Current Events

Cypriot origin YouTuber Fidias has secured a seat in this year’s European Parliament elections.

The elections, which had candidates receiving votes from all over the EU, had the YouTuber receiving seventy-one thousand votes (roughly nineteen percent).

Fidias Panayiotou is well-renowned for his work as a YouTuber – where he has hugged celebrities, played pranks and updates on his travels where he does not spend any money.

He is one of the six Members of European Parliament who shall represent the Greek and Cypriot area in the pan-European administration.

Elections for this were held between June 6th and 9th in all twenty-seven of EU member countries. Seven hundred and twenty deputies have been elected, as opposed to seven hundred and five the last time around in 2019.

Elections are valid for a period of five years and take place via direct universal suffrage.

The government ordered the stoppage of all types of outdoor-based services, including food delivery – to protect people from the unforgiving heat wave.

The island nation’s meteorological department has issued an orange alert – with the temperatures having reached 34 degrees Celsius in the hills, 43 degrees Celsius in the capital, and over 38 degrees along the coastline.

For this reason, the Cypriot Labour department issued an order mandating the stop of any kind of work involving the outdoors between the hours of noon and midday 4 pm.

The ban is binding on all types of delivery that involves construction and the use of two-wheelers.

Additionally, the health ministry has asked elders, children, and those otherwise vulnerable to stay indoors.

There is also a high chance of forest fires occurring – which is why the fire services have also been put on red alert.

The island nation is seeing lesser rainfall – 2024 being the tenth most parched in the last one-hundred-and-twenty-three years.

Wednesday’s temperatures were around 10 degrees above normal for June and climbed from Monday’s yellow alert when the thermometer peaked at 40 degrees.

The Meteorological Department is calling this series of events “unusual” and believe it has much to do with the situation of the weather in the eastern Mediterranean regions.

The education minister of Cyprus has announced that the use of mobiles will henceforth be banned in schools, on grounds of them enabling distractions and general anti-social behavior.

The ban will officially come into motion upon the completion of its discussion in the parliament.

The island nation is the most recent of several EU countries to ban cellphones in schools – all by recommendation from UNESCO.

According to minister Athena Michaelidou, students using mobiles takes them away from studying, and encourages anti-social habits.

While students will still be allowed to physically bring their phones to school, they will not be allowed to keep them on.

There are over 1.4 million cellphones in use in Cyprus – far higher than its near-one-million population.

The center of Cyprus’ capital Nicosia has been hit by storms.

The storm was short, with the skies set to clear up by next morning.

Cypriot social media platform ‘Kairofiloi Kiprou’ says that the storm started in Ayios Dometios and Engomi, and then proceeded towards the rest of the city.

The storm winded down towards the evening, with temperatures falling to 10 degrees Celsius in the mountainous regions and 17 degrees Celsius inland.

The Cyprus police has issued a warning about the fact that some roads could be suddenly closed on account of the Emir of Qatar’s official Cypriot visit.

What is special about these is that no announcement shall be made prior to closure, primarily to preserve the security of the emir and his delegate.

The police have apologized for the inconvenience caused to the public in advance, but is also requesting them to comply with the police and co-operate in what is a temporary situation.

A teenage boy has been grievously injured in a traffic mishap in Limassol.

The boy, aged 13, is currently in the ICU at the General Hospital, also in Limassol.

The Cyprus police says that mishap occurred at 2100 hours at Kolonakiou Street, when a thirteen-year-old who was trying to cross the street on an electrical scooter was badly hit.

Preliminary investigations reveal that he was hit by a car with another young man, aged 19, as the driver.

Paramedics took the young boy to general hospital in Limassol, where he was diagnosed with a broken leg, a broken arm, several injured ribs and fracture on the skull.

Surgery was performed to save the boy’s life – he is still under serious condition.

Further investigation by the traffic police is currently underway.

The government of Cyprus has awarded citizenship to fourteen children from mixed marriages.

These children come from marriages between Turkish nationals and Turkish Cypriot nationals.

The move is being considered a progressive move, as more such cases are being screened.

This information has been published in various media in Turkish Cyprus, mentioning how over 3,500 applications have been made following President Nikos Christodoulides’s announcement.

The announcement itself has been made to instill confidence that people of Cypriot descent, no matter the percentage or where they came from – shall be maintained in Cyprus.

The screening process includes a brief investigating phase, in the event that a child’s parents include one parent of Cypriot origin.

While children with one Turkish national parent get a more scrutinous application, given as it is practically illegal for people from Turkish Cyprus to enter the country.

In a bid to spread awareness on traffic best practices, Cypriot authorities have painted warning signs declaring that the island will have fixed cameras installed.

