Greece; a comforting place to be when you miss the dead

2011-09-17

 

THE DEAD are haunting me tonight. It happens when I’m worried: those I’ve loved who’ve gone, visit with advice and raised eyebrows. Not real, of course, just memory. Unlike Aunty Ivy with her mauve hair and red glasses who ‘saw’ things.  But, even so, Greece is a comforting place to be when you miss the dead. None of the soulless concrete town crematoriums, lain with perpendicular paths, stiff rows of roses and “Do no walk on the grass” signs.

Here in Greece they know how to mourn. Our local town graveyard is on a headland overlooking the sunrise of Mani to the East and the sea to the west. It’s a steep cobbled climb through Koroni castle, where the story goes a whole garrison of Venetians was slaughtered because they forgot to close the gate. 

Palestine: The Vatican Option

2011-09-17

PALESTINIAN president Mahmoud Abbas said early this month:“We will go to the United Nations (to request the recognition of Palestine as a state) and then we will return to talks”.

But he is actually going to the UN because there are no peace talks, and there is little likelihood of them even if he doesn’t go. He has to give Palestinians some sign of progress, even if it is a purely symbolic UN recognition of a Palestinian state.

'Garden tax' to hammer homeowners in London

2011-09-17

Wealthy Londoners with big gardens would be clobbered by a land tax being proposed by senior members of the Coalition.

The Liberal Democrats are calling for a levy on land that would hit homeowners in London and the South-East hardest. But the idea threatened to cause a Coalition split, with one Tory today branding it a “garden tax”.

Simon Hughes, the Lib-Dems’ deputy leader, threw his weight behind the proposal for a new levy on the wealthy to ease the tax burden on the less-well-off.

US 'Red Dot' spy program hunts bombs in war zones

2011-09-17

THE US agency that operates spy satellites is helping the military spot homemade bombs before they kill American troops on the ground in war zones such as Afghanistan and Iraq.

The “Red Dot” program started six months ago puts a red dot on a display in Humvee vehicles or command posts to alert to the location of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which are responsible for many of the US combat casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The National Reconnaissance Office helps detect the bombs with satellites that hone in on the electronic signals from the detonator and that information is combined with imagery, the agency’s director Bruce Carlson said.

Kosovo and EU deploy customs and police in restive north

2011-09-17

KOSOVAR and European Union police and customs officers deployed at two contested border crossings with Serbia in the predominantly-Serb north of the country yesterday, an official said, amid concerns that the move could provoke ethnic violence.

Heavily armed troops of NATO’s KFOR force also sealed off the two crossings in an attempt to pre-empt any violence.

“Mixed teams are on the border. They were sent in by helicopters,” Kosovo’s Interior Minister Bajram Rexhepi told Reuters.

The Pristina government wants to reinstate its presence in the largely lawless northern area which pledges its allegiance to Belgrade, three years after Kosovo – which has an Albanian majority – declared independence from Serbia.

EU proposes rules for curbs on passport-free travel

2011-09-17

EUROPEAN Union states could see border checks with their neighbours restored in the future if they persistently fail to protect the EU’s external frontier, legislative proposals by the EU executive showed yesterday.

The plans unveiled by the European Commission propose new rules on conducting border controls in the EU’s passport-free Schengen zone to address mounting concern in parts of Europe over illegal immigration, notably from North Africa

Several EU governments have lobbied to make it easier to curb unrestricted travel in Europe and reinstate internal frontiers abandoned in most of the bloc in the last two decades.

UN urges resolution of gas dispute

2011-09-17

 

THE UNITED Nations yesterday appealed to all sides to tone down the rhetoric over oil and gas exploration and focus on the positives that a Cyprus solution could bring to the island and region. 

Speaking after talks between the two leaders yesterday, UN special representative in Cyprus Lisa Buttenheim said: “It should be understood that natural resources, if they are discovered, would be for the benefit of all Cypriots – Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots – under the framework of a federal united Cyprus.”

Our View: Consumers must find a practical way to fight rising prices

2011-09-17

IT WAS shocking to see the prices of milk and bread sold in Cyprus compared to those in Germany. A 1kg loaf of white sliced bread in Cyprus is sold at a price that was between 104 and 186 per cent higher than in Germany. As for milk, it was between 33 and 153 per cent more expensive in Cyprus. And the price difference of a kilogram of yoghurt was between 114 and 202 per cent.

Mari inquiry: EAC was ‘reassured’ by army statements

2011-09-17

THE Electricity Authority (EAC) did not know the contents of 98 containers located at a naval base, which eventually exploded and incapacitated the neigbouring main power plant, a top official said yesterday.

EAC director Stelios Stylianou told an inquiry that the semi-state company had no knowledge of the cargo, located around 200 metres from the Vassilikos power plant, separated only by an embankment.

The inquiry has previously heard that the plant’s director, Antonis Ioannou, had sent an email to the HQ on February, 2009, with photos showing the area where a concrete base was being constructed to hold the cargo.

Mari inquiry: victims died ‘for no reason’ Polyviou says

2011-09-17

THE investigator looking into the naval base blast that killed 13 men said the loss of life was unnecessary and could have been avoided.

“I believe the loss of the 13 men was completely unnecessary and is even more tragic because it was unnecessary,” Polys Polyviou said.

The 13 – seven sailors and six firemen – died when 98 containers filled with munitions confiscated from a ship sailing from Iran to Syria blew up on the morning of July 11. The containers, mostly filled with gunpowder, had been stacked in a single solid cube exposed to the elements for over two years.

The blast also incapacitated the island’s main electricity plant causing rolling power cuts that lasted for around a month.

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.