Current Events

The American Hellenic Institute (AHI) has openly criticized the ongoing ban on arms sales from the US to Cyprus. The statement was made by the AHI in a new briefing on the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).

The ITAR, which was originally signed in 1985, prevents Washington from supplying any kind of weapons as well as military technology to some countries, such as the island nation of Cyprus.

According to Nick Larigakis, President of the AHI, the embargo is unlawful and not justified at all. He went to urge the U.S. State Department to change said policy in the best interests of both US and of the Republic of Cyprus.

According to Egypt’s chief prosecutor, Cyprus has extradited the hijacker of an EgyptAir plane which was diverted to the island country in 2016.

Egypt’s chief prosecutor Nabil Sadek revealed the fact that that Egyptian police have found and taken custody of Seif Eddin Mustafa – the hijacker of the Egyptian plane – in Nicosia, the capital city of Cyprus.

The 60-year-old man had been on their most wanted list for hijacking a domestic EgyptAir flight in March 2016. He used a fake suicide belt to divert said plane to Cyprus.

According to Mustafa, his actions were in protest to Egypt’s government and its policies. Prosecutors in Cyprus, however, claims that Mustafa told the authorities that the only motivation of his actions was to reunite with his estranged family in Cyprus, whom he had not met for 24 years.

Cypriot authorities arrested him after the incident and have until recently been detaining him in Cyprus. The Supreme Court in Cyprus even went on to rejecting Mustafa’s appeal against his extradition.

In a surprising news for professionals and workers alike, a UK-based company’s survey has revealed that Cyprus stands at the top of EU countries as regards celebrating the number of bank holidays.

According to an interactive map produced by mapping software developing company Esri UK, the island nation and Slovakia have 15 bank holidays each – the largest among all EU member states. Additionally, the map revealed that the average working week in Cyprus is 41.6 hours long.

Besides, religious holidays like Christmas and Easter, and political holidays like Labor Day and Independence day, Cyprus observes several other bank holidays such as the Ochi Day, the start of the War of Greek Independence in 1821, and the anniversary of the launch of the Eoka struggle against British rule.

Following Cyprus and Slovakia are Lithuania, Malta, and Greece, which have 14 bank holidays.

While England and Wales are on the lower end of the number of bank holidays with only eight, they have the largest amount of work hours, averaging to 42.1 hours a week. Cyprus comes second to this with Austria, Greece and Portugal coming third and fourth with 41.3 hours and 41 hours respectively.

If Fitch Ratings’ recent announcement is anything to go by, the pace of ratings for Western European countries seems to be going on the up and up.

Fitch Ratings recently announced that all three of Cyprus, Greece and Andorra had upgrades in their ratings and that there have been no downgrades since April 2018.

The announcement was documented in the rating house’s Western Europe Sovereign Credit Overview (3Q18 report), which stated how Cyprus, like Finland and Austria are looking towards positivity whereas San Marino and the UK are going towards negative.

The UK downgrading has much to do with the downside risks of disruptively exiting from the EU.

Cyprus has indeed benefited tremendously by being upgraded by a total of five notches since mid-2015 thanks to European Stability Mechanism (ESM) programs. This growth is marked by an improvement in public finances, and an overall decline in general government debts and deficits.

Georgios Lakkotrypis, the energy minister of Cyprus has said that the island nation will re-negotiate its contract’s financial terms of its contract with a consortium regarding the exploitation of a gas field off the Cypriot southern shore.

Mr. Lakkotrypis announced the consortium, which has Royal Dutch Shell, Texas-based Noble Energy, and Israel’s Delek as its members – wished to renegotiate the Aphrodite gas field contract. According to a recent estimation, the gas field is holding around 4.5 trillion cubic feet of gas.

According to Mr. Lakkotrypis, the consortium desire to renegotiate comes from the undesirable effect of the lower global oil prices, which make the selling of Aphrodite gas to an Egyptian Shell-operated processing plant an unsuitable deal.

A man has been arrested in north Cyprus in connection to the murder of George Barker, who was stabbed to death at a gym in Bexley around two years ago.

The suspect, Charles Riddington, has been identified as the guilty party and is was on the police’s wanted list. Mr. Riddington is known to have used a total of 14 different names.

The police had issued Riddington’s image not much later after Mr. Barker’s death. They even put out a £10,000 reward for anyone who could give credible information that could lead to Riddington being arrested.

