By Stefanos Evripidou

THERE is no issue at present of re-tabling the EU regulation on direct trade with the north, government spokesman Christos Stylianides said on Thursday, after reports surfaced last week that the European Commission was seeking to bring the contested issue back on the agenda.

Speaking after a meeting between President Nicos Anastasiades and EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule in Brussels, the spokesman said the two discussed developments in Ukraine, the EU’s enhanced role in the Cyprus peace talks, confidence-building measures (CBMs) and the issue of direct trade between the EU and the occupied areas.

“The issue (of direct trade) is exclusively linked to the proposal made by the president on the Turkish occupied town of Famagusta and it is being discussed as such,” said Stylianides.

“It has been made absolutely clear that re-visiting this regulation is a non issue for the Directorate-General for Enlargement at this point,” he said.

Anastasiades has invested a lot in a CBM package proposal which will see the fenced-off area of Famagusta returned to its mainly Greek Cypriot inhabitants under UN control, the opening of Turkish-controlled Famagusta port to international trade under EU supervision, implementation of the Ankara Protocol for Cyprus-flag ships and aircraft, and the lifting of Cyprus’ veto on a number of Turkey’s EU accession negotiation chapters.

The spokesman said he believes the international community has widely accepted the fact that Famagusta is the most important CBM for the Greek Cypriots as it would bring a real impetus to the peace talks, and facilitate new cooperation between the two communities.

Stylianides added that the two also discussed the upgraded role of the EU, noting that the personal representative of European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso at the UN-sponsored talks, Pieter Van Nuffel, has a dual role to play.

He needs to evaluate proposals submitted at the negotiating table by both sides on their compatibility with the EU acquis.

At the same time, he has a “very important role” to play in familiarising the Turkish Cypriot community with the body of EU laws that exists, and on questions like what the EU means, what is acceptable within the EU, allowing more time to be saved in the negotiations process, said Stylianides.

Anastasiades is in Brussels for a European Council meeting, the conclusions of which are expected to include a special reference to the Cyprus peace talks.

In its draft conclusions, the European Council points out that the division of Cyprus has gone on for far too long and places emphasis on maintaining the momentum, adding that it is ready to play a role in supporting the negotiations and any CBMs agreed by the two sides.

According to Turkish Cypriot daily Kibris, when asked about the possibility of Van Nuffel participating in the talks, Turkish Cypriot negotiator Kudret Ozersay said the European Commission representative was not a new arrival to the island.

“Van Nuffel is doing today what he has been doing in the past,” he said.

Ozersay argued that the EU representative’s job was to provide technical support on the issue of increasing convergences under the EU chapter of the talks and helping out within the EU context on some confidence-building measures.

Ozersay is in Washington where he met with US Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and her deputy Eric Rubin.

Referring to press reports regarding the return of the Annan plan, he told Kibris that Greek Cypriots should not worry “because the Annan Plan is not on the table”, and neither should Turkish Cypriots because changes are not being made to the plan to make it more palatable to the Greek Cypriots.

“What will come up, if this process ends successfully, is a new solution agreement which will establish a new partnership,” where the rights, benefits and costs of a solution will be balanced, said Ozersay.

Meanwhile, outgoing Special Adviser on Cyprus Alexander Downer met briefly with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday in New York, to say a brief goodbye.

Ban asked Downer to submit a report in April with his recommendations on the peace talks, including whether he feels it would be useful to appoint someone to replace him or whether his duties can be fully undertaken by UN Special Representative in Cyprus Lisa Buttenheim.

Downer is expected to arrive in Cyprus next Tuesday to bid farewell to the leaders of the two communities and associates, before taking up the post of Australian High Commissioner to London.

By Nick Tattersall

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan described the gunning down of three members of the security forces in the southern province of Nigde on Thursday as a “nefarious terrorist attack” but did not say who was responsible.

Paramilitary and regular police officers were manning a checkpoint when the attackers opened fire from a truck, Turkey’s Dogan News Agency (DHA) said. The driver of the truck, which was stolen, was also killed in the exchange of fire.

Speaking at a rally before March 30 local elections in the northwestern town of Sakarya, Erdogan confirmed the attack.

“A nefarious terrorist attack has been carried out against our gendarmarie and police in the Ulukisla district of Nigde,” Erdogan said.

Two of the assailants were captured alive and police were searching for a third, he added.

Five other members of the security forces were wounded, local news agencies said.

Southeastern Turkey has seen similar attacks by Kurdish militants in the past but the region has been relatively calm since a ceasefire was announced last year as part of a peace process with the government.

Isolated clashes have occasionally threatened the ceasefire, which is still holding as Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers Party’s (PKK) jailed leader, Abdullah Ocalan, negotiate a peace process to end a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people over the past decade.

The aim of the assailants were not immediately clear. A statement from Turkish deputy prime minister Besir Atalay raised the possibility that the attack could have been carried out by Syrians.

