NEARLY 10,000 people were caught drink-driving in 2009, police said yesterday following the latest incident at the weekend when a 17-year old girl was nabbed without a licence and driving over the limit.

Traffic Police Head Demetris Demetriou said: “We are setting new records with the number of arrests for drink driving. The more checks we carry out, the more drunk drivers we catch.”

“The police will continue to carry out checks, and we will be enforcing the law even more strictly”, he added.

The problem of unqualified car drivers was given a disturbing twist in the early hours of Sunday, with the arrest in Limassol of the 17-year-old girl who had no driving licence or car insurance and was over the legal limit for blood-alcohol.

LEADERS of the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities yesterday kicked off the first round of intensive talks with a nine-hour meeting where they exchanged views on governance.

“We have freely exchanged views on the various aspects of governance, without having any document as a basis; I want to make this clear,” President Demetris Christofias said after the meeting.

He was referring to the proposals submitted by the Turkish side, outlining its positions regarding governance and power-sharing.

He said both him and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat had stated that nothing has been agreed and nothing will be agreed if there is no agreement on everything.

A 28-YEAR-OLD Nicosia man who was yesterday jailed for two and a half years for possession of, and intent to sell, 60 grams of cocaine said he only became involved in the drugs business when he tried to help his brother who was a user.

Sitting in his holding cell at Nicosia’s Criminal Court staring at the ground, George Nicolaou said: “I came back from Russia, where I studied philology in Yekaterinburg, to help my brother and then on September 15, 2008 my life came to an end and I started dealing drugs,” he said.

The divorced father of one said he remembered the date clearly because it was when everything in his life had started falling apart.

INVESTIGATIONS continued yesterday into vandalism at the Ayios Nikolas cemetery in Limassol where 70 graves, including that of former President Spyros Kyprianou, had Greek and Cypriot flags removed.

The vandalism took place on Sunday only days after the Greek flag was removed from the empty grave of former President and DIKO leader Tassos Papadopoulos whose remains were stolen from the Deftera cemetery outside Nicosia in mid-December, and which are still missing.

Police yesterday confirmed that Sunday’s incident in Limassol where flags and candles were removed from graves, including that of Kyprianou – also a former President and DIKO leader – was not connected to the recent flag-removal at the Papadopoulos site.

A 36-YEAR-OLD British permanent resident David Anthony Jones was killed by a pensioner, who tested more than double the permitted alcohol limit in his blood, in a road traffic accident in Paphos on Sunday lunchtime.

Jones, who was serving at the army base of Akrotiri, was fatally injured when the high-powered racing motorbike he was driving was involved in a head on collision with a pick-up truck.

The accident took place on the Mesoyi to Tsada road. The 76-year-old truck driver had more than 40 years experience as a bus driver, but was found to have an alcohol level of 43mg in his blood. The legal limit is 22 mg. Police arrested him at the scene.

TWO CARS parked in different areas of Limassol were torched by unknown arsonists in the early hours of yesterday.

In the first arson attack around 1.30am, a luxury car worth €65,000 was torched. The car, owned by a 25-year-old man was parked outside his Polemidia residence. The luxury vehicle was completely destroyed as a result of the blaze, which police later determined had been set intentionally. A second car, owned by a 52-year-old man that was parked next to the targeted vehicle also sustained considerable damage.

A 49-YEAR-OLD Nicosia mechanic was yesterday fined €800 after he was found guilty of trespassing.

Costas Glykis was found guilty of entering Ioanna Karsera’s garden and trying to harass her.

According to the charges the 49-year-old and Karsera had been friends up until 2005 when he attacked and assaulted her over some financial differences causing her actual bodily harm. She had to be hospitalised because of the 2005 attack and filed a charges against Glykis, whereby the latter pleaded guilty.

A 28-YEAR-OLD Syrian national escaped from the main police holding cells, which are located within the Central Prisons, yesterday morning around 7:45am.  The Syrian national was being held for having entered Cyprus illegally.

“This morning, a little before 8am, a foreigner who was being held under a holding and deportation order… whilst he was transferring buckets of trash under the supervision of a member of the police, under conditions which are being investigated, escaped and is being searched for,” said Michalis Katsounotos, spokesperson for the police.