Riddington, however, remained in hiding until he was found by Turkish authorities and arrested in Northern Cyprus. According to said authorities, the man’s appearance was markedly different from his photo, with blonde, long and curly hair. All his fake ID documents were also found when the arrest was made.

In what is being considered a great news for the Cypriot and the European tech scene, Natasa Pilides, Deputy Minister of Shipping has announced that the Cyprus Marine and Maritime Institute (CMMI) along with other projects that will form the groundwork for Larnaca Municipality’s Blue Growth.

The projects will have experts from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the MaRITeC-X project team.

MaRITeC-X is a special project that has its focus on shipping and marine innovation and research and aims to establish the CMMI on the island country.

The ambitious project has been lauded by policy makers and academics from Cyprus and beyond. Besides Pilides’ elaborate description of the several social and economic benefits that Cyprus would stand to gain from this entire arrangement, Nicholas Makris from MIT emphasized on how Cyprus, with its superior offshore territory would be benefited not just economically and socially, but culturally and intellectually.

Constantinos Christofides, Rector of the University of Cyprus said that the project had great potential and should be funded by the government itself – if the EU fails to do so.

The constantly devaluing Turkish Lira has caused several Turkish Cypriots to spend their holidays celebrating the ‘Feast of the Sacrifice’ in government-controlled areas on the island nation.

According to Havadis, a Turkish Cypriot daily, Nicosia’s Ayios Dhometios crossing was dotted with long lines consisting of several Turkish Cypriots observing Kurban Bayramı spending their time in the government-controlled areas during the holidays of Kurban Bayramı. The paper reported a surge in traffic density at the crossing, though it did clarify that an increase in Greek Cypriots crossing to the north also contributed to the traffic.

The Lira’s devaluation has impacted travel agents as well, who have been adversely affected by the lack of demand for travelling abroad in what was previously considered the peak period of selling packages for trips abroad. This is since the average middle-class Turkish Cypriot can no longer afford to travel abroad thanks to successive price increases.

Countermeasures have been taken by the authorities, who have declared to deal strictly with any business found guilty of profiteering by overcharging for products. Not only will authorities slap such businesses with fines, they may temporarily close their businesses, and/or subject the owner and operators involved to imprisonment.

A 20-year-old man has been remanded in connection to the trident bakery robbery.

The man was remanded from Liopetri, Famagusta district on grounds of using a speargun trident to rob a prominent bakery.

The suspect, who was arrested a few days prior to being remanded, confessed to conducting a robbery at around 4am the same day the bakery was robbed. According to the police, the 20-year-old surrendered €75, which he said was the money taken by him.

According to the employee of the bakery who reported the incident, an unknown individual with his face covered with a hood had forcibly entered the shop. The man was armed with fishing trident and threatened various members of staff demanding for money. The man finally opened the drawer by force and took the small bag that contained the money.

In what is being considered a tragic accident Cyprus, 19 people have been reported dead after a boat had capsized off the northern coast of Cyprus.

The Turkish coastguard has said that while rescue crews did save 103 people, 25 more are yet to be found. The coastguard also shared footage of helicopter and a plane along with four rescue boats being dispatched to the accident scene.

The exact cause for the capsizing, which had occurred around 30km north of Cyprus’ Karpas Peninsula, could not be determined immediately. The nationalities of the people on board haven’t yet been confirmed.

The survivors have been airlifted Mersin, Turkey. At least one person has been treated for serious injuries there.

This incident is one of several that have taken place in the Mediterranean region, exacerbated by the migrant crisis that has thousands of refugees moving on often overloaded boats.

According to Thomas Cook Group, their annual profit will scale lower than their expectations, courtesy the adverse effect on late holiday bookings caused by the sudden surge in temperature weather all over Europe.

The British travel company usually makes most of its profit during the summer, when its northern European customers (especially those from Scandinavia, Britain, and Germany) go on holiday to southern European destinations like Greece, Spain, Turkey and of course, Cyprus.

The sudden surge in weather all over northern Europe, however, has led to travelers getting discouraged to make their booking, which has visibly affected late bookings. According to Thomas Cook, this new development will make the full-year underlying operating profit end up on the lower end of market expectations.