“In the information I received, there is a note about Syria. It is very grave. They may be aiming to stir up the election atmosphere” Atalay was quoted as saying by Hurriyet newspaper.

Turkey has seen Syria’s three-year-long conflict spilling into its borders occasionally, with mortar shells exploding on its soil, causing civilian deaths.

Turkey, which share a 900-km border with Syrian, has been among the fiercest opponents of President Bashar al-Assad and has been housing more than 700,000 Syrian refugees.

About half a million refugees live outside the camps, paving the way for increasingly disgruntled local communities who complain about a rise in robberies and crime.

Ensuring that young Cypriots have the skills employers are looking for is vital if the country is to reduce its youth unemployment rate, EU Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth Androulla Vassiliou has said.

In the EU there are currently two million vacancies, which could be filled by young people but a third of employers cannot recruit staff with the right qualifications, the commissioner said,

“Levels of youth unemployment across Europe are unacceptably high. They can only be overcome if our education and training systems are more effective and adapted to the needs of the job market,” Vassiliou said.

The economic crisis has hit young people more than any other age group.

Around six million young people are currently unemployed across the EU and the level of youth unemployment in Cyprus is nearly twice as high as the overall jobless rate — 23 per cent compared with 12 per cent in the EU.

Youth unemployment – under 25 — in Cyprus jumped from 9.0 per cent in 2008 to more than 40 per cent today.

Cyprus is also faced with a unique problem in the EU: the unemployment rate for young graduates (25 per cent) is higher than among the lowest skilled groups (22 per cent).

This partly reflects its high level of tertiary graduates but is equally due to the skills mismatch.

In contrast, the unemployment rate in the EU is less than 11 per cent on average for graduates and 27 per cent for those with only lower secondary qualifications or less.

“Like many other countries, Cyprus needs to better prepare its young people for work,” Vassiliou said. “We have to address the mismatch between the skills our young people leave education with and the needs of employers.”

The European Commission is working together with Member States to put in place a Youth Guarantee, aimed at ensuring that all young people under 25 get a good-quality, concrete offer of a job, apprenticeship, traineeship, or continued education within four months of leaving formal education or becoming unemployed.

Cyprus is due to receive €11 million from the EU’s Youth Unemployment Initiative to support the introduction of the Youth Guarantee. This funding will support apprenticeships, work placements, and job advice.

Cyprus has submitted a ‘Youth Guarantee Implementation Plan’ to the Commission, in which it outlines reforms of apprenticeship, vocational education and training systems. ‘

Second-chance’ education for vulnerable groups, such as early school leavers and low-skilled unemployed, are also part of the plan.

The need to address the ‘skills mismatch’ will be the focus of a speech by Vassiliou at the European University Cyprus Forum on Youth and Employment on Friday March 21.

By Dominic Evans

More than half of Syria’s declared chemical weapons arsenal has been shipped out or destroyed within the country, the head of the international team overseeing the disarmament process said on Thursday.

Sigrid Kaag, head of the joint mission of the United Nations and Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), said 54 per cent of the toxins had been removed or eliminated.

The process, which President Bashar al-Assad’s government agreed to after a chemical attack killed hundreds of people around Damascus last year, is months behind schedule but Kaag said the new momentum “would allow for timely completion”.

“The joint mission welcomes the momentum attained and encourages the Syrian Arab Republic to sustain the current pace,” Kaag said in a statement.

Syria has already missed a Feb. 5 deadline to hand over or destroy all 1,300 tonnes of chemical agents which it declared last year. Last week it missed a deadline to destroy a dozen production and storage facilities.

Syrian authorities, battling a three-year uprising and insurgency against Assad’s rule, blame security problems for the delays in bringing the chemicals through contested territory to the Mediterranean port of Latakia.

Last month Syria said there were two attempted attacks on convoys transporting chemical weapons, and two storage sites remain inaccessible due to the civil war which has killed 140,000 people and ravaged whole districts of Syrian cities.

Five rockets were fired towards the Latakia port area earlier this month, with one landing near to where the international chemical team was staying, sources said on Tuesday.

Assad agreed with the United States and Russia to dispose of the chemical weapons – an arsenal which Damascus had never formally acknowledged – after the August chemical attacks in the Ghouta and Mouadamiya suburbs around the Syrian capital.

Washington and its Western allies blamed Assad’s forces for the world’s worst chemical attack in a quarter-century, and nearly launched military strikes in response. Damascus said anti-Assad rebels were responsible.

Lengthy delays at the start of the year have left Syria several months behind schedule and it risks missing a June 30 deadline for the chemicals to be destroyed. It has proposed an April 27 target to complete the removal of the chemicals.

The OPCW said another consignment of ‘Priority 1′ chemicals, considered the most dangerous, was delivered to Latakia on Thursday – the 11th to be transported out of Syria.

More than one third of the Priority 1 chemicals have now left the country, it said, including all of Syria’s declared mustard gas stocks.

