Europa League 3rd Qualifying Round results on Thursday July 31:

Omonia 3
Metalurg Skopje 0

Young Boys 1
Ermis Aradippou 0

AS Trencin 0
Hull 0

By George Psyllides

THE two weeks between August 11 and 24 are expected to see some 470,000 people move through the island’s two airports on a total of 2,900 flights, it emerged on Thursday.

“Cypriot airports are going through their most active period these days,” airport operator Hermes spokesman Adamos Aspris said. “Based on Hermes figures, the period between August 11 and 24 is expected to be the climax of passenger traffic.”

Aspris said most flights, or about 2,230, will go through Larnaca, carrying 340,000 passengers. Paphos airport will handle 670 flights and 130,000 people.

Aspris said Greece was the Cypriots’ favourite destination with Kavala, Mykonos, Santorini, Skiathos, Hania, Preveza, Lefkada and Rhodes taking the biggest share of outbound travellers.

Barcelona was also a popular destination.

Hermes considers the figures satisfactory although there is room for improvement.

“Passenger traffic is showing a 5.0 per cent rise,” Aspris said. “The development is the culmination of Hermes’ hard efforts and the coordinated actions of the tourist industry.”

Aspris said the company was constantly trying to attract new airlines to Cyprus and enrich the available routes.

IT WAS encouraging to hear the IMF mission chief raise the matter of the public sector payroll during Wednesday’s conference call. Someone had to do it as our politicians would never dare mention it for fear of incurring the wrath of the pampered public sector workers and their union bosses.

The point was illustrated by President Anastasiades who revealed on Wednesday night that when Ms Velculescu brought up the matter at a meeting he reacted forcefully and decisively. “If we honour our commitments, there is absolutely no obligation to follow any suggestions by a member of the Troika,” he said defiantly, using this as an argument for support of the foreclosures bill which he presented in a television address on Wednesday evening.

Anastasiades regularly panders to public employees, recently raising a few laughs by praising them for the big sacrifices they had made. It suffices to say that public sector workers, the best-paid in the country, suffered the smallest pay cuts, which are temporary, while work conditions remained unchanged; even an attempt to change their working hours was abandoned after a few months. Big sacrifices indeed.

The memorandum provided an ideal opportunity to cut wages and bring them more in line with the private sector as well as oblige employees to contribute from their wages towards pensions and their retirement bonus. But neither the government nor any of the parties dared mention this possibility.

And nobody has complained that the government has yet to appoint a Commissioner for the reform of the public service, after the post was vacated last May. The Commissioner was meant to initiate changes in the public service and reform the pay structure which guarantees automatic increments annually. It would be no surprise if nobody is appointed so that the government does not have to take the inevitably unpopular decisions, because it is against the philosophy of our politicians to look ahead.

But the IMF mission chief, who does not have to think about votes and popularity ratings, felt duty-bound to raise the matter as it is certain to cause problems in the future. In 2016, when the adjustment programme ends, the pay cuts would be rescinded and public employees would receive their pre-2013 wages, plus increments and everything else they are entitled to. Even if their numbers are reduced – a big ‘if’ – the public sector wage bill would still put a big strain on public finances because the economy would be smaller. The state payroll would again be unsustainable.

It is an imperative for the government to make all the changes, which would ensure a sustainable state payroll in the future, now. But this is unlikely to happen without pressure from the Troika, which is why we hope Ms Velculescu will not drop the matter.

By Stefanos Evripidou

THE European Union must demand Turkey to leave Cyprus as part of the obligation to protect its members, a British MP said on the occasion of the 40^th anniversary of the Turkish invasion.

In an interview with the Cyprus News Agency, Labour MP for Mansfield Sir Alan Meale criticised the EU and UK government for not demanding freedom for Cyprus.

“What is the use of having a family if you don’t support its members? What we have to do is not ask Turkey to leave, it’s not our job to ask, it’s to demand.

