Eroglu: ‘treated with contempt’

2010-09-19

THE GREEK Cypriot negotiating team is failing to take seriously proposals tabled by the Turkish Cypriot side and sometimes even treats them “with contempt”, the Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu has said.
In a rare interview, Eroglu told the Sunday Mail that the talks with President Demetris Christofias are “going slowly”, repeating his view that the latest effort is “the last chance” for a solution.
“Everything that needs to be discussed has been discussed … but Christofias seems to be seeking more time by blaming me and calling me intransigent,” he said.
He complained that his team’s proposals in the talks are “not taken seriously” and are even sometimes treated “with contempt” by the Greek Cypriot team, despite the UN considering them “reasonable”.

Our View: Paying the price of a shabby vendetta

2010-09-19

IN THE PREVIOUS three years the state has spent €106 million sending patients abroad for medical treatment. For many cases this was justified, as the required medical treatment could not be provided on the island, but in others it was not. There could be no justification, whatsoever, for example, in sending patients to Israel, the UK or Greece for open heart surgery, when this can be done at Cyprus’ private hospitals, at which standards of care and success rates are as high as anywhere in the world.

Tales from the Coffeeshop: What a glorious week for the Church

2010-09-19

HOW DOES a bill of €170 million in tax arrears to the Inland Revenue Department become €170,000 from one day to the next? You divide by 1,000 or multiply by 0.1 per cent.
This is the difficult way of doing it. There is a much easier way as we found out this week. The Auditor-general admits that she had mistakenly concluded in her annual report that the Church owed the IRD €170 million in taxes. She blames the IRD for giving her the wrong figures and presto 170 million becomes 170 thousand.
No division necessary – all that is required is an IRD that is run by a bunch of village idiots who could be blamed for getting their calculations wrong by 169,830,000.

EU praise for probe into dancer’s death

2010-09-19

THE COUNCIL of Europe has issued an interim resolution praising the efforts made by Russia and Cyprus following the landmark ruling against them in the case of the 20-year-old Russian dancer Oxana Rantseva.
The Council’s Committee of Ministers issued the interim resolution following its two-day meeting on September 14 and 15, on the execution of a European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruling last January, in which the two countries were condemned for violating anti-slavery conventions and the human right to life, freedom and security.
Cyprus was found guilty by the ECHR of failing on multiple accounts to protect Rantseva, who fell to her death in March 2001 while trying to escape from a fifth-floor Limassol flat owned by a cabaret-owner’s employee.

Police to study Kitas’ latest claims

2010-09-19

THE police are expected to have the court minutes of convict Antonis Prokopiou Kitas’ testimony on the theft of former President Tassos Papadopoulos’ body by Thursday the latest.
According to Police Spokesman Michalis Katsounotos yesterday, Kitas’ testimony will be compared to the statement he had previously given the police and any new additions would be investigated.
On Friday, convicted murderer and rapist Kitas took to the stand at Nicosia Criminal Court to testify as one of the three main suspects in the theft of Papadopoulos’ body back in December. He pointed the finger of blame to a police inspector, a wanted man and a murder-trial witness, who he said pressured him into carrying out the crime, promising him significant benefits if he went along with it.

Tractor death the fourth this summer

2010-09-19

A MAN from Egypt was yesterday the fourth farmer in just over a month to lose his life after being crushed by the tractor he was driving.
According to Limassol police’s head of rural areas, Philippos Papaelias, the accident took place early yesterday morning, while the 27-year-old victim had been driving along a rural road in Pissouri.
He apparently lost control of the tractor and swerved off the road into a five-metre deep ditch. The tractor was upturned and its driver crushed beneath.
Labour Inspector Andreas Kalogirou said the tractor had no protective canopy; otherwise the outcome could have been a lot different.

Bus timetables still not ready

2010-09-19

FULL OPERATION of the new Nicosia bus system is still not quite there yet, but updated timetables should finally be ready by the end of this week, according to Iordanos Iordanou, the head of the Nicosia District Transport Organisation (OSEL).
The new system was officially launched in early July, despite efforts by parliament to postpone it until after the summer. Deputies showed a sensitive ear to disgruntled bus drivers who failed to negotiate new terms of employment or compensation with the Communications Ministry and new bus companies.

THOK fire was accidental

2010-09-19

A FIRE that broke out in the new Cyprus Theatre Organisation’s (THOK) building site on Friday was because of work that was being done on the construction, police said yesterday.
Nicosia CID yesterday joined the Fire Services and Electromechanical Service to examine the reasons behind the blaze, which broke out on the construction’s third floor and took fire fighters over an hour to put out because of the scaffolding.
The outcome was that the fire was down to human error and hadn’t been set on purpose.

Factory destroyed as water tanks burst

2010-09-19

SEVEN hundred tons of distilled water flooded the streets in Larnaca’s industrial estate yesterday, when the wall surrounding a biological waste depot for an olive processing factory collapsed and brought its water tanks crashing down.
The Fire Services and Aradippou police station arrived on the scene and managed to bring the situation under control, after closing off the surrounding area and pumping out the water.
There were no injuries or other incidents, but the factory in question, as well as another neighbouring it, sustained considerable damages from the sheer force of the water.
Aradippou police, the Fire Services and Labour Inspection Department are investigating the reasons behind the incident.

In a rational world people would take to the streets

2010-09-19

LAST SUNDAY I wrote about the privileged employees of the public sector, the annual cost of which to the taxpayer is in the region of €2.7 billion.
Figures, given this week by the general secretary of PASYDY, about the princely allowances paid to deputies and state officials as well as the revelations at legislature about the golden boys of the CyBC add weight to the conclusion of last Sunday’s comment. We cannot expect any measures to sort out the mess of public finances by the political parties or the government.

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.