Thomas Cook, which runs an airline as well as a tour operator business, said in its third quarter statement that a strong airline performance in Germany helped to offset the impact of a warm summer. However, the “sustained period of hot weather” during the June-July period caused a delay in customer bookings in the tour operator, which in turn has restricted their ability make their intended profits in the late bookings market.

This news comes in contrast to Thomas Cook’s earlier statements made in May, which stated how the travel company was on its way to meet analysts’ expectations of a 7 percent rise in its post-operating profit to 352 million pounds ($462.04 million) for the 12 months to Sept. 30, on a constant currency basis.

In what is being considered an overarching action made by Cyprus, the island nation’s government has announced its plans to ask the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to help it defend the two Turkish Cypriot journalists who are being detained and investigated in Turkey over an article that is being considered as “derogatory” to the latter.

According to Prodromos Prodromou, spokesman for Cyprus government, the OSCE has been asked to defend the “right of free speech and media freedom” of the journalists, which they have a right to keep by default. He further said the European Union is keeping a close watch on the case.

The two journalists – Sener Levent and Afrika columnist Ali Osman – must be defended as they “haven’t done anything wrong” and should not forcibly work with authorities.

The article which has led to the controversy was published in Turkey in January, and compared Turkey’s Syrian military operation to its Cyprus military occupation in the northern third. This is also the place where Ankara has been keeping 35,000 troops since as early as 1974.

The man who was charged with the murder Robert Birch, the Welsh builder who was on holiday in Cyprus has been accused in court.

The 35-year-old accused, who was arrested on charges of pre-meditated murder, will be entering plea the following month.

A 23-year-old woman was also arrested but has been released without being charged.

Robert Birch, also known as Charlie and 39 years of age, from Welshpool, Powys, was murdered on 24 June in what is being considered as a deliberate hit-and-run incident. The builder was in Cyprus holidaying with family, and during the time of the crime was with another 32-year-old British man.

The police later found the perpetrator’s car in the sea at Agios Georgios in Pegeia.

The defendant, who under Cypriot law is unable to be identified successfully, was remanded into custody on grounds of not being ready for trial. He will appear once again at court on 19th September.

Panayiotis Kafkaris, the island nation’s longest-serving convict has been released.

The 72-year-old, who had killed a man along with his two children, was released post the parole board’s approval of his repeated appeal requests.

Kafkaris has served 31 years after being given three life sentences in 1987 in Limassol. The man he had murdered was businessman Panicos Michael, 45, who had two children aged 11 and 13 by placing a bomb under Michael’s vehicle, which killed all the three upon detonation. According to Kafkaris’ trial testimony, he was paid CYP £10,000 (€17,000) to carry out the killings.

Kafkaris has been known to have fought his imprisonment using several legal means early on during his incarceration, which included recourse to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). That was stalled when the Nicosia Criminal Court re-interpreted life imprisonment as the end of the biological life of a convict – as opposed to 20 years.

Kafkaris has previously sought to be released on parole in 2012, which was rejected. He re-appealed in February 2015 when the Supreme Court cancelled the parole board’s ruling on grounds of improper examination.

The parole board later rejected the request once again after its re-examination. After another appeal by Kafkaris, the Supreme court cancelled the parole board’s decision on the same grounds.

Kafkaris sought a third review on April 3, 2017, for which he did not get any reply. He then went on to submit another request seeking permission to apply for a preferential order. This was denied by the Supreme Court.

In July 2015, Kafkaris wrote to the ombudsman as well as the ECHR, requesting them to put him to death if they do not intent to re-examine his request for parole.

Cyprus has always been keen on making the world a better place, and recent events have made this a bigger fact. In what is being a welcoming news for the philanthropic community, The Cyprus Hotel Association has announced a donation of €100,000 to aid those affected by the wildfire that took place in July in eastern Attica.

Haris Loizides, the president of the association, expressed his deepest sympathies in a letter to Elena Kountoura, Greek Tourism Minister on the matter. He also expressed solidarity towards the victims and their families who were adversely affected by the wildfire in eastern Attica which killed over 90 people.

Loizides went on to say that the association and its members have a “national obligation” to help as much as they possibly everyone can to relieve the Greek fire-stricken communities, and in turn contribute to the universal effort of Cypriot Hellenism.

He also stated that the contribution will be paid through procedures foreseen by both the Cypriot Volunteer Commissioner and the Republic of Cyprus.