“Thousands of Cypriots died for Europe and Britain during the two world wars. For us to give way and not demand freedom for them is absolutely outrageous. It’s morally and strategically wrong,” said Meale.

The British MP has been following and actively engaged in the Cyprus problem since 1987 when he entered the House of Commons.

He remains optimistic that a solution can be found, despite the stretch of time passed since the island was split by the invasion of Turkish troops over two phases in the summer of 1974.

“We’ll all wake up one day and it will be over and we’ll all wonder why it took so long to do that,” he said.

Meale listed the geostrategic advantages of Cyprus that make the island “irreplaceable” for Europe, including its large maritime fleet, role as a telecommunications crossroad, financial services, and trade arrangements with Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

He made a special reference to Cyprus’ natural gas prospects.

“Cyprus could be the gas station of the world. The European community will not allow anyone to take this resource away from them. We must take advantage of that to clear away some of the other issues,” said the MP.

Meale welcomed the possible return of the fenced area of Famagusta but warned that this should not be considered a solution in itself.

“I won’t be satisfied until every single inch of Cyprus is in the Republic and administrated by a regime which represents all of the people,” he said.

The Labour MP highlighted the need for the fate of the missing persons to be revealed in full detail, so that those responsible could be held accountable, as happened in South Africa, where truth was followed by peace and reconciliation.

“At best it was an illegal incursion which resulted in the death of thousands of people, at worst it was genocide and why should genocide be applicable in Bosnia, in the Far East or the Middle East and not in Cyprus?”

Meale noted that some of the victims were British citizens or relatives of British citizens.
Asked about his thoughts on the 40th anniversary of the invasion and occupation, Meale said: “I shake my head in disbelief that someone could do this and get away with it in modern society. It’s against everything we stand for. I think the 40th anniversary is a sad reminder of what humanity can do to one other.”

“We have to have democracy again. We have to take it back, it is one country, one island, all the people have to be together and the involvement of Turkey in this is absolutely disgraceful.”

By Evie Andreou

POLICE handling of animal abuse cases has already improved but more is expected, animal rights activists said after their meeting with police chief Zacharias Chrysostomou on Thursday.

Chrysostomou said that animals are an integral part of our eco-system and that they too have rights to life, health and welfare, just as humans.

“I am in favour of animal rights as well as human rights,” he said.

Chrysostomou said that the police, which are responsible for the enforcement of laws for the protection of rights, give great importance to issues concerning animals.

“It was a very good meeting, it is a step forward, we already have seen a change in the way police deals with animal abuse cases, but there is still much that needs to be done,” said Mary Anastasi, chairwoman of Cyprus Voice for Animals (CVA).

“Lately the police had to deal with a number of animal cruelty cases,” said Chrysostomou, which he called ‘abominable’ and thanked animal rights activists whose contribution very helps the police work.

“We have had many (animal abuse) incidents and we expect to see more prosecutions, more suspects brought to justice, more penalties,” Anastasi said.

Earlier in the week, Justice minister Ionas Nicolaou announced that he intended to designate a police officer in each district to coordinate actions against reports of animal abuse and pledged to give strict instructions to the police to fully investigate all cases of animal abuse.

Chrysostomou said that as part of police officers’ training, the police academy will host a conference on animal protection and the role of all social partners at the beginning of the next academic season.

AN INTER-ministerial committee convenes on Friday to assess investors’ initial expressions of interest in the stock and/or assets of national carrier Cyprus Airways.

As reported by the Cyprus News Agency, the meeting will take place at the finance ministry, and will be attended by the finance minister, the communications minister, the accountant-general, the chairman of Cyprus Airways and KPMG, the airline’s consultants.

The deadline for submissions of non-binding expressions of interest expired on July 23. Some 20 companies expressed an interest, among them five involved in air transport.

The process is a preliminary step towards any eventual binding offer by any bidder. Remaining bidders must until the end of September file binding proposals. Interested parties will visit the airline’s offices here to acquire more corporate data.