The transport ministry says that sign-painting started the week prior.

The intention of these markings is for drivers to better know of the road’s status.

Specifically, these markings look like yellow lines and have the image camera, which is painted in white.

These markings do not affect other markings already in place, like the white line or the zebra crossing.

Turkish Cypriot minister of transport Erhan Arikli has issued a statement to the press, explaining how the airport at Ercan (Tymbou) is facing issues courtesy the inter-region conflicts.

Arikli says that the airport is facing troubles with GPS as a result.

The ministry of transport itself has issued a statement, mentioning how the area around the airport is also compromised with inaccurate GPS data due to the same problem.

It further explained how these issues have been compromising aircrafts while landing.

Sometimes airplanes also receive the wrong information, which has led them to assume they are supposed to land at a different airport than intended.

The root cause of these errors are the various conflicts happening in the middle east.

More clouds in the sky are expected, bringing with them rain showers and isolated storms.

The latter are expected to occur primarily on the eastern coast, inland and in the mountainous regions.

Meanwhile the average temperatures are set to rise up to 26 degrees Celsius in the eastern and south-eastern coasts, 27 degrees Celsius inland and 16 degrees Celsius in the mountainous regions. Winds are expected to go up to three on the Beaufort scale, making a turn towards south and to the to north westerly, making its way up to moderate speeds at four on the Beaufort scale.

Some roughness is expected in the seas.

The night skies are expected to be clear, with some clouds on the lower and fogs towards sunrise the next day. At this point, the temperatures shall decrease to around 15 degrees Celsius in the coastal regions, 14 degrees Celsius inland and 10 degrees Celsius in the mountainous regions.

Wind speed at this point is expected to be three on the Beaufort scale, while the sea is expected to be less rough.

Cyprus’ public employee’s independent union (Asdyk)’s police division has made a statement to the public, expressing their frustration over the Ministry of Finance’s rule for calculation of payment of Police Officers on election duty.

The payments are to be made based on the A3 pay system for civil service officers, meaning police officers on election duty will earn less than their usual pay.

This includes several thousand police officers – many of whom have more than a decade of service and are upwards of A7 on the Pau snake.

They will all perform strenuous twenty-hour shifts and be paid much lesser – a frustrating prospect indeed.

The asdyk is requesting the Ministry of Finance to consider their standing on the matter and not cut on expenses at the cost of paying some of the high-earning law enforcement officers the lowest possible salary for putting the least amount of effort, given as the this is a one-day-affair that will not repeat for years to come.

Their demand is that the police officers be compensated according to their current pay scale based on the hours of work.

They also spoke about an order from the chief of police, which pretty much forced police officers to work overtime, but were paid time off rate for it.

A high school mathematics teacher has been arrested after 2 students filed formal complaints, alleging having suffered sexual harassment from him.

The students, both female, aged 16 and 13 filed the complaint against the math teacher, aged 49 – elaborating how he made less-than-appropriate gestures at them.

The man was immediately arrested and kept in police custody for 8 days – with 28th may being the last day. The police, however, have determined to extend the remand on grounds of the nature of the crime.

Further investigation is currently underway.

Several schools were evacuated in Cyprus after they received anonymous emails with threats of them being targeted with bombs. Scared and panicked, authorities led evacuating students from their schools on a large scale.

The emails, later made public by the media were very graphic, containing pledges saying things like “drown you in your blood” & “sever your necks;” they are suspected of having their background in Islamist extremist beliefs.

Some kindergartens, as well nearly every secondary and primary school received this threat.

According to Christos Andreou, the spokesperson for the Cyprus Police, the evacuations were executed without incident, and no bomb has been found.

Several panicked parents collected their kids straight from the schools.

The email threats made references to the Sharia Islamic law, with the email’s author saying that those who did not believe in it deserved to be punished.

The message was in Greek, but the structure appeared to have been translated on the internet. Investigators are doing their best to find out the source of the email.

A man has sustained major injuries after falling out from his bedroom on the residential building’s 2nd floor.

The man, aged 56, fell out of his bedroom early in the morning from the second floor of his three-floor apartment building.

The man landed in the courtyard, where he was visibly gravely injured. Bystanders called paramedics, who picked the man up and took him to Paphos Hospital. He is still receiving treatment there.

The police are currently investigating the matter, and have the area sealed to be able to continue their examinations as to why the incident happened in the first place.

So far, they have revealed that the man lives with his twin brother in said apartment.

A sudden fire broke out in the rear side of a university-affiliated bus in the north side of Nicosia in Cyprus.

The bus seemed to have caught on fire while it was behind some traffic lights in Mandres, Nicosia.