Mustard gas is the most dangerous to transport because it is stored in the same form that is deployed in warfare. Components of other binary agents such as sarin are kept separately and only mixed when they are loaded into weapons, making them safer to store and move around.

Most of the Priority 1 chemicals will be neutralised at sea on a US vessel, while the rest will be handled at a British facility in Ellesmere Port, northwest England. The less toxic Priority 2 chemicals will be destroyed in the United States and Finland.

The UN-OPCW statement said experts inside Syria were forming a plan for the destruction of the chemical weapons storage sites.

By Steve Holland and Maria Tsvetkova

US President Barack Obama announced sanctions on Thursday against prominent Russians including close allies of President Vladimir Putin, as Moscow raced to complete its annexation of Crimea and built up its forces in the region.

Moscow responded by announcing its own sanctions against senior US politicians in retaliation against visa bans and asset freezes imposed by Washington on its citizens, with the foreign ministry saying US action would “hit the United States like a boomerang”.

With Obama also clearing the way for possible sanctions on vital sectors of the Russian economy, Putin told Russian company bosses to bring their assets home to help the nation survive the sanctions and an economic downturn.

Obama said the action would also target a Russian bank, named by a senior administration official as Bank Rossiya, which is partly owned by Yuri Kovalchuk, a St. Petersburg banker whose association with Putin dates back to the early 1990s.

Speaking at the White House, Obama said Russia’s threats to southern and eastern areas of Ukraine - which like Crimea have large Russian-speaking populations – posed a serious risk of escalation of the crisis in the region.

“We’re imposing sanctions on more senior officials of the Russian government,” he said. “In addition, we are today sanctioning a number of other individuals with substantial resources and influence who provide material support to the Russian leadership, as well as a bank that provides material support to these individuals.”

Washington announced a first round of sanctions against 11 Russians and Ukrainians it said were involved with the Crimean annexation on Monday. The latest measures cover 20 people including Putin confidantes, the official said, adding that Bank Rossiya – which has $10 billion in assets – would be “frozen out of the dollar”.

Those on the Russian list included former presidential candidate Senator John McCain, Senate majority leader Harry Reid and House of Representatives speaker John Boehner.

Obama said he had signed a new executive order expanding the US government’s authority to take measures against economic sectors. “Russia must know that further escalation will only isolate it further from the international community,” he said.

European Union leaders also gathered in Brussels to consider imposing their own further sanctions on Moscow.

ANNEXATION

In Moscow, Russia’s State Duma lower house of parliament approved a treaty taking Crimea, captured from Ukraine, into the Russian Federation, even as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was in the Russian capital for talks on the crisis.

Some of Russia’s largest companies are registered abroad where they may benefit from lower tax rates but also may enjoy some distance from the Kremlin and feel beyond its reach.

Without referring to Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region or to slowing economic growth, Putin said it would also be in the bosses’ interests to support the Russian economy.

“Russian companies should be registered on the territory of our nation, in our country and have a transparent ownership structure,” Putin told heads of Russia’s largest companies. “I am certain that this is also in your interests.”

In Kiev, the government said its border guards in Crimea, surrounded and outnumbered by Russian forces, had begun redeploying to the mainland after units loyal to Moscow stormed two Ukrainian military bases in the Crimean peninsula’s main town of Simferopol on Wednesday.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told parliament in Berlin that the 28 European Union leaders would show they are ready to ramp up punitive measures in a staged response against Russian officials and move to politically sensitive economic sanctions if goes further.

“The EU summit today and tomorrow will make clear that we are ready at any time to introduce phase-3 measures if there is a worsening of the situation,” she said.

Some diplomats read her statement as an implicit recognition that Crimea was lost, and that only further steps by Russia to destabilise Ukraine or intervene in other post-Soviet republics would trigger sanctions that could hurt convalescing Western economies as well as Moscow’s.

Russian forces took control of the region in late February following the toppling of Moscow-backed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich by protests provoked by his decision to spurn a trade deal with the EU and seek closer ties with Moscow. People in Crimea voted overwhelmingly in a referendum last Sunday to join Russia.

Only one deputy in the State Duma voted against the treaty, while 443 lawmakers backed it, rising for the national anthem after the vote. The upper house is due to complete the formal ratification on Friday.

“From now on, and forever, the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol will be in the Russian Federation,” pro-Kremlin lawmaker Leonid Slutsky said in an address before the vote.

By John O’Donnell and Tom Körkemeier

Europe took the final step to complete a banking union on Thursday with an agency to shut failing euro zone banks, but there will be no joint government back-up to pay the costs of closures.

The breakthrough ends an impasse with the European Parliament, which persuaded euro zone countries to strengthen the scheme. It completes the second pillar of banking union, which starts at the end of the year when the European Central Bank takes over as watchdog.

The accord means that the ECB has the means to shut banks it decides are too weak to survive, reinforcing its role as supervisor as it prepares to run health checks on the still fragile sector.

