THE ENGLISH School in Nicosia returned to normal yesterday with all Turkish Cypriot pupils present, as an 18-year-old pupil from another school appeared in court in connection with the racist attack that rocked the school on Wednesday.
Sir,
I was deeply shocked to see the events coming from the English School in Nicosia in the last 24 hours.
Let me join in on the condemnation of events of this nature, which certainly do not help our cause in showing that we can peacefully coexist in this island.
A PUPIL was yesterday remanded in custody for five days in connection with the assault of Turkish Cypriot pupils at the English School in Nicosia on Wednesday.
Police say the 18-year-old has confessed in a statement that he was among a gang of youths involved in the assault of Turkish Cypriot pupils on English School grounds during a break on Wednesday morning.
TURKISH Cypriot ‘Prime Minister’ Ferdi Sabit Soyer said yesterday the Cyprus government was responsible for the security of every Turkish Cypriot who crossed over to the south of the island.
Soyer was responding to the attack on Turkish Cypriot pupils at the English School by a gang of masked youths on Wednesday.
U.N. SECRETARY-general Kofi Annan is gearing up to appoint a new special advisor for Cyprus, indicating that new talk on a settlement could become a reality next year.
Annan has made a request for $639,500 in the UN’s budget programme to cover the cost of a special advisor in 2007, depending on developments.
A PARTIAL suspension of Turkey’s European Union entry talks would be dangerous, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul told Reuters in an interview yesterday.
The EU is mulling a possible partial suspension of the talks due to Ankara’s continued refusal to open its ports to shipping from EU member Cyprus.
GREECE warned yesterday that if the issue of Varosha was removed from the Finnish compromise to avoid a Turkey-EU crisis, the initiative could be derailed.
Although the Finnish proposal has not been publicised, and is said to be only verbal, it is believed to suggest that Varosha be handed to the UN for work to start so that it can be returned to Greek Cypriots at a future stage.
THE UNITED Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) yesterday held the second of its twice-yearly Military Skills competition, with participants tackling a series of different disciplines in the UN’s Protected Area at the site of the old Nicosia airport.
THE House yesterday voted into law the new supermarket hours, which will allow stores to stay open on Saturdays until 7.30pm in the summer and 7pm in the winter.
Under the new law, the Wednesday half-day will stay in effect, but the closing hours will be pushed back until 3pm. Stores can open as early as 5am and the midday closing of stores will be optional.
PARENTS of pupils who attend the Ayios Nicolaos high school in Limassol are calling on the police to intervene because the school is frequently being bombed.
Yesterday, two pupils, aged 16 and 18, were arrested and remanded in custody for eight days by a Limassol District Court on suspicion of detonating a bomb outside the headmaster’s office at the school.
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.