The fire brigade was immediately notified, who arrived quickly and doused the fire before it had a chance to spread.

It is not yet known why the fire happened in the first place; police investigation into the matter is still underway.

The Cyprus Research and Innovation Centre (CyRIC) has unveiled its product “MultiLab” – a first-of-its-kind lab-on-chip platform with sensors enabled.

These sensors (important in the fields of environmental monitoring and medical diagnostics) are small yet powerful, and can detect and provide a wide range of biochemical and chemical information.

While several conventional methods are still widely used in labs for microscopy and chromatography, also come with their set of limitations, namely being slower and requiring people technically qualified to use them.

MultiLab aims to tide over these problems by making intuitive sensors, which even a lay man can easily use.

Although led by CyRIC, MultiLab is now a section of the Horizon Europe Programme of the European Union.

It was officially launched on the 1st of January this year, and shall run for 4 years from now.

The CyRIC has a number for partners for this mission, which include several private companies and government-funded institutions from EU countries Germany, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Greece, along with Switzerland.

The ultimate goal here is to manufacture the chip on a mass level, so that everyone who needs it can access it at an affordable rate.

For now, MultiLab has 2 major applications – finding early warning signs of harmful algae proliferations, and improving the diagnosis of unknown-origin fevers.

More than ten thousand people have reportedly visited Cyprus’ Travel Expo.

The event, held on the fairgrounds, had visitors from all over the country as well as the world – all of whom were excited and impressed to see the available travel packages.

A collaborative effort by Display Art Plc and the Association of Cyprus Travel Agents (ACTA), the expo was indeed a resounding success – having civilians and stakeholders of the tourism industry coming together to explore tourism further.

The ACTA’s press release said that attendees were able to browse through a myriad of travel packages – and got clarity on things like experiences and destinations, and of course choosing the packages most suited to them.

The organizers, who themselves were very impressed, expressed their emotions by calling the Expo a “triumph.” Several have remarked that they would be happy to play the same, if not a better role in the event in the following year.

The event has several famous participants, including the Cyprus Agrotourism Company, the Cyprus Deputy Ministry of Tourism, regional Cypriot boards, and of course, the Greek National Tourism Organization. Several niche tourist organizations were also present, as were tourism specialists from other European countries such as Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary. Travel agency reps, airline official, cruises and local municipalities were also among the hundreds who participated.

Israel’s Geological Institute has discovered a canyon under the water near the Cypriot coast.

The canyon in question, which has been named Eratosthenes (being near to a famous now-underwater mountain with the same name) has been estimated to be as old as five-and-a-half-million-years-old, around the time the Messinian event happened.

Said to have been buried at the dawn of the Messinian times, the canyon has been measured to lie five-hundred meters deep and ten-kilometers-wide.

Geologists say that the canyon must have formed when the Mediterranean Sea level lowered due to rising salt levels. This led to the creation of gravity currents i.e. the proliferation of thick solutions that ultimately caused the seabed to subsidize and destabilized the slopes.

They further mentioned how the discovery of the Eratosthenes canyon puts the Messinian event in a more detailed light.

Often called the salinity crisis – this was an epic geological happening where the Mediterranean Sea fell into a state of total or partial desiccation state.

Singer Silia Kapsis is all set to go to Malmö in Sweden to participate in Eurovision 2024 – where she will be representing the island nation.

Kapsis, aged 17, shall be performing her song titled “Liar.”

Speaking at the Eleftherios Venizelos Airport, where she had her photos taken while holding the flag of Cyprus, Kapsis expressed her immense excitement at the opportunity.

She mentioned that while there is some anxiety, it is an opportunity of a lifetime and she will do her best to stay as relaxed as possible.

Kapsis will be representing Cyprus at Eurovision’s first semi-final’s first half.

Several predictions are already being made on the eurovisionworld.gr website, where “Liar” stands away from the top 10 songs.

Meanwhile, odds for betting suggest the song will land at approximately twenty-fourth place.

Greek musician and composer Dimitris Kontopoulos produced and composed the “Liar” song himself.

The Criminal Court of Larnaca has found a man guilty of trafficking drugs, and subsequently sentenced him to serve 5 years in prison.

The man, aged 29, was stopped by drug squad (Ykan) members of the Cyprus Police on a road in rural Larnaca during the afternoon.

The police found his movement suspicious, and proceeded to make a search of the car – this is where they found 1600 grams of cannabis, packed within 2 nylon packets.

Ykan law enforcement proceeded to make a search of the man’s home; they uncovered 10 more similar packages full of cannabis – these weighing 269 grams in total.

The man was already booked at this point and the case was registered for trial on an immediate basis at the criminal court, where the rest of the proceedings and sentencing took place.