THE FIRE Services have issued guidelines for people in order to avoid the risk of fires.

According to the law, it is forbidden to light fires in rural areas, while throwing lit cigarettes out of car windows is a major cause of blazes.

THE IMPORTANCE of contacts between the two sides was the main focus of a dinner in the north on Thursday night attended by former President Glafcos Clerides and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat.

EURO ZONE hopeful Cyprus opened an EU-wide tender yesterday for media planners to coax a deeply suspicious public into ditching their pound and accepting the European currency in 2008.

The £1 million campaign, running for two years, is designed to convince Cypriots – among the biggest worriers at euro price hikes according to one EU survey – that their concerns are misplaced.

FOREIGN MINISTER George Iacovou said the Greek Cypriot side will not deviate from the line that the Cyprus talks should be held under UN auspices, CNA reported yesterday.

A LINGUISTICS professor in Turkey has identified 738 words of Turkish origin used in everyday language by Greek Cypriots.

According to the study by Ridvan Ozturk, 131 of the words describe items and tools, 61 describe different foods, 56 character descriptions, 34 professions and 22 plants, among other uses.

MAYORS on both sides of the Green Line should take the initiative to make contact and not leave it all up to politicians, the President of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, Giovanni di Stasi, said yesterday.

AN ASSOCIATION set up to preserve the nature and culture of Tala village, on the outskirts of Paphos, has hit out at the government for failing to listen to their needs.

Mike Stock, Secretary of the Tala Cultural and Environmental Association, has told the Cyprus Mail that the Association, formed in March, has several major concerns, which have not been addressed.

EVENTS for this year’s Telethon were announced at a news conference in Nicosia this week.

Organised for the first time in Cyprus in 1994, the Telethon has taken place every year since and is organised by the Cyprus Institute of Neurology and Genetics (CING) and the Cyprus Muscular Dystrophy Association (CMDA).

A BOMB exploded beneath the car of a 26-year-old Nicosia woman at 3.30am yesterday morning. A police announcement said the area was cordoned off and put under observation, while bomb technicians and members of the Nicosia CID continue to investigate the incident. The explosion left a sizeable crater in the road just outside Nicosia’s School for the Blind.