THE LABOUR Ministry’s Mediating Services are scrambling for an initiative to find a resolution to the hotel industry crisis and avert a potentially crippling 48-hour hotel staff strike, which has been set for Monday.
Trade unions, however, have made it clear that the strike will definitely be going ahead after talks for the renewal of the collective agreement stalled.
CYPRUS Airways (CY) hopes to meet with pilots’ union PASIPY on Monday in an effort to avert a 48-hour strike planned for the end of next week, chairman Lazaros Savvides said yesterday.
The strike, if it goes ahead, will affect 80 flights and 12,000 passengers.
THE TURK?SH Cypriot side was the latest to dismiss a British press report suggesting that Famagusta port could be operated under the auspices of the UN in an attempt to settle the issue of direct trade.
Hasan Ercakica, the spokesman for Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat, said the north was not involved in any such discussions.
THE UNITED Nation announced yesterday that a Word Food Programme-chartered catamaran would begin a twice-weekly passenger service for NGOs and diplomats between Cyprus and Beirut, as reconstruction and aid distribution efforts stepped up in the war-torn country.
CYPRUS has offered the use of its ports and airports as transit for an expanded UN force in Lebanon, the government said yesterday.
Government Spokesman Christodoulos Pashardis told reporters that the Foreign Ministry had sent a letter to the United Nations and to the European Union, offering to act as a transit point both for humanitarian aid and for the movement of troops.
FOUR MEN were yesterday remanded in custody for eight days in connection with Wednesday’s failed co-op armed robbery in Mammari.
The Sudanese suspects, who are legal residents on the island, have confessed to the robbery, but they will not be officially charged until next week.
THE GOVERNMENT was non-committal yesterday after reports said the two sides were ready to exchange the remains of missing persons.
Simerini newspaper said the Turkish Cypriot side was ready to hand over the remains of 105 Greek Cypriots missing since 1974.
OVER 40 Greek Cypriots have now made applications for compensation to the property commission in the north, the Turkish Cypriot side said yesterday.
“The number of applications so far has reached to 42 and three of these have been decided,” a statement said.
AN unidentified foreign man found unconscious with head injuries on Regina Street in Nicosia on Thursday night has died of his injuries, and is being kept at Nicosia General Hospital’s morgue as police search for his identity.
ENVIRONMENT Minister Photis Photiou yesterday joined regional officials in Greece to discuss efforts to avert a potential environmental catastrophe stemming from a massive oil spill off the coast of Lebanon.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