ECB President Mario Draghi said that plans to allow the new ‘resolution’ or clean-up fund to borrow to top itself up looked promising and that the decision-making scheme to shut a bank had been streamlined.

“The point we’ve always made that we need a mechanism that is properly funded and the agreement actually improves the existing funding,” Draghi told journalists as he entered a meeting of European Union leaders.

“All in all we made progress for a better banking union.”

Michel Barnier, the European commissioner in charge of regulation, said the scheme would help to bring “an end to the era of massive bailouts”.

“The second pillar of banking union will allow bank crises to be managed more effectively,” he said.

Thursday’s agreement makes it harder for EU countries to challenge the ECB if the central bank triggers bank closures, and establishes a common 55 billion euro back-up fund over eight years – quicker than planned but far longer than the ECB’s watchdog had hoped.

But the new system, which Barnier conceded was not ‘perfect’, has shortcomings.

For one, the ‘resolution’ fund is small and would, in the view of the ECB watchdog, be quickly spent. To remedy that the fund will be able to borrow to replenish spent money.

Euro zone governments will not, however, club together to make it cheaper and easier for it to do so.

The 18 euro zone countries do not intend to cover jointly the cost of dealing with individual bank failures, a central tenet of the original plan for banking union.

Germany resisted pressure from Spain and France to make such a concession. Its finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble welcomed new rules forcing bank creditors to take losses and that “the mutualised liability … remained ruled out” – a reference to sharing the burden of a bank collapse.

Neither will there be any joint protection of deposits.

DEADLY EMBRACE

Almost seven years since German small business lender IKB became Europe’s first victim of the global financial crisis, the region is still struggling to lift its economy out of the doldrums and banks are taking much of the blame for not lending.

The banking union, and the clean-up of banks’ books that will accompany it, is intended to restore their confidence in one another. It is also supposed to stop indebted states from shielding the banks that buy their bonds, treated in law as ‘risk-free’ despite Greece’s default in all but name.

Under the deal reached, a fund made up by levies on banks will be built up over eight years, rather than 10 as originally foreseen. Forty percent of the fund will be shared among countries from the start and 60 percent after two years.

It also envisages giving the European Central Bank the primary role in triggering the closure of a bank, limiting the scope for country ministers to challenge such a move.

Mark Wall, Deutsche Bank’s chief euro zone economist, said new rules to impose losses on the bondholders of troubled banks would reduce the burden on the fund but warned that its size was too modest. “A cross-European fund of the size of 55 billion raises some eyebrows in terms of scale,” he said.

The fund will be able to borrow against future bank levies but will not be able to rely on the euro zone bailout fund to raise credit. Critics say this means primary responsibility for problem lenders remained with their home countries and that the banking union will never live up to its name.

“The key to the banking union is an authority with financial clout. They don’t have it so we don’t have a banking union,” said Paul De Grauwe of the London School of Economics.

“The whole idea was to cut the deadly embrace between bank and sovereign. But if a banking crisis were to erupt again, it would be back to how it was in 2008 with every country on its own.”

Carsten Brzeski, an economist at ING, said the decision-making process to shut a bank was too complicated and long-winded.

The fragility and politicized nature of Europe’s banks has been highlighted by ailing Austrian state lender Hypo Alpe Adria .

Vienna will sponsor a bad bank to isolate roughly 18 billion euros of bad loans extended by the bank after Joerg Haider, the far-right politician who governed its home province, earlier ramped up its activities.

Despite the bank’s impact on national debt, many politicians feel Austria has little choice. Were banking union in place, the situation would be little different.

A FIRE broke out in a car in Nicosia district early Thursday.

The vehicle was parked in an open space next to the owners’ house and was completely destroyed by the fire. It was put out by the fire brigade and reported to be malicious. The Pera Chorio police station is investigating further.

By Constantinos Psillides

ASSISTANT Attorney general Rikos Erotokritou has suspended prosecution against an Ivory Cost national who is a suspected victim in an alleged police brutality case.

The man was seen in a November 27 video that went viral on the Internet with his leg apparently broken, while police officers were in the process of arresting him.

Meanwhile, the police filed a case against him for resisting arrest and causing actual bodily harm to a police officer on the scene.

Erotokritou suspended prosecution, pending the conclusion of an inquiry by the Independent Authority for the Investigation of Complaints. Justice minister Ionas Nicolaou had promised that the investigation would be concluded within a month.

The office of the deputy Attorney general confirmed that the charges against the migrant were dropped but did not say why.

News of the prosecution prompted a reaction from the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, that said this development was “extremely worrying.”

Doros Polycarpou, head of immigrant support group KISA told the Cyprus Mail earlier this week that the police was aiming to intimidate the Ivorian into dropping the charges. “They are trying to blackmail him into dropping the charges against the police for breaking his leg. They’ll make a case against him and will consent to drop it only after he agrees not to go through with his claim,” Polycarpou said, adding that the migrant is lucky that the event was caught on camera.

