Most of the top 10 viewed stories of 2019 on the Cyprus Mail website were predictable: you would expect the reports of Cyprus first known serial killer and the use of Cyprus as a location for a Hollywood film to be on the list.
But it was man of the cloth who had the dubious honour of providing the website’s most-read story of the year. The most viewed article with nearly 60,000 hits was the comments by the bishop of Morphou Neophytos on how homosexuality is ‘created’. His comments went viral after his speech in June when he claimed that men are born gay when their mother has anal sex and enjoys it during pregnancy. The bishop explained that a desire is created and transmitted to the fetus. Also, according to Neophytos, all homosexual men have a distinct bad smell. No mention was made about homosexual women. He was accused of hate speech, but later cleared.
The second most read story focused on Hollywood coming to Cyprus. The multi million movie starring Nicholas Cage and Dimitris Logothetis as a director was shot in Cyprus over the summer.
Despite the excitement over the famous actor’s arrival, a landing of a very different sort in the middle of summer also made the top ten most-viewed articles when five parts of a stray S-200 Russian missile from the Syria conflict crashed near the villages of Vouno, Dikomo and Kornokypos north of Nicosia. Fortunately, no one was injured.
Nothing could top the horrific discovery of a Cypriot serial killer.The Cyprus Mail’s reports as the full horror unfolded following the accidental finding of the remains of a woman by tourists in a mine shaft at Mitsero were obviously among the most-read stories. The arrest of Nicos Metaxas, a 35-year-old military officer and the shock over the following weeks as seven bodies two of them underage children of six and eight years old. All the victims were foreign women, who mainly came on the island as domestic workers. The killer was handed seven life sentences.
Another tragedy hit the island when British Cypriot Natalie Christopher went missing during her holidays in Greek island Ikaria with her Greek Cypriot partner. On the day of their departure from the island at the end of summer, Christopher went for a jog alone and never returned. The Oxford graduate was found dead two days later in a 20-metre ravine. She was the founder of the ‘Cyprus Girls Can’ campaign, an initiative to bring women and girls of Cyprus together and introduce them into sports.
The failure to address the issues faced by thousands of foreign property buyers in Cyprus meant that a protest by homeowners at a property fair in the UK also made the top ten. In May, Briton Conor O’Dwyer along with a handful of other brits who had bought property in Cyprus gathered outside the Olympia in London where A Place in the Sun Live was taking place. Their aim was to warn their compatriots and others who wished to invest in Cyprus against it, as two Cypriot real estate agencies were among those taking part. The reason for their initiative was the negative experiences they had when they invested on the island. Some of the protesters’ properties were destroyed in a land slippage in Pissouri, some were victims of the mis-selling of Swiss Franc loans and the organiser was a victim of double selling fraud.
In March 2019 the Asian tiger mosquito appeared on the island. The insect transmits the West Nile virus as well as Zika virus and dengue fever. By October, eight people had been affected in the north, while the south saw 13 cases including one elderly man losing his life in August.
Also in the top ten most-viewed stories was the amusement park accident which injured two Russian tourists in Ayia Napa took a bad turn in April. A 44-year-old mother with her seven-year-old son were riding the Star Flyer carousel, which was going too fast and part of their swing hit a pole of another ride. The boy suffered an exposed fracture on his right leg. His mother lacerated her left knee, broke her right hand and suffered a concussion.
A shocking case of xenophobia went viral in October after three women, a teenage girl and a young boy were seen crashing into a parked car as they left a carpark.
A Russian woman named Svetlana Zaitseva saw the incident and signaled them to stop and call the police. When two of the Cypriot women realised she was not the owner of the car they started attacking her with racist remarks. Zaitseva was recording everything on her phone and later made the video public.
Rounding off the top ten was a story from April when a hotel manager threatened to jump off the roof of his establishment in Paphos. His desperate threat was linked to a court ruling for the repossession of Turkish Cypriot properties by the local authorities. The man had leased some Turkish Cypriot properties next to his hotel in the city centre, and had appealed on court seeking reversal of the decision to evict him. His request was rejected.