Cyprus tourism has recently experienced a much-deserved boost, and it comes as no surprise the passenger traffic too has increased exponentially. Hermes Airports operator data has revealed that Paphos and Larnaca airports have seen a combined total of 5,939,198 passengers passing through terminal recording – going by an increase of 8% in the seven months to July. This amounts to 438,834 more travelers than the same time in 2017.

In the month of July, the two airports processed 1,414,954 passengers, up by 3.8% from last year’s 1,363,165.

Over 1.06 million passengers have been reported to have traveled to and from Larnaca Airport in July, as opposed to 1.04 last year. This marks an impressive increase of 1.7% in arrivals.

Passenger traffic for Larnaca reached 4.38 million against 2017’s 4.14 million, marking an increase of 0.24 million passengers.

Paphos airport too, despite being smaller in size, displayed an impressive increase in percentage.

A total of 351,723 passengers has passed through the airport in July 2018, marking an increase of 10.8% from last year’s 317,557.

The amount of passenger at the airport was reported to be 1.56 million, which is an increase of about 14.6% on the same figures from the previous year.

A 37-year old woman, who has stolen over thousands of Euros from tourists from all over Cyprus under the guise of booking holiday packages, is currently being actively hunted by Cyprus police authorities.

The woman is currently suspected to have fled the country and has been put on a stop list to help track her whereabouts.

According to the police, the suspect “owned” a travel agency in Aradippou, which she used to book holidays for customers. She asked for the entire package cost in advance, but in fact paid a very small deposit to book the vacations.

After repeated reporting by multiple customers, it became clear that the woman had appropriated around €26,000 in this manner. The police, however, suspects that the total amount may go ahead of €80,000, keeping the increasing number of people coming by to report her.

In a decision that may go on to change the spending styles and habits of Cypriots, international supermarket giant SPAR has announced its plans to open its first shop in Larnaca in collaboration with CTC Group’s ERMES.

The supermarket chain, which aims to open over 20 stores on the island country, will make its debut in Larnaca’s city center by August-end.

The new store will be over 1,300 square meters in area and will have full parking. While they will have an entire range of products, the focus will remain on fresh items like vegetables, fruits, fish, sea food and meats, along with sweets, coffee, delicatessen, and sweets.

While the store will have SPAR’s native brand products, other retail brands’ products will also be available. The company will also work with local producers to maintain “glocal” philosophy.

SPAR is one of the world’s biggest supermarket chains. First opened in 1932, the chain employs 350,000 employees across 12,500 stores in 48 countries on 4 continents. Serving over 13 million customers per day, the Dutch origin company has a retail sales worth of €34.5 billion as of 2017.

Those affected by the scorching heat can now rejoice as the temperature in Cyprus is set to drop after reaching a peak point of 37C.

Cyprus has been going through a period of hot weather, which will come to a stand point with forecast of 35C in Nicosia and along the east coast, and 29C in the coastal areas and mountains. It is predicted with bar some fog and clouds, the day will be sunny.

More clouds may form during the evening and subsequent mornings. Mornings may be misty. Nighttime temperatures may fall to 20C in the Nicosia area and at the south and east coasts, 23C in the west and north and 14C around Troodos.

The Met office has said that over and above everything, the weekend will have the island country seeing sunny weather in general.

Those looking for some quality entertainment can now rejoice in the fact that the temporary casino which will pave the way for the City of Dreams Mediterranean Resort has opened its doors in Limassol. Called the C2 Cyprus casino, the establishment will run till 2021 – when City of Dreams will be set to open.

Craig Ballantyne, property president of City of Dreams Mediterranean and Cyprus Casinos, spoke for the event, speaking that C2 is much more than a pop-up casino. Having invested over €13 million into the facility, the company will seek to make sure that all guests experience the renowned service quality for which Melco is famous.

Housed in the former Orphanides supermarket, in Zakaki, the building, which has been renovated for €12 million is sprawled across an area of 4,600 square meters and includes a 1,300-square-metre gaming area and can host 1,000 people.

The casino itself has 242 slot machines, 33 tables, a VIP gaming area, and a restaurant, along with two bars which will serve both food and drink. It employs 593 people, with Cypriots taking up 75 per cent them.

The casino is set to be officially inaugurated in September. The establishment will work on trial basis till then.