President Demetris Christofias briefed the National Council on the course of direct talks with Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat for over three hours yesterday.

Party leaders will submit their positions on the progress, or not, of the talks in a next Council meeting on March 10.

STUDENTS are to receive a €12 million aid package with vouchers for food, housing, transport and equipment Education Minister Andreas Demetriou announced yesterday.

The programme will begin for the new academic year starting in September this year and applies to students of public and private universities, he said.

APPROXIMATELY 400 Port Authority staff at Larnaca and Limassol ended a two-day warning strike at 6am yesterday after protesting against a Ministry of Finance decision to review the Authority’s pension fund agreement.

THE USUALLY sedate village of Mammari has become a source of anti-UN sentiment after UN peacekeepers prevented local villagers from picking wild asparagus from nearby fields.

Villagers are more than a little peeved that UN soldiers are preventing them from harvesting the traditional wild asparagus (aggrelia) from the fertile land.

MARIOS Garoyian was yesterday re-elected leader of the Democratic Party (DIKO) for a further four-year term, after his candidacy went unopposed.

Garoyian, who has led DIKO since 2006, will be officially declared party president at the Pancyprian Electoral Congress on March 15.

POLICE found another 60kg of cannabis in a Larnaca flat yesterday, as part of further investigations into the drugs found in charcoal storage facilities a day earlier, taking the total amount confiscated to 176kg.

CYPRIOTS will be able to vote in the upcoming European Parliament elections with their European identity cards, while non-Cypriot EU citizens can also use their passports at polling stations.

CONSERVATIONISTS in Cyprus are in a race against time to save the island’s forests from being wiped out by drought and fire.

Once known as the “Green Island” of the Mediterranean, forests now cover less than half of Cyprus. Over the years forest fires and drought have decimated scores of trees, with blackened stumps or brown trees a blight on the landscape.

PAPHOS can look forward to getting a new world-class health centre offering a wide range of medical services to both local residents and foreign visitors.

FINANCE Minister Charilaos Stavrakis yesterday delivered the first 30 loan approvals totalling €4.2 million, to young couples who applied for a housing loan to the Housing Finance Corporation, under the government scheme for acquisition of a first home.