Cyprus Airways is seeking a strategic investor to stay float.  The airline has struggled to survive against cheaper competitors and has been loss-making for years despite several attempts at a turnaround.

It is also under scrutiny by the European Commission over a €31.3m capital increase in early 2013 and a €73m rescue package by the Cypriot state in 2012, to establish whether it violated state aid rules.

By Hermes Solomon

NO BANK can remain in business unless they are permitted to call in unsustainable NPLs to protect depositors and support the bank’s capital base.

Parliament cannot keep ‘the wolves’ from the door indefinitely. By the end of this year NPLs will come under the hammer or the troika will withhold the next tranche of funds.

It doesn’t matter how the House of Reps votes on the ‘forced sale of property’ bill. Opponents will not delay the inevitable, which is that NPLs must be called in whether money is available or not.

No political party has openly condoned forced sales/auctions of NPL first residences, but the ‘wordy’ DISY bill coming before the House all but does.

The House of Reps has yet to tell us in plain language what will happen to NPLs, but thanks to the troika, we already know.

What happened in the US, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece will happen here, eventually! But opposition parties must first broadcast, until we are sick to the teeth of hearing them, virulent debates in ‘defence’ of first residence NPLs as if they weren’t toxic waste, which they are.

Little mention is made of our ‘fat cat’ developers, who collectively owe ‘toxic’ billions yet hold the sway of power on all political parties and the banks (for now) are in the palm of their hands.

We were told this week that 14 per cent of NPLs overall are for primary residences, but we also need to know their overall estimated value, then compare that to the extent/amount/value of major developers’ toxic NPLs so that we can have some true understanding of who owes what.

Has anybody compiled those figures? Of course not, for the simple reason that you can only value something by what it will fetch on the open market. And given politicians’ delaying tactics, little will sell at anywhere near its former value.

Years of pussyfooting by politicians have reduced sale values to bargain basement prices.

And when the bargain basement opens for business, as it will eventually, foreigners will home in and buy up prime job lots for a song unless ‘bankrupt’ major developers return funds from their illicit offshore accounts to bid for what they formerly sold and were paid for.

Perhaps waiting to bid for prime lots at bargain basements prices was always their intention and isn’t that always the case at times of reckoning – the small go under and the fat cats float to the top?

In 2004 He was a small developer and She a civil servant on an annual salary of Cy £20,000. He built them a 400 square metre house in the suburbs with the help of a Cy £200,000 low interest loan (340,000 euros).

They had two ‘posh’ cars, two dogs, cat, housemaid and two lovely children, who could both communicate in pidgin Filipino.

Like most small developers, His business went up the spout and She is now supporting the family, the outstanding loan repayments (His several after He was declared bankrupt) and one small car on a reduced by 20 per cent salary, from which is deducted income tax, social insurance, healthcare, loan interest, pension contributions, etc.

Over the past ten years, the cost of living has soared and they, like many others, are struggling to survive. Their dream house has made of the family potential SDF’s (sans domicile fixe). They could always walk away, like many did in the States. But if they choose to remain in Cyprus, there is no place to hide from our banks and the judiciary.

Valued at a million euros prior to the crash, the house’s likely sale value now sits at around half that. If it fails to sell then the asking price will be reduced by a further 20 percent. If, in a further six months, it still hasn’t sold, it will go to auction.

Given that the eventual sale price fails to meet ‘all’ loan obligations, the couple will be in debt to the bank for the rest of their lives.

On the upside, rents are unrealistically cheap by comparison to pre-crash years. Towns overflow with vacant property. The family could rent a three bedroom flat for around 400 euros a month – less than a third of what She is paying in monthly interest on their present loans – never mind capital repayments, which is something most borrowers never take into account when they sign on the dotted line.

But the banks urgently need to recapitalise to survive and foreign investors are buying in. Existing board members will be politely requested to walk the plank and be replaced by the Wilbur L Ross’s of this world – American, Russian, British and Chinese. Call them vultures if you will, but business is business…

The new board members will not be so kind. They do not have a political face or any obligation to answer to the House and ordinary voter for ‘heartless’ actions taken against non performers.

