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GOVERNMENT party AKEL’s leader Andros Kyprianou was contacted last week by party supporters looking for political favours, it emerged yesterday.
As a result of a misplaced click of a computer mouse, AKEL yesterday emailed to all its media contacts a summary of Kyprianou’s phone messages from last Friday, which included a proposed “quid pro quo” over a senior public sector job and a request for a political favour.
The email was intended for Kyprianou, but instead his secretary mistakenly sent it to everyone on the party’s media mailing list yesterday afternoon.
The first of two items that raise questions of rusfeti (political favours) relates to an appointment to the position of senior customs officer.
THE 2010 World Cup seems destined to be remembered for its big refereeing blunders. Both Sunday’s matches featured refereeing howlers which, it could be argued, altered their results. Was it a coincidence the two sides that were favoured by the decisions both won their matches? They may have been technically better than their opponents, but there is no denying that they were helped by the bad decisions.
TURKISH Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu has asked UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for a timetable on the Cyprus talks with a view to concluding negotiations by the end of the year, reports from New York said yesterday.
According to the CyBC last night, Eroglu made the request during a half-hour meeting yesterday with Ban at the UN headquarters.
The Turkish Cypriot leader also reiterated to the UN chief the need for an end to the ‘embargo’ on the north of the island.
Speaking via a translator at a press conference after the meeting, Eroglu said he “shared” the UN chief’s desire for a solution by the end of 2010.
THE LAWYER acting for a British man who was held illegally at the Central Prison has vowed to fight for justice after what he described as “a very serious breach of human rights”.
The case has caused a major political row and raised questions over heavy-handed and possibly racist treatment of foreigners by authorities.
Lawyer Giovannis Kouzalis was so appalled by the incident that his firm took on the case without fee and currently have several staff working on the issue flat out.
The British man’s ordeal began moments after he was released from serving a one-month prison sentence for drink-driving.
Minutes after leaving the prison, the man who is HIV positive, was ordered back into custody and held without lawful authority for a further 15 days.
DISCUSSION of a bill to increase the number of deputies and raise the percentage of the vote necessary for entry into parliament kicked-off yesterday amid heated arguments, but little in the way of substance.
The proposal to increase deputies by seven – to 63 – and raise the minimum threshold of votes necessary for a political party to be represented in parliament to 3.5 per cent from 1.8 per cent, was submitted by AKEL and DISY – the two biggest parties — in a rare show of cooperation.
GOVERNMENT allies DIKO and opposition DISY alike have slammed the government’s latest package of economic measures, dubbing it poorly thought-out and counterproductive.
Ostensibly geared at boosting a sluggish economy and at the same time raising state revenues, the package consists of five proposals/bills: a one per cent hike on corporate tax for a period of two years; an increase in property tax to be levied on the 8,000 largest landowners; measures to crack down on tax evasion and tax avoidance; a general town planning amnesty; and a shoring up of public spending on benefits for large families and college students.
CYPRUS was the place to go for cheap meat and cigarettes in 2009, but for other foodstuffs including fish, alcohol and dairy, the cost was significantly higher according to the latest EU report, and when compared with expendable income, these high prices made shopping in 2009 even tougher for consumers.
Overall, when including all basic foodstuffs and alcoholic beverages, the report showed Cyprus was eight per cent above the European Union average.
When the various food and beverage sub groups are considered individually, the report shows the most expensive foods to be milk, cheese and eggs. At 37 per cent above the EU average, Cyprus is the third most expensive countries for these products, alongside Ireland and Greece.
THE STATE broadcaster is planning a summer cleaning of its “sick” premises in an effort to cleanse it of the various contaminations currently plaguing the building, at least until a new one can be built, said its chairman yesterday.
Makis Symeou, chairman of the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CyBC) said that the broadcaster was now “doing much better” in its battle against sick building syndrome. The CyBC building in the capital was built nearly six decades ago, but more recently has been found to have caused numerous health problems for employees.
A SCOTTISH man, an English woman and a Brazilian woman, all lost their lives on Sunday in unrelated incidents on Sunday in Famagusta district.
The body of a 50-year-old Brazilian woman’s body was found floating in the water about 25 metres from Maistrali bay in Ayia Napa at around 4.30p.m. She was transferred to the shore by lifeguards who tried in vain to revive her. She was taken by ambulance to a private clinic where she was pronounced dead by on-duty doctors.
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.
