Lowest road toll in 50 years

2011-01-20

LAST YEAR saw the least number of serious traffic accidents and road deaths on the island since the creation of the Republic, Police Chief Michalis Papageorgiou said yesterday.

Despite the good news, Papageorgiou revealed that a staggering 55 per cent of children are not strapped into seat belts while in the car.

“We conducted a visual survey and checked 13,332 cars to see how many of drivers and passengers wore seatbelts. We found that 91 per cent of people in cities wore seatbelts, while only 74.8 per cent of people wore seatbelts in rural areas,” said the police chief.

“A startling statistic was that 55.2 per cent of children do not wear seatbelts in cars; this figure also includes children riding in the back seat,” he added.

Our View: Unions must aim to foster cooperation

2011-01-20

 

REPRESENTATIVES of the Cyprus Airways unions recently had their first meeting with the mediation service of the Ministry of Labour in order to discuss management’s proposals for pay cuts. Unions have already expressed objections to the proposed across-the-board pay cuts, arguing that the lower earners should be exempt.

They also demanded that before any decision was taken on the pay cuts, the management had to clarify how many employees would be made redundant as this would affect the savings that the company would have to make. If 150 instead of 120 workers left the company the saving would be €1.3 million higher and thus a smaller contribution would be required from the remaining employees.

Learning from Lebanon

2011-01-20

AFTER watching the collapse of Lebanon’s government last week, it is hard not to think about efforts to build a stable Iraq. The two countries have so much in common. Both are volatile democracies where any political question can provoke not just intense debate, but also the threat of violence.

Both countries have relative freedom of speech, relative to their Arab neighbours, and several political parties that are always ready to use it. Each faces a greater risk of manipulation by outsiders than other countries in the region.

Military shell explodes only metres from Ayia Anna home

2011-01-20

A MILITARY shell exploded ten metres from a prefabricated house in Ayia Anna village yesterday causing damage to the holiday home after going off course during a National Guard exercise.

The shell veered off course during a National Guard exercise at the Kalo Chorio firing range at around 1.30pm, landing ten metres from the prefab house and exploding. The house sustained a fair amount of damage though no injuries were recorded, according to Cyprus News Agency (CNA).

According to police, the shell exploded 800 metres away from the village residential area. By sheer chance, the owners of the holiday home, who stay there every Wednesday afternoon and weekend, arrived an hour after the explosion. As such, injuries were avoided.

Flurry of activity ahead of Geneva meeting

2011-01-20

A FLURRY of activity is underway both on the island and off in preparation for the two leaders meeting with the UN chief in Geneva next week.

President Demetris Christofias chaired a meeting of the National Council yesterday to update party leaders on the latest developments in the talks. UN Special Adviser Alexander Downer also met with Christofias and Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu while today he is reportedly flying to Turkey to meet with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Clear picture of oil and gas deposits by March 2012

2011-01-20

CYPRUS will definitely know by Spring 2012 whether there are hydrocarbon deposits in its territorial waters as a senior energy official appeared certain of their existence.

Solon Kassinis, the head of the energy department at the trade and industry ministry said he was “1000 per cent” certain there were natural gas deposits in an area inside the island’s exclusive economic zone that neighbours that of Israel.

Noble, a US firm which has a concession over one Cypriot offshore block, is contractually obliged to start drilling between October 2011 and October 2013, Kassinis told parliament.

Noble and its Israeli partners recently made one of the largest deepwater gas finds of the past decade at Leviathan, an offshore field 34 km away from the Cypriot block.

Nobel laureate wants to help Cyprus economy

2011-01-20

CYPRIOT Nobel Laureate Professor Christophoros Pissarides has offered his economic expertise to the government, he said yesterday in his first public appearance since returning to the island.

Pissarides, who has taken up a position at the University of Cyprus, told a news conference that he approached Finance Minister Charilaos Stavrakis around ten days ago offering his help, which was accepted, he said.

But Pissarides stressed, he was “an economist and an academic and did not want to be involved in politics or political disputes.

“This award is for me is a purely academic and not a means of solving the problems of Cyprus or those of other countries,” said the professor who won his Nobel for a paper into unemployment and the labour market.

Qatar deal ‘down but not out’

2011-01-20

aTHE GOVERNMENT yesterday denied that negotiations with Qatar on the multi-million euro investment project had collapsed and called instead for less “noise” on the matter.

Government spokesman Stefanos Stefanou said yesterday: “I want to make clear that there is no collapse (of negotiations) on the matter of Qatar. We are in the process of contacts and negotiations aiming to realise the Qatari investment.”

The Cyprus Mail reported on Wednesday that the deal had run aground with Qatar looking to step away from a deal which according to a source close to the negotiations had seemed just around the corner.

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.