Wins for Flames and Amdocs in Cyprus Cricket League

2010-12-08

THE European University Flames and Amdocs recorded wins in the latest round of the Cyprus Cricket League.

After winning the toss, the Flames decided to bat first at the Potamia Ground in Nicosia where they faced the Fellows, led by national team captain Mike Kyriakou, who made early inroads into the fragile Flames top order and reduced them to 53 runs for four wickets.

An innings of 65 from the Flames’ Jaimin Patel helped them recover, to post a challenging total of 170 runs after 32 overs.

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2010-12-08
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Pill-popping Cypriots find drugs in water supply

2010-12-08

RESEARCHERS in Cyprus have discovered trace levels of pharmaceuticals in the water supply as a result of a pill-popping culture which makes Cypriots one of the leading EU consumers of antibiotics.

At present, the quantities of chemicals ranging from painkillers to antibiotics and antidepressants found in the water supply are too minute to be a public health threat.

But scientists say further research is needed on the impact of a longer-term accumulation of the substances, as well as the interaction of each in a chemical cocktail if the present consumption and use of medication continues unabated.

Our View: Call for Plan B to solve Cyprob justified

2010-12-08

PRESIDENT Christofias and Dervis Eroglu on Monday met for the first time since their meeting with the UN Secretary General in New York. It was a brief encounter during which they scheduled three meetings for December. Their aides, who would be meeting twice a week, would work out their schedule on Friday.

The two sides are showing a sense of urgency, which had been lacking before the New York meeting and had been highlighted by Ban Ki-moon in his report – he described the procedure as ‘sluggish’. There is no guarantee that the two men would be more productive and cover more ground just because they were “intensifying their contacts”. The talks were intensified a few months ago as well but led nowhere.

Taxpayers’ money going to hospital middlemen

2010-12-08

THE health ministry is wasting hundreds of thousands of euros by paying commission to  ‘middlemen’ in sending patients to two particular hospitals in Israel instead of going direct to the facilities themselves, the Auditor-general’s report for 2009 said yesterday.

Auditor-general Chrystalla Yiorkadji also questioned why a health ministry official recommended to one of the ‘middlemen’ companies to alter its books so that the commission paid would not leave a paper trail.

“Despite our service’s repeated suggestions to the health ministry to immediately go for direct co-operation with the hospitals …to cut expenses, it has been established that the ministry continues to cooperate with the specific companies,” report said.

Report shows lost state revenue reached €626m in 2009

2010-12-08

THE STATE is losing hundreds of millions each year in uncollected taxes, according to Auditor-general Chrystalla Yiorkadji’s 2009 report on the finances of the state machinery.

Yiorkadji delivered the 753-page report to President Demetris Christofias yesterday. Christofias noted that it was a little less bulky than last year’s report, expressing the hope it would identify fewer problems.

The AG said the report contained “reliable, objective information” on the public sector and local authorities on which policy decisions could be taken.

According to the report, the Inland Revenue Department collected €1.31bn in taxes last year compared with €1.35bn in 2008.

Money wasted as H1N1 vaccines over ordered

2010-12-08

CYPRUS ordered 400,000 doses of H1N1 flu vaccine for €3.2 million but used only 23,000 as people realised the virus was not as serious as first thought, it emerged yesterday.

According to the auditor-general’s report, Cyprus signed an agreement with a pharmaceutical company for the procurement of the doses in August 2009.

It was the time when the World Health Organisation declared a pandemic, sending countries scrambling for vaccines, fearing the worst.

By February of this year, Cyprus took delivery of 200,000 doses, paying €1.7 million but it later transpired that additional quantities would not be necessary.

Arrests after police raid ‘steroids lab’

2010-12-08

FIVE PEOPLE, including a pensioner couple and their son, were arrested yesterday after substantial quantities of raw materials that could be used to manufacture illegal anabolic steroids were located in a laboratory during a police raid in Nicosia.

The couple, aged 72 and 71, were expected to be released after questioning, police said.

Their 43-year-old son and two foreign inividuals, 25 and 32, will be brought before a court today for a remand hearing.

Police spokesman Michael Katsounotos said there was some concern that if, as police suspected, steroids were being manufactured at the warehouse, that they were being distributed around the world from Cyprus.

Hot weather takes its toll on Paphos ice rink

2010-12-08

THE CONTINUING unseasonable temperatures have started to melt the first-ever ice rink created outdoors in Paphos for the Christmas holiday season.

Lubos Salnac is a guard and ice master of ‘Cyprus on the ice’, the company responsible for setting up the rink in the Town Hall gardens said:  “We are having huge problems during the day as the sun is so strong, the top of the ice is being turned to water.”

The rink was originally due to be open all day, but because of the balmy weather it is currently not opening until 3pm when temperatures start to drop somewhat. Until then, a layer of water covers the top of the 200-square-metre rink, which does not freeze over completely until the sun goes down completely.

Police Chief: making fun of me is not funny

2010-12-08

POLICE Chief Michalis Papageorgiou is upset with state broadcaster CyBC for ridiculing him on the comedy satire show ‘Patates Antinaxtes’.

Papageorgiou has sent a letter to the show’s producers who have repeatedly screened skits featuring a character based on the police chief. In the letter Papageorgiou demanded that the producers immediately remove his character from the popular show.

Papageorgiou is featured on numerous episodes of the show. On November 28 he was depicted on the show as being self absorbed, someone that refers to himself in the third person, not bright, and a little scared of a well known felon.

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.