Human rights lawyer Nicoletta Charalambidou, who is representing the victim, told the Cyprus Mail that the deputy district attorney “was right in suspending the prosecution, but there is still one thing that needs to be addressed: who went ahead and ordered the prosecution?”

Police spokesman Andreas Angelides told the Cyprus Mail that this is standard operating procedure and that there was no malicious intent. “We have two separate cases under investigation. One has to do with the migrant’s accusations against the police, which is investigated independently as per instructions of the Justice Minister and one where the officer filed charges against the migrant. The second was handled by police investigators. We concluded the investigation and gave our findings to the Police Prosecution office. It has nothing to do with the other case and certainly there was no hidden purpose behind proceeding with the case,” he said.

LEBANON’S parliament gave a newly-formed cabinet a vote of confidence on Thursday, ending almost a year of political deadlock during which the country has been pulled further into the civil war in neighbouring Syria.

The approval – by 96 of the 101 parliamentarians who attended the vote – was widely expected after the government reached a compromise last week on a policy statement following weeks of dispute that brought it to the verge of collapse.

The vote gave Lebanon a fully empowered government for the first time in more than a year, raising hopes of holding presidential elections before President Michel Suleiman’s mandate expires in May and finally conducting parliamentary polls that were postponed last year due to the political impasse.

Until Prime Minister Tammam Salam’s government was formed last month, the country was ruled by a caretaker government following the resignation of his predecessor Najib Mikati.

Mikati resigned in March 2013 as parties aligned with the Shi’ite Hezbollah movement and a Sunni-led rival bloc pursued a power struggle exacerbated by their support for opposing sides in Syria’s three-year-old civil war.

Salam warned against inflated expectations.

“Nothing will be promised that the government cannot achieve, so do not expect miracles.”

The statement made the organisation of presidential and parliamentary elections the main priority, while also pledging to take “all possible measures to stimulate key economic sectors, first among them tourism.”

The policy statement also said the government would “accelerate measures related to licensing for oil drilling and extraction.” Potential gas and oil reserves off Lebanon’s coast have raised hopes that Lebanon could in the long term bring down debt which stands at 140 per cent of GDP.

But political wrangling has obstructed progress even as neighbouring countries stake out their claims. A row over who would control Lebanon’s energy portfolio thwarted an earlier attempt at forming a government.

By Nathan Morley

AN inquest into the mysterious death of a man who died while visiting Cyprus last year will be held on Friday morning.

Briton Daniel Brewster, 23, had been on the island to attend his best friend’s wedding, but was found unconscious a few hours after leaving a group of his friends on a pre-wedding celebration night out in Protaras.

Brewster had arrived on the island on the same day of the fatal incident in June last year.

Speaking to the press after the incident, a police spokeswoman said Brewster had attempted to climb up to the balcony of a private clinic in Paralimni, adding that while climbing up, he tried to grab a large concrete planter which fell on him, causing him to fall to the ground.

There were no witnesses to the incident.

Doctors determined he had suffered multiple fractures to the left side of his skull – he died two weeks later.

Last month, relatives hired a local lawyer and interpreter in an attempt to gather more information, as despite the police investigation, they had received no official explanation as to how he died.

On Thursday night, family representative Leon Georgiou told the Cyprus Mail that the relatives of Brewster do not accept the version of events presented by the police.

“Basically, we don’t believe the official story that has been given surrounding Daniel’s death,” Georgiou said.

The family insist many questions remain unanswered, including how and why Brewster travelled from Protaras to Paralimni on that fateful night.

By Karolos Grohmann and Iain Rogers

Real Madrid were given a chance to avenge last season’s Champions League semi-final defeat by Borussia Dortmund when the teams were drawn against each other on Friday in the quarter-finals of this year’s tournament.

Dortmund, who won the first leg 4-1 on the way to a 4-3 aggregate victory, will visit the Bernabeu for the first leg on April 1/2 with the return a week later.

Titleholders Bayern Munich were paired with Manchester United, a meeting that will inevitably spark memories of their 1999 final when United scored two goals at the death to win 2-1.

Paris St Germain face Chelsea and the remaining tie is an all-Spanish affair between Barcelona and Atletico Madrid, the teams’ first-ever meeting in European competition.

Poland forward Robert Lewandowski, who scored all four goals in Dortmund’s 4-1 win over Real last season, will be suspended for the first match against the nine-times champions.

“That’s a big big blow. He is a great player. It was a ridiculous decision,” said Dortmund CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke after Lewandowski was booked in the second leg against Zenit St Petersburg for handball.

“We would have liked to get someone else. Real is the world’s biggest football club. But there is no easy draw here at this stage. We just have to be as best prepared as possible.

“It will take an enormous effort from everyone to do well. Obviously we had a great team (last year) whether or not we can raise the level of our game we will see.”

Bayern, who are on course of a Champions League, Bundesliga and German Cup treble for the second season in a row, promised they would not be taking United likely despite their domestic problems.