It’s gonna’ turn nasty. To a Cypriot, his home is his castle and he will fight to the ‘death’ to keep it. But he will lose the war because he was simply paying interest to the banks for something he would never completely own.

Four hundred square metre houses are pie in the sky, castles in Spain, a dream while it lasted. There are tons of them! Pay IPT, insure them, heat them, cool them, clean them and water them, that’s all a living nightmare in hard times.

Six years ago I wrote “The days of wine and roses are numbered. Consolidate!”

We did not consolidate and today we are no longer in control. We never really were.

There is no such thing as a free lunch! Next time we’ll think twice before biting the poisoned apple of ‘easy money’.

By Dr James Mackay

ACCORDING to Evie Andreou’s report in last week’s Sunday Mail (“The rise of vocational degrees,” July 27), President Nicos Anastasiades has called upon Cyprus youth to “start considering newer career paths and choose qualifications relevant to jobs that will be needed in the future instead of going for more ‘traditional’ studies like philology and other professions for which there is no demand anymore.”

As I am a literature professor, obviously it makes me rather sad to hear the president of my country declare that I am obsolete, that my subject is irrelevant, and that the young people of Cyprus had better start off for a brave new world of entirely vocational degrees. However, I’m sure that saddle-makers in the early twentieth century faced with the rise of the automobile and the inevitable decline of their profession felt much the same way, so I won’t bore Sunday Mail readers with would-be inspirational odes to the glory of literature.

However, I would argue that the president’s remarks show a worrying misunderstanding of future trends in the labour market, the changes needed in the Cypriot economy and society, and the very practical gifts that humanities subjects bring to those who take them. It is my contention that if President Anastasiades understood these realities, he would shift his efforts away from exhorting students to take Casino Management or Golf Club Maintenance (or whatever specialised vocational courses he had in mind), and move to persuading employers and students alike to re-evaluate the utility of a philology degree.

The simple fact is that the triple forces of globalisation, the digital revolution and environmental destruction are changing our world at a speed and with a scope never previously imaginable. As Cyprus takes its troika-humbled place within an EU devoted to transnational shifts of capital and labour, it is folly to continue to assume that a job, any job, can be a job for life.

Internet-enabled content delivery systems are irrevocably altering almost every aspect of modern culture, throwing industries into flux that have enjoyed stable economic models for a century or more. From newspapers to universities, manufacturers to neighbourhood kiosks, all businesses are having to contend with destabilising forces that, yes, create wonderful new opportunities – but which also in their creative destruction bring down long-established companies and job categories.

The future is deeply uncertain in other ways, with peak oil likely already passed, with inevitably growing competition for resources with the newly resurgent economies of Asia, Africa and South America, and with a warming world increasing the cost of resources for everyone. In other words, many vocational degrees, teaching as they do skills for the here and now, will face obsolescence in the future. Only doctors and lawyers are guaranteed survival, and Cyprus can only take so many lawyers.

The result is that the future Cypriot workforce, rather than needing to become more specialised and fitted for some bureaucrat’s idea of what will be an “employable” qualification in a decade’s time, needs to become more flexible and more outwardly focused. Employers, outside of certain specialised professions which will not employ the majority of the population, already carry out on-the-job training, and place relatively little value on the informational content of a degree. Rather, they value proven ability to think and adapt.

Given that our future is set within an EU committed to “ever-closer union” (and therefore “ever-lower barriers” in a free market), employers will also get the greatest value out of employees who can speak multiple languages and who, more importantly, can function in different cultural contexts. More, it would be simply insane for Cyprus to let its head start in English, the global business language, drain away: never mind the disgraceful lack of Mandarin Chinese lessons in schools and universities. Empathy, internationalism and communication skills should, after all, be the watchwords of Cypriot education policy.

