CYPRUS coach Angelos Anastasiades admitted that the better team won on the night after Denmark’s 2-0 victory in their Euro 2012 Group clash in Copenhagen on Tuesday.
“Our opponents were better than us and they deserved to win. We could not follow their pace throughout the game. As much as we tried we could not break through into their half the way we wanted,” said Anastasiades.
CYPRIOT duo George Achilleos and Andreas Ηasikos have claimed two more medals for Cyprus at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi, improving the island’s medal count at the competition to six.
Achilleos and Ηasikos, who won the gold medal in the men’s Skeet Pairs on Sunday, took the silver and bronze medals in the Singles Skeet men with a total of 144 and 143 points respectively yesterday.
The 29-year-old Achilleos, who holds Games records in both qualifications and finals, had to be satisfied with the silver medal after losing in a shoot-off to Richard Brickell of England, while Chasikos managed to beat Drew Christie of Scotland and Englishman Clive Bramley in the bronze medal shoot-off .
THE ROAD transport department has been flooded with applications for their “cash-for-clunkers” scheme with over a thousand phone calls and 2,300 applications submitted by 1pm yesterday, the second day of the scheme.
Senior road transport engineer Yiannis Nicolaides said: “When we arrived (at work) this morning we had received over 1,800 applications. We now have 2,334 applications.”
Asked how many of these applications would be accepted for the scheme, Nicolaides said: “It’s a case of arithmetic, we have a budget of €2 million and if we give €1,800 to everyone it will mean about 1,111 new cars.”
With so many applications in the first days, it is likely that most, if not all, will fall into the highest cashback category.
CYPRUS had every right to be happy that one of its own, Professor Christophoros Pissarides, had been awarded the Nobel Prize for economics. It was no exaggeration to say that Pissarides made us all proud because it is very rare for a country with a population of less than a million to produce a Nobel Prize winner. Every country needs one of its children to make it feel proud occasionally and we are grateful to him for giving us this small pleasure in these difficult times.
THE UNITED NATIONS have no plans to host an international conference on the Cyprus problem, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Adviser Alexander Downer said yesterday.
Speaking after meeting President Demetris Christofias, Downer said the UN did not have any plans to host an international conference on the Cyprus problem and reiterated that nothing was agreed in the negotiations until everything is agreed.
Turkey has repeatedly asked for an international conference to resolve the matter but the Greek Cypriot side says that one should take place only on the international aspects of the Cyprus problem and after the rest were resolved.
TV ACTRESS Valentina Sophocleous, who has been actively campaigning for the opening of the island’s barriers, has expressed her delight at the scheduled opening of the Pyrgos-Limnitis checkpoint tomorrow.
The crossing will open at 3pm tomorrow, marking a new era for locals. Many, including Sophocleous, have long been fighting for the opening of the checkpoint.
Sophocleous told Radio Pafos listeners that the opening of the crossing marked a historic occasion.
“It proves that when people co-operate and set a common target, then they can achieve anything,” she said.
CYPRUS Turkish Airlines, known as KTHY, has lost its bid in the Court of Appeal to overturn the ban on flights from the UK to the north.
KTHY and its UK tour operator, CTA Holidays Limited, argued that the ban unfairly restricted Turkish Cypriots and their companies wishing to travel and conduct business with the EU and the rest of the world.
Currently, flights to northern Cyprus must land in Turkey first, which is the only country in the world that recognises the ‘TRNC’.
Yesterday three appeal judges ruled that granting permits would contravene the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation and constitute a breach of the UK’s obligation to respect the rights of the Republic of Cyprus (RoC).
A CYPRIOT container ship collided with a Greek tanker carrying jet fuel some 30 km off the Dutch coast at Scheveningen leaking highly flammable kerosene into the sea, the Dutch coast guard said yesterday.
Peter van Oorschot, a spokesman for the Dutch Coast Guard, told Reuters the tanker Mindoro had leaked jet fuel from a five-by-six metre hole just above the water line.
“The leakage has now stopped, they have pumped the fuel from a leaking compartment to another tank on board. What is left is a stream of fuel on the water and there is danger of explosion,” Van Oorschot said.
Oil was floating on the water over an area of 3 km to 0.5 km, but an oil dispersion vessel at the scene said it was not needed to clean the oil as it would evaporate.
THE GOVERNMENT has welcomed the return to the island of Nobel prize winner Christopher Pissarides, who will return to Cyprus in January as a lecturer at the University of Cyprus.
“At a time when Cyprus is experiencing a financial crisis his knowledge will be invaluable to his country. We will certainly make use of Pissarides’ knowledge,” said Commerce Minister Antonis Paschalidis, who also expressed the view that Pissarides “can help as a Government adviser on technology, innovation and many other sectors”.
Pissarides was announced on Monday as the 2010 winner of the Nobel Prize of Economics.
EUROCYPRIA pilots yesterday warned they would react if the finance minister did not meet a commitment, they say he made, to transfer the airline’s personnel to Cyprus Airways when the two companies merge.
The government has decided to merge the two ailing airlines, saying it was the only way if the island was to continue having a carrier.
Elisseos Michael, the general secretary of the Eurocypria pilots’ union said they are demanding from Finance Minister Charilaos Stavrakis that he implement his commitment, made on September 6, that Eurocypria staff would be transferred to Cyprus Airways.
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.
