Discovery of oil and natural gas deposits in the Mediterranean highlights the growing importance the US has given to the region US vice-president Joe Biden arrived in Cyprus on Wednesday, the most senior US official to visit in more than 50 years, as the quest to find alternative energy routes into Europe focused international attention on the continent's only divided country. With the discovery of...
Norwegian Major General Kristin Lund, who has served in Bosnia and Afghanistan, to lead 1,000 peacekeepers in Cyprus The first woman has been appointed to command a United Nations peacekeeping force a Norwegian general who has served in Lebanon, the first Gulf war, Bosnia and Afghanistan. Major General Kristin Lund will replace Chinese Major General Chao Liu on 13 August as commander of about 1,000...
Penalty of 90m will compensate relatives of missing Greek Cypriots and may open door to claims from Crimea dispute The European court of human rights has ordered Turkey to pay 90m (£73m) in compensation for its 1974 invasion of Cyprus in a judgment which has potential legal implications for Ukraine and Crimea. The court's largest ever damages award is based on earlier ECHR judgments ruling that...
Two elderly residents reminisce about the villages they had to leave when the island split into Turkish and Greek enclaves Christina shouted to the man who was approaching: "Hello, Mr Mustafa! Come, sit with us, have a coffee." Mustafa was in his late 70s, on the short side, with a round belly, a thin moustache and white hair. Christina, my 72-year-old friend, and I had arrived in Bellapais...
Reuters photographer Neil Hall travelled to Cyprus to document the UN neutral territory that was established 40 years ago, following the Turkish invasion of the island. The zone contains abandoned homes, closed businesses and the disused Nicosia international airport. And not very many people Continue reading... ...
My friend Stass Paraskos, who has died aged 81, was the most significant Cypriot artist of his generation. In 1966, Stass gained notoriety in the UK when the police raided Lovers and Romances, an exhibition of his work at the Leeds Institute Gallery, following a complaint from a member of the public, and charged him with obscenity. The trial led luminaries of the art world, including Herbert Read,...
Survey shows increase in the number of new poor in seven countries and challenges the official European Union discourse Far from being over Europe's economic crisis is getting worse with disturbing levels of poverty and deprivation being noted among children and youth, says a report compiled by the Catholic charity Caritas. The survey, conducted over the course of the past year, not only challenges...
Pentagon says the Morning Glory, loaded with $20m cargo of crude oil, will be handed to Libyan government control American Navy Seals have seized a North Korea-flagged tanker which had been loaded with crude oil at a rebel-held port in eastern Libya, the Pentagon said on Monday. The operation to take control of the Morning Glory came a week after Libya failed to prevent the tanker from leaving the...
Panicos Demetriades dismisses government accusations that he failed to take adequate steps ahead of island's banking collapse Cyprus's outgoing central bank chief, Panicos Demetriades, has hit back after the government accused him of mishandling the island's near economic collapse, as the Cypriot president, Nikos Anastasiades, wasted no time in appointing a replacement. The centre-right leader, who...
Panicos Demetriades, who clashed with the government, resigns with no immediate official explanation of the reasons Cypriot central bank governor Panicos Demetriades, whose testy relations with the island's government dogged a tumultuous tenure as Cyprus teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, has resigned. President Nicos Anastasiades, who had been pressing for Demetriades's departure since last year's...
Ukraine FA president says exhibition game which was moved to Cyprus due to political situation will be played on Wednesday Steve Busfield ...
s new ministers are women Scotland: MPs to examine civil service impartiality ahead of referendum Westminster's public administration select committee has launched an inquiry into the role of the civil service in the lead up to the vote on Scottish independence in September. The inquiry comes after Scottish finance secretary John Swinney complained that advice given to George Osborne from top Treasury...
car explodes • United States due to play Ukraine on island next week The football association in Cyprus has postponed all first division matches over the weekend after a bomb damaged the car of a top referee in the country. Police say an explosive device was placed on the hood of the referee Leontios Trattos' car and it exploded early Friday in a parking lot outside his apartment in a Nicosia suburb....
s rejuvenation after its 1974 invasion by Turkey, the high-end boutiques of Nicosia's main shopping street are boarded up, its fashion shops plastered with "for rent" signs, its thriving cafes closed and shuttered. Eleven months after the Mediterranean isle's near economic collapse, the Cypriot capital's pre-eminent avenue embodies the destruction wrought by a financial hurricane that, for a few dramatic...
t want to go into specifics as the markets could take advantage if it got out," said one well-placed insider. "All these steps are in the right direction but there is still a long way to go." Last week Cyprus's finance minister, Harris Georgiades, said the easing of controls would be substantial. "Starting next week we will have significant relaxations of the restrictive measures," he told reporters...
s nuclear weapons programme depends and was last renewed for 10 years in 2004. Co-operation is not merely one-way: the US military outsources work to the UK's Atomic Weapons Establishment, currently operated by a consortium of Serco, Jacobs Engineering and Lockheed Martin, the latter two being US companies. There is a strong legal argument that the MDA breaches the nuclear non-proliferation treaty,...
s Facebook photograph and expat informers helped police track down man wanted over VAT scam One of Britain's most wanted men has been arrested in northern Cyprus after being given away by expats and a telling Facebook photograph. Michael Voudouri, who confessed to secreting away more than £10m in accounts in Cyprus, Greece and Switzerland as part of a complex VAT scam before he skipped bail 14 months...
s death puts banks' working culture in spotlight The tragic death of a young intern working in the London office of Bank of America Merrill Lynch triggered calls for an enquiry into excessive working hours in the City. Moritz Erhardt, a 21 year old German student, was found dead in the shower after having regularly worked through the night at the bank. An inquest later found that he died as a result...
Britons who were advised to buy property with Swiss franc mortgages must lodge their case before the end of the year to stand a chance of making a claim Thousands of Britons who bought property in Cyprus with Swiss franc mortgages are being urged to submit claims for mis-selling, ahead of a deadline at the end of the year. Between 2003 and 2010, Cypriot banks suggested buyers take out a mortgage in...
s eavesdropping agency at the centre of the revelations about mass surveillance of diplomatic, political and personal data by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden. However, there is a telltale reference which escaped the censor's notice. One of the memos of the Sovereign Areas Intelligence Committee, marked Top Secret, was copied to a Sir Eric Jones. Jones was director of GCHQ at the time. The fact...