“We should not be blinded by their current position in the league because they have outstanding players,” said Bayern captain Philipp Lahm.

“We have to perform according to what we can and if we do that we have good chances of reaching the semi-finals.”

Barcelona sporting director Andoni Zubizarreta said in an interview with Spanish television broadcaster Canal Plus: “Considering the teams that were in the draw I don’t know if we would swap for anyone else as they would all be very tough ties.

“We are seeing in La Liga this season that Atletico are one of the strongest teams in Europe right now.”

By Brian Homewood

Favourites Juventus were handed a difficult tie against Olympique Lyon in the Europa League quarter-finals following Friday’s draw at UEFA headquarters.

Antonio Conte’s team, whose stadium will host the final in Turin in May, will travel to France for the first leg on April 3 with the return a week later.

Juventus, who eliminated fellow Serie A team Fiorentina in the round of 16, are chasing their first European title since the 1996 Champions League.

The twice European champions won the old UEFA Cup three times and the Cup Winners’ Cup once.

Benfica, beaten finalists last season, were drawn against Dutch club AZ Alkmaar while their compatriots Porto, who knocked out Napoli in the previous round, face Sevilla.

In the other tie, Basel meet Valencia with the Swiss side, beaten semi-finalists last season, at home in the first leg.

Basel could still face disciplinary action after Thursday’s match at Salzburg was interrupted in the first half for 12 minutes when their fans hurled plastic bottles and cigarette lighters at an opposing player.

By Stefanos Evripidou

THE DISCOVERY of hydrocarbons in Cyprus’ Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) widens the potential for the country’s shipping industry, creating new synergies of cooperation, said Communications and Works Minister Marios Demetriades on Friday.

Speaking at the 2nd Cyprus Shipping Forecast Forum, the minister said hydrocarbons creates new prospects for Cyprus and its economy: “These new developments widen the horizons of our shipping industry, creating relevant synergies. The discovery of hydrocarbons places new challenges on our shipping industry.

“Offshore exploration and production of gas and oil, as well as their transportation ashore, require the operation of specialised ships and equipment and the supply of specialised supporting services,” he said.

Demetriades added that many Cyprus-based shipping companies are keen to be involved in the industry. Some have already taken the step to broaden their services and activities.

The government anticipates foreign shipping companies will relocate their offices and operations to Cyprus in order to explore the benefits of the emerging eastern Mediterranean offshore market, he said.

The minister highlighted the government’s commitment to maintaining Cyprus’ leading role in the world shipping scene through continuous development and growth.

“Shipping is a significant pillar of our economy in its capacity to act as a wide gateway of foreign investments to our island and this is of crucial importance on Cyprus’ path towards economic recovery,” he said.

His ministry will continue to improve and update the incentives offered to shipping entrepreneurs, while exploring new incentives to ensure Cyprus’ competitiveness as a ship management and shipping centre, said Demetriades.

Regarding piracy activity in the high risk areas of the Indian Ocean and West Africa, the minister said the Department of Merchant Shipping has prepared comprehensive new legislation to counteract unlawful acts against Cyprus-flagged ships.

The new legislation establishes a legal framework allowing the use of private armed personnel on board Cyprus-flagged vessels, for when they sail through high risk areas.

Forum Chairman and Chief Maritime Analyst at IHS Maritime UK, Richard Clayton, said despite sceptics who doubted the determination and resolve of the Cyprus Shipping Chamber, Cyprus continues to punch above its weight as a ship register and ship management cluster.

“It does so because this community shows a commitment to the industry that has little to do with size and much to do with professionalism,” he said.

Clayton said after meeting with the minister on Thursday, he was impressed by his vision for the shipping industry.

By Steve Scherer

Italy’s navy has rescued more than 4,000 migrants from overcrowded boats in the Mediterranean Sea south of Sicily in the past four days and several other rescue operations are still going on, officials said on Friday.

This week’s warm spring weather has brought calm seas and an surge in new arrivals. Most migrants pay more than $1,000 to criminal gangs in increasingly chaotic Libya to make the crossing to Italy – and the European Union – that killed hundreds last year.

Two suspected people smugglers were taken into police custody when the amphibious assault ship San Giusto and another Italian naval ship arrived in the Sicilian port of Augusta near Syracuse on Friday with more than 1,500 migrants rescued at sea.

While on patrol, the San Giusto picked up one dead refugee and rescued two in critical condition, the vessel’s commander Captain Mario Mattesi told Reuters.

“The rescue operations have been reinforced from five to eight ships and all are operating in the area of interest,” between Sicily and Libya, Mattesi said.

“The dead man and the two others all showed signs of probable carbon dioxide poisoning and burns from the petrol that was aboard the raft. One of the men was resuscitated on the San Giusto after being rescued,” he added.

MORE ARRIVALS FORESEEN

The Geneva-based International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said the arrivals were set to intensify.

“Our feeling and understanding is that there will be more movement because of instability in Libya, more movement of people coming up,” spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume told reporters on Friday.