The humanities were designed at a similar moment in human history, as the relative certainties of the Middle Ages gave way to the modern era. No longer was absolute obedience to an old theological and social order enough: humanistic teaching required that its students challenge their fellows and their teachers in debate, employing varying rhetorical strategies and bringing to bear as many facts as they could get at their disposal.

These skill sets ensure that our graduates are creative thinkers, able to construct a coherent and multi-stranded argument. They are trained in essential business skills such as the ability to research – which, in the age of Google, has become ever more important – and putting together what they discover from their research in a way that clearly summarises it for others.

Working on languages and literatures from many different countries ensures that they have developed skills in empathy and adaptation. Working on essays that deal with highly abstract questions of aesthetics and philosophy has honed their argumentative skills in a way that no vocational course can replicate. And no other type of course demands ethical reasoning at the same level as the humanities do.

President Anastasiades is hardly the first person to knock the relevance of the humanities. Yet studies show that the employment rates for humanities graduates are comparable to any other degree. To quote just one of numerous statistics bearing out the long-term utility of these qualifications, 34 per cent of FTSE companies’ CEOs have a humanities and social sciences education – more than have science or technology backgrounds. (See the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities for more). Survey after survey finds employers looking to recruit people with the precise skills the humanities teach: critical thinking, clear communication and an ability to deal with complexity.

Of course, these statistics are for the US and the UK. I am unable to find similar research for Cyprus: that, in itself, is suggestive. Given all the revelations about the unimaginative, short-termist way that the Cypriot economy was being handled that have emerged in the past couple of years, it would not be a surprise to find that employers and the government have still not woken up to the challenges and opportunities of the future. If they had, President Anastasiades would not need to caution young Cypriots against the types of degrees that actually teach the skills needed in a global, digital, forward-facing economy.

Dr James Mackay is assistant professor in British and American literatures in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the European University Cyprus

By Loucas Charalambous

IT IS FAIR to say that DISY chief Averof Neophytou was right about most of the things he accused the banks of at his news conference on July 24.

The behaviour of the management of the banks today is very far away from what we would have expected, with ample justification after last year’s collapse and recapitalisation through the seizing of a big chunk of deposits, not to mention the wiping out of shares and bonds.

It must be mentioned that, despite everything that happened and in spite of their unforgivable actions which caused misery to thousands of people that had trusted them, everyone agrees the banks should be helped to return to normalcy. Not because this would be just or deserved, but because, unfortunately, it is necessary.

This concession, however, should not be construed as condoning the methods and practices followed by the banks, which in some cases are inhuman. There have been many reports by borrowers who had gone to the bank to discuss restructuring a loan and were met with hostility and arrogance.

For example, people with loans who have requested a restructuring – sincerely seeking an arrangement that would allow them to gradually repay their dues – have encountered totally unreasonable demands from the banks such as additional security, new guarantors, new collateral and higher interest rates.

In addition to this, banks are also trying to introduce unfavourable terms on loan contracts. One such term gives the bank the right to unilaterally terminate an agreement and demand full repayment even if the customer has been making the repayments agreed to in the restructuring. It would appear that in these cases, the bank, apart from everything else, wants to keep the customer’s head under the guillotine, threatening to chop it off at any moment.

Who in his right mind would agree to such an arrangement or a new loan on these terms? How can anyone do business in the knowledge that the bank could at any moment stop it and demand full settlement of his loan? How can any businessman plan his operations with this threat looming?

This behaviour by bankers, especially under today’s circumstances, is provocative to say the least. And one wonders what the point is. If the objective was a friendly and fair arrangement for the repayment of a loan then this type of behaviour achieves the exact opposite.

If the plan is for banks to take over as quickly as possible the properties used as collateral, they will find out, if they pull it off, that it will be just a drop in the ocean of debt. The result will be properties with very low sales value that the banks will have difficulty selling.

Nobody disagrees with pressuring those who have been taking advantage of the situation and are refusing to repay their loans despite having the funds. But the banks must differentiate between those who are compliant and those that are not. After all, the banks should not forget that they caused this problem with their greed and irresponsibility.

