NOBODY should be surprised by the decision of the European Court of Human Rights to reject 49 applications by Greek Cypriot families of the missing. The Court rejected the applications because they had not been submitted within a reasonable period of time, which is set at six months after domestic court remedies had been exhausted. For the court this was in 1990 when the last application by families of the missing had been submitted; the 49 applications were filed after the year 2000.

THE 2010 government budget was approved yesterday by a comfortable majority in the House after a session that lasted well into the night.

The government’s financial statement was approved by 33 votes to 19 against. The ‘ayes’ came from ruling AKEL, DIKO, EDEK and the Greens, and the ‘nays’ from DISY and the European Party.

Parliament was able to overcome the toughest snag to passage, which was opposition to the supplementary budget for 2009 for state broadcaster CyBC that the government tagged onto 2010.

Despite the €8.8 million item having been pre-approved in February, objections to it were raised last week by 21 deputies from DISY, DIKO and the European Party.

AN ALLEGED plot to assassinate the President, a massive row over calls for a national unity government, and accusations against the Finance Ministry of fudging the numbers, were some of the highlights during discussion of the budget in parliament yesterday.

AKEL leader Andros Kyprianou caused a brief storm earlier in the week when he informed deputies of the existence of websites and blogs “encouraging the physical extermination” of President Demetris Christofias.

These purported threats appeared on spoof news sites, but Kyprianou said they were serious enough to merit concern. He provided no more details, but in a comment apparently referring to the President’s detractors, concluded: “You see, this is the only way they know how to respond to arguments.”

Only one quarter of Greek Cypriot youth characterise themselves as European, whilst 15 per cent of Turkish Cypriots did so in a new survey released yesterday.

Some eight per cent of Greek Cypriot youth and five per cent of Turkish Cypriot youth said they felt Middle Eastern, while a whopping 70 per cent of Greek Cypriot youth and 66 per cent of Turkish Cypriot youth identified themselves as “Mediterranean”

“For me personally this is the most surprising result of the whole survey,” said Dr Nicos Peristianis of the University of Nicosia when presenting the result of the survey carried out by UNDP-ACT in cooperation with the University of Nicosia and KADEM.

LATEST available figures for tourism show an 11 per cent drop in arrivals for 2009, and a 17 per cent drop in revenue, Cyprus Hotels Association (PASYXE) President Haris Loizides said yesterday.

If the tourism industry was to stand any chance of recovering, dogmatic thinking, bureaucratic snags and time-consuming procedures” needed to be left far behind,” said Loizides.

“What is mainly needed is immediate mobilisation – today, not tomorrow.”

Speaking at a lunch following PASYXE’s extraordinary general meeting, Loizides said “an even bigger worry” than the 2009 figures was “the fact that these results are much worse than those of our main competitor destinations, due mainly to the degraded competitiveness of our tourist product”.

A BRITISH woman snatched her daughter twice from her Turkish Cypriot husband but her child ended up blaming her for not getting to know her father and his family and cut all contact with her mother for nearly five years.

In her story, which was published in the British tabloid Daily Mail online yesterday, Georgina Han recounts how she took her daughter Jayhan, who was born in 1986, from the north when she was just a baby and left for the UK but the girl’s father later managed to snatch her back when she was four years old and kept her for two years until 1990 when Georgina decided to take matters into her own hands.

THE SOFTWARE industry in Cyprus lost $15 million due to piracy in 2008, it emerged yesterday but measures are being stepped up with the launch of a Mystery Shopper campaign nationwide to root out fakes.

“In Cyprus, a new era in combating software piracy has emerged. As an effort to protect the honest resellers from the illicit competition and the consumers from being duped, we are currently running a Mystery Shopper campaign nationwide,” said Evie Demetriou, Anti-Piracy Manager of Microsoft Cyprus.

Demetriou said they were also working closely with the Cyprus police to train them in forensic technology, which helps them determine whether product keys found during police investigations are genuine or counterfeit.

STRICTER checks on meat quality will be enforced during the festive season, Agriculture Minister Michalis Polynikis said yesterday.

In a meeting with Veterinary Services and Health Services, Polynikis called for the adoption of added measures to protect public health and ensure consumers can make informed purchases.

“I have given instructions to Veterinary Services to intensify daily checks at all points of production, packaging, storage and sale in the fresh meat market. Particular care should be given so that all slaughtered animals bear a stamp denoting the country of origin, next to the quality stamp,” Polynikis said.

THE EDUCATION Ministry yesterday said that H1N1 cases at schools had decreased over the last few days, following an upsurge in November.

“There was an increase of new flu cases at schools in November, but as we had expected the number of cases has fallen since the beginning of December,” said Yiannis Kasoulides, Health and Safety Officer at the Ministry.

Commenting on reports by schools that there is a shortage of liquid disinfectants, Kasoulides said that maintaining an adequate supply of necessary items is the obligation of individual school managements. “Where there are shortages school administrations should inform the Ministry,” Kasoulides added.