Italy is a major gateway into Europe for migrants arriving by sea from North Africa and sea arrivals more than tripled in 2013 from the previous year, fuelled by Syria’s civil war and strife in the Horn of Africa.

In October, at least 366 Eritreans drowned in a shipwreck near the shore of the Italian island of Lampedusa, which is located about halfway between Sicily and Tunisia. More than 200, mostly Syrians, died in another shipwreck a week later.

However as well as those fleeing strife and civil war, the migrant boats carry many from politically stable but poor countries who cannot find work at home and accept the risks of the voyage in the hope of even low-paid work in Europe.

The IOM says African countries many migrants come from, transit countries including Libya and Tunisia and countries of destination such as Italy had to meet to try to find some solution that could include more temporary permits.

“In a country you need workers to do certain types of jobs, you can have them for a certain period of time,” Berthiaume said. “If there were channels for people to migrate, we wouldn’t see all these people risking their lives at sea.”

By George Psyllides

Famagusta police have arrested a man in connection with the 2012 murder of his 30-year-old estranged wife, whose death had been ruled accidental at the time.

Pontian Greek Giorgos Kyriakides, 33, was on Friday remanded in custody for eight days in connection with the death of Christina Kalaitzidou in Dherynia on March 16, 2012.

In a statement to police, the suspect allegedly admitted killing Kalaitzidou.

She was found dead in bed in a flat in Dherynia where she lived with the couple’s three children – all boys — aged five, seven, and eleven.

Police and fire fighters scrambled to the scene after people noticed smoked coming out the window.

They broke into the flat after finding all doors locked.

Officers determined that the fire on the bed, which had gone out in the meantime, had been caused by a cigarette.

The woman had light burns on her right arm.

State pathologist Eleni Antoniou examined the scene and ruled out foul play.

After carrying out a post mortem, Antoniou concluded that the woman died from smoke inhalation.

Her remains were flown for burial to Greece, where her family expressed doubt about the official cause of death.

Visible marks of violence on her face suggested that Kalaitzidou had been murdered, the family said.

Her body was exhumed and a fresh post mortem was carried out while a specialist UK-based centre was asked to provide its views.

The findings, announced to the family and the authorities a few days ago, showed that the cause of death was strangulation and not smoke inhalation.

Police told the court on Friday that it appeared the suspect had hit the woman, strangled her, and then set fire to her bed, where she was found dead.

After her death, the children moved in with their father.

By Iacovos Constantinou

This weekend sees the beginning of the playoffs with the relegation (positions 7-12) fixtures being played on Saturday and the group (positions 1-6) that will challenge for the championship on Sunday. Each team will have a total of thirty points (10 games) to play for so the final standings in both groups may change considerably.

Leaders AEL travel to the Antonis Papadopoulos to face Anorthosis and anything but a win for the Limassol team will come as a surprise given Anorthosis’s poor form of late. Anorthosis have not won since January, with morale being at an all-time low, and given that a number of key players will be missing through suspensions and injuries it’s hard to see them getting anything out of the game.

Apollon, three points behind AEL, entertain Omonia in what should be a very close encounter. Apollon have not been very impressive lately and in their last game against lowly Aris they needed a last gasp winner to collect all three points. Their defence seems suspect, and Omonia’s tricky forward line is bound to pose a lot of problems.

APOEL’s impressive run of nine straight wins was halted last Wednesday and they will be tested yet again against Ermis Aradippou who have yet to lose at home. Both teams need the points, APOEL to stay within striking distance of the leaders and Ermis to hang onto the prized fourth position.

Two more teams will follow Alki and Enosis to the second division and it should be a tussle between Aris, AEK Kouklion and Ethnikos Achnas as just three points separates these teams.

Despite being at the bottom of the group, Aris Lemesou have been in fine form of late and were extremely unlucky on Wednesday when they lost to championship hopefuls Apollon. They will have to overcome the indifferent but superior AEK Larnaca in Limassol.

AEK Kouklion travel to Larnaca to play against Nea Salamina whose biggest problem this season was their inconsistency. The result will hinge on which Nea Salamina turns out for the game.

The last game of the group is between Ethnikos Achnas and Doxa Katokopias with the third of the relegation candidates Ethnikos capable of taking all three points and preserving their two point difference from AEK Kouklion

All games start at 4pm except Ermis Aradippou v APOEL that begins at 5.30pm on Sunday.

By George Psyllides

OVER 3,600 foreclosure applications have been filed at the land registry, a senior official said on Friday, with the huge majority coming from banks.

Deputy land registry director Vasos Petrides said the department had received 3,639 applications, mainly from banks, which could soon be able to activate the procedure themselves.

Petrides said legislation was in the pipeline that would also allow banks to start the procedure themselves, sell the properties, and then allocate the proceeds to cover the debtors’ obligations.

“It would be up to the bank to choose one of the two procedures,” Petrides told the Cyprus News Agency.

