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TORRENTIAL rain and flooding in Nicosia and Larnaca districts yesterday trapped people in their cars and brought traffic to a standstill as thousands returned home at the end of the three-day, and aptly named, Kataklysmos (Festival of the Flood) weekend.
Some of the worst hit areas were many of the villages between Larnaca and Nicosia, including Lympia, Kornos, Pera Horio, Latsia, Alambra, Ayia Varvara, the GSZ area in Larnaca and Aradippou with some of them also experiencing heavy hail storms.
Drivers on the Larnaca-Nicosia highway crawled along at 30km per hour due to heavy traffic jams and visibility problems, with huge amounts of water gathering in some areas such as the Dekhelia road up to the Rizoelia roundabout.
TURKEY’S Justice and Development Party (AKP) won its third successive parliamentary election on Sunday, taking 50 per cent of the vote. It has increased its vote in every election it has entered, with its leader, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, described as the “most successful leader in the democratic history of Turkey”.
The AKP however failed to win 367 seats that would have given it the ‘super-majority’ needed to reform the constitution. It took about 325 seats, which was short of the 330 seats that would have allowed it to draft the proposals for reform of the constitution and put the package to a referendum. Erdogan’s decision to raise the election threshold to 10 per cent had backfired as AKP won more votes than ever before, but fewer seats in parliament.
THE WAR between Archbishop Chrysostomos II and the government has shown no signs of abating, with the church leader launching another scathing attack against President Demetris Christofias in an interview on Sunday.
Taking a swipe at Christofias proclaiming himself as a “president of solution”, the Archbishop told a local newspaper the term “president of dissolution” would be more apt.
He said Christofias was making unacceptable concessions in negotiations towards a solution to the Cyprus problem, instead of following the correct course.
Chrysostomos made it clear that he planned to take a political stance in the 2013 presidential elections, though he wasn’t too happy about his possible choices.
PRESIDENT Demetris Christofias will go to Geneva with a “constructive approach” and will be “well prepared” for his three-way meeting with the UN chief and Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu, the government spokesman has said.
The three meet in Switzerland on July 7 amid reports that the UN, concerned at the lack of real progress in peace talks over the last three years, might be pushing for a change of course with regard to the format and pace of the negotiations.
“What the President does each time he meets with the UN Secretary-General, and what he is doing on this occasion, is to go there well prepared…in order that we open the way for a solution,” government spokesman Stefanos Stefanou said.
AROUND 75 per cent of requests for information from government bodies go ignored, a recent report on access to information shows.
Ten bodies in the south and ten in the north were monitored between May and August last year for their response to questions such as, ‘how many people sought citizenship in 2009?’, ‘how many people work in night clubs?’ or asking for the names of the heads of departments.
A total of 73 per cent of requests went ignored in the south and 78 per cent in the north. Eight per cent of questions were fully answered in the republic and seven in the north.
“The lack of access to information from local authorities in Cyprus is a serious problem,” said one of the researchers from the Institute for Social-Political Studies (IKME).
BUSINESSES which have constructed beach bars on Yeroskipou’s municipality beach in Paphos will be taken to court and penalised again this year, according to the local district office.
Yeroskipou district officer George Yianni, who is responsible for the protection of the beaches, said no beach bar licences have been given out this year.
“We don’t have the authority to give or not to give licences to these people anyway. But, if someone wants permission for an event or something else for one day, we will investigate the request and pass on our findings to the district officer and they make a final decision.”
His comments come in the wake of a furore caused by businessmen who had planned to run such beach enterprises for the summer.
A PROTEST took place yesterday in the occupied area of Famagusta by the Citizen’s Movement ‘Return to Famagusta’ between 11am and 1pm.
The protesters swam silently at the beach in front of the Constantia hotel to symbolise their desire to see a reunited Famagusta and for refugees to return home.
“We pledge to hold this demonstration again, bringing more people to reinforce our struggle for justice,” said a representative for the movement, Stelios Charalambous.
The event was also attended by DISY MP Georgios Georgiou and Alexandra Galanou, the wife of Famagusta Mayor Alexis Galanos.
FAMAGUSTA taxi owners are planning a second protest this Thursday to highlight what they say is a loss of earnings due to the improved bus services.
They will gather en masse outside the communications ministry to demand measures are taken to lessen the competition from buses caused by lower fares and increased frequency in the past year.
Only two weeks ago taxi drivers blocked the Ayia Triada roundabout in Protaras for five minutes, demanding that bus fares be raised and services reduced.
A 20-year-old got a nasty shock yesterday when he tried to break into an apartment only to find it belonged to a police officer.
The man, a Nicosia resident, who broke into the Ayia Napa apartment early yesterday was arrested on the spot by the officer who works at the Criminal Investigation Department.
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.