Worst of all is that while this heavy-handed behaviour by the banks is taking place, none of those responsible for the collapse of the banks is in jail or have been made to pay for their crimes.

Last week, the Bank of England announced tough punitive measures against those responsible for the collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds, including the return of the bonus payments of seven years.

Nothing of the sort has happened here. On the contrary, some of the main culprits for the banking disaster have the audacity to appear on television and give us advice on how we will climb out of the abyss into which they threw us.

By Evie Andreou

AN AUSTRALIAN-BORN Cypriot is returning home to his family’s small village of Meniko to continue what his grandfather started: run the village coffee-shop.

Steven Lefteri’s project is only partially a desire to go back to his roots. It is also a sound business proposition. Busloads of tourists descend on the small village of Meniko to visit its famous church, Ayios Kyprianos, but after viewing its famous icons, holy fountain and relics of Saints Kyprianos and Ioustini, they have nowhere to go.

Lefteri aims to change all that.

Three years ago, while on holiday in Meniko, he woke up one morning to witness busloads of tourists arriving at the village, a sight which he never thought he’d see.

“I thought I needed glasses. I looked out the window and I saw all these people, getting off the buses and going to the church,” Lefteri recalled. “This was very extraordinary for me to see because Meniko is only 1000 people and traditionally there’s not much that happens here.”

After visiting the church Lefteri noticed that visitors were at a bit of a loss. “People would come to the village and sit under a tree, others would sit in their cars, others would just walk around,” he said.

So he came up with the idea to utilise the coffee-shop his mother had inherited from her father.

“I just felt that the village has to offer something to people that come to this church and no one was willing to do it.”

Although the coffee-shop idea had been brewing for some time, Lefteri only recently took the plunge after he decided to leave the large pharmaceutical company he had been working with for 20 years and, instead of accepting any of the job offers he had received, decided to return to Cyprus.

Lefteri believes the coffee-shop will help the locals as it will bring visitors to the village. He will also employ villagers and help local producers by buying their products.

The coffee-shop in the centre of Meniko

And, of course, he gets to continue the legacy of his grandfather and former mukhtar Giorgos Antoniades. Antoniades, who has a road in Meniko named after him, Mukhtar, worked the coffee-shop from 1920 until the 1940s. After Antoniades died in the 1950s, the shop was eventually passed on to Lefteri’s mother, Kyproulla, his youngest child of eleven.

The shop was left empty for years until the 1980s when Kyproulla, who had in the meantime migrated to Australia, demolished the original building which was falling to bits and dangerous. She rebuilt a shop on the ground floor and an apartment above which was used by the family when on holiday in Cyprus.

Lefteri has done extensive work on the shop to turn it into a coffee-shop and hopes it will be ready to open within the month.

“Some of my relatives are excited I’m doing this because it was their grandfather’s shop and now his grandson will keep the light burning. One of my cousins said ‘If you do the shop you got to have a photo of our grandfather in it’,” Lefteri said.

Grandfather Giorgos Antoniades ran the village coffee-shop until the 1940s

The coffee-shop, ‘St Kyprianos’ Square’ is next to the church and will offer hot and cold beverages, cakes and snacks. Lefteri is planning on hiring local staff, and buy fruit and vegetables from local producers, but above all he feels that he is providing a service to the village and to the numerous visitors to the church both  local and tourists.

“The whole attempt is not about making money. It’s about adding value to something that was much overdue in the village,” Lefteri said.

The church of Ayios Kyprianos

The relics of the third century saints, Kyprianos and Ioustini are said to be housed in the church in Meniko.

The church was built by the Lusignan King of Cyprus Peter I in the 14th century in the place of a smaller church dedicated to the two saints and extensions were added in the 19th century. The church’s icons date from the 16th until the 19th centuries. Parts of medieval frescoes are visible in the walls of the church.

In the church there is also a fountain with holy water. Ayios