Petrides said he expected banks to choose to handle the procedure alone, thinking it would be faster.

However, he added, delays were also possible in this case if the debtor secured a court order suspending the procedure – a usual phenomenon in the cases handled by the land registry.

“It is a time consuming procedure, repetitive, and this is why these cases cannot be completed,” Petrides said.

Lawmakers have been discussing a joint AKEL-EDEK bill aiming to protect primary residences and the premises of small businesses that are unable to repay their mortgage, by allowing court-mandated suspensions of repayment for a fixed term.

While small businesses eligible to apply for protection under the proposed bill are capped at employing up to 10 people and with a €2 million maximum turnover, no such cap is being considered for eligibility based on home value.

The reason, according to sources, is that such a provision would likely raise discrimination issues.

The finance ministry has said that it was working on broader-scoped bill as part of the bailout-mandated adjustment programme.

The finance ministry agrees with the Central Bank of Cyprus, and the banks association, that lenders cannot be asked to subsidise insolvent borrowers and that the committee proposals created the risk of moral hazard.

“Borrowers that may or may not face crisis-related solvency issues would likely inundate the courts with requests to suspend repayment,” a spokesman from the banks association has said.

Police have arrested a 17-year-old in connection with the death of his blind father whose charred body was found following a fire at the home of a neighbour in Limassol.

The victim, 58, was found burnt to death on January 21, in the living room of the neighbour’s home at the Trachoni refugee estate, who was at work at the time.

The teenager, who was remanded in custody for six days, was arrested by the British bases (SBA) police after new evidence appeared to refute his initial claims.

SBA police spokesman Giorgos Kiteos appeared confident that the case would be fully resolved.

The suspect, who has neither confirmed nor denied his alleged involvement, is receiving psychological help.

By Constantinos Psillides

Nicosia Municipality has begun a radical pruning programme along major roads in the capital in an attempt to limit damage caused by an overgrowth of branches and tree roots, it said on Friday.

Pruning has been done on trees lining Makarios and Evagoas avenues, Stassinou, Salaminas and other roads.

“The decision was reached after taking into consideration the multitude of problems the trees roots caused, like damaging water pipes, wiring installations, storm drains, sidewalks and nearby buildings,” said a statement from the municipality.

“It’s urgent that we move on with the work at hand as quickly as possible.”

Besides limiting damage done to underground pipes, pruning the trees would also have other benefits, the municipality said.

It would make it easier for municipal employees to clean the pavements around the trees, storm drains would not be  clogged with leaves and the area around the trees would not be full of bird droppings. The tall ficus trees were also a danger to public safety in case of a storm, the municipality added.

During a storm on September 19, 2009, the car of the Swiss ambassador to Cyprus was crushed after a large tree near the Lycavitos Police station was uprooted. The ambassador and his driver weren’t harmed.

The municipality assures any members of the public who are concerned over the radical pruning, that within a few months the trees would sprout new leaves. “But now they will also be far easier to maintain, decreasing maintenance costs,” it added.

In order to avoid further damage in buildings, the municipality has agreed with other government services to, in future, only plant trees whose roots stay close to the surface.

By Constantinos Psillides

TWELVE students from the Pascal English School in Nicosia are trying to raise public awareness on the issue of young girls around the world being denied access to education, by abstaining from food for 30 hours.

The students, ages 16-17, began what organisers described as a “famine event” at 7am on Friday, which will end at 1pm on Saturday.

They were spending Friday night on school premises, under teacher supervision.

A “famine event” is a form of protest initiated by World Vision, a religious non-profit humanitarian organisation. The “30-hour famine event” initially aimed at raising awareness on world hunger but spread as a form of protest.

The students were inspired by the 2013 documentary “Girl Rising”, which told the stories of nine girls around the world, in their struggle to gain access to education.

“As a class we are very active when it comes to charity”, says Maria, one of the students. “When we first saw the documentary we were pretty shocked. We decided to do something about it”.

The students attended a screening of the documentary, which has since evolved into a world-wide movement, and were inspired into raising money to donate to the “Girl Rising” campaign.

“I’m so proud of them”, said one of the teachers, Nektaria Hadjisergi. “When they first started they tried to find sponsors but couldn’t get enough support. Then they proposed to the school board to stage the event but the board was initially hesitant, concerned over the children’s health. The students didn’t give up. They presented their case to the school board again and this time managed to convince them. They didn’t just give up. They saw this though, all the way to the end.”

Asked how the students were planning to raise money by staging a famine event, Hadjisergi responded that was not about money but about raising public awareness on the issue. “And also, about taking a stand and not just give up when things don’t go your way. As many people nowadays tend to do,” she said.

Hadjisergi is one of 11 teachers tasked with supervising the students. The teachers took shifts so there is always someone around she said. Hadjisergi told the Cyprus Mail that the teachers had first-aid training, while the parent of one of the students who happens to be a doctor had been notified and he was on standby.