Stavrakis: downgrades beyond our control

2011-04-01

THE government said yesterday it could do little to avert further sovereign downgrades if ratings agencies continued to link the island’s economy with problems in indebted Greece, as the opposition piled on the criticism over the new setback.

Standard and Poor’s on Wednesday downgraded Cyprus one notch to A-, citing concern at the exposure of the island’s banks from a potential debt restructuring in Greece.

“Unfortunately right now foreign (credit rating) agencies see a possible problem in Greece, see a linkage between the two banking systems and have reached some conclusions, which are to a large extent beyond our control,” Finance Minister Charilaos

Stavrakis told reporters.

Our View: A good start, but the legalised theft needs to end

2011-04-01

THE BILL approved by the Council of Ministers on Tuesday goes a long way towards ending the scandalous pension privileges enjoyed by retired state officials. Nobody would be entitled to multiple pensions for serving in different posts as had been the practice, nor would a retired official who was appointed to a public post be entitled to carry on receiving his or her pension payments.

British evictions highlight north’s property perils

2011-04-01

A GROUP of elderly British expatriates living near Kyrenia are awaiting eviction from their homes after a developer mortgaged the land on which they were built and then defaulted on repayments.

It has emerged that their developer, who is understood to have fled to Turkey, handed the title deeds of ten properties to the Akfinans bank without the knowledge of the owners in order to secure a loan of £41,600.

When the saga began last year there was disbelief after the bank managed to evict two British families and then bought the property at auction for an undisclosed sum.  Now, the eviction of the remaining residents is expected within days.

‘Named and shamed’ in ‘cash for airtime’

2011-04-01

DISY deputy Andreas Themistocleous yesterday disclosed alleged documents showing a local television station’s offer of €3,000 in exchange for airtime on election shows.

The MP was – partly – making good on a pledge to back up earlier claims that two Limassol-based stations had approached him demanding substantial amounts in exchange for appearances in scheduled programming.

Though Themistocleous had named two stations – Capital and NTV – the purported evidence he unveiled yesterday concerned only the latter.

The Limassol deputy produced a copy of a fax sent to him, dated March 21, 2011, from NTV’s department of marketing and advertising.

20,000 migrants could get fast-track citizenship

2011-04-01

MORE than 20,000 migrants could receive Cypriot citizenship under a new proposal to tackle “unmanageable” numbers of asylum applicants, the government said yesterday.

In a surprise move, the  assistant head of migrant integration, Nancy Yuren-Jie, who received her own citizenship just last week, presented the plan to naturalise all new arrivals, starting immediately, and with a view to extending this to illegal immigrants within a year.

Yuren-Jie said the new measures could cut asylum-seeker numbers to almost zero.  Cyprus currently receives the most asylum applications in the industrialised world, according to the UNHCR’s latest report.

Three-way meeting with Ban

2011-04-01

UN SECRETARY-General Ban Ki-moon plans to contact the leaders sometime next week to review progress in peace talks and to set a possible date for a three-way meeting, the Cyprus News Agency (CNA) reported last night citing diplomatic sources.

The CNA also quoted a spokesperson for the UNSG as saying that, for the time being, the UN chief’s schedule for April did not include a meeting with President Demetris Christofias and Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu.

“If there is any change on this, I will let you know,” the spokesperson told newsmen.

According to the CNA, Ban plans to meet with the leaders a few days prior to his submitting his report on his Mission of Good Offices. The report is to be submitted to the UN Security Council by June 1.

Tempers flare over gaming bill

2011-04-01

 

HEATED disputes yesterday resulted in two MPs storming out of a parliamentary discussion on the gaming bill, amid accusations of personal interests being served by the proposed law.

The bill, which was being examined jointly by the House Legal Affairs, Finance, and Institutions Committees, brought two  committee chairmen into conflict, resulting in the session being closed to the media halfway through.

As tempers flared inside, a very irate Averof Neophytou, opposition DISY’s  number two, stormed out of the meeting, saying he couldn’t participate in a discussion when doubts had been raised over possible personal interests that could be hidden behind the bill.

Police to record all calls to stations

2011-04-01

COME Monday, citizens’ calls to central police stations across the island will be recorded in a bid to upgrade the force’s services to the public, it was announced yesterday.

With this system, “we will ensure the immediate response of our members and on the other hand make sure that citizens’ complaints will be handled in the best possible way,” police chief Michalis Papageorgiou told a news conference.

Initially, the system will record calls to district call centres (district HQs) with a view to extending it to all police stations in the future.

Thousands of tourists from Iran

2011-04-01

 

LARNACA airport has been extra busy the last two weeks with the arrival of around 2,000 Iranian tourists on flights from Tehran, the organisation Development and Promotion of Tourism Larnaca said yesterday.

According to Nana Asmeni-Pavlou, an official at the organisation, the influx is due to the Persian New Year (Nowruz), which began on March 21 and lasts around two weeks.

She added that prospects for the continued arrival of tourists from Iran were also“very encouraging.”

Asmeni-Pavlou said that since March 17, eight charter flights had landed at Larnaca from Tehran, carrying a total of 2,000 tourists, 90 per cent of whom are staying in Larnaca, often classed as the ‘poor relation’ in terms of its share of the tourism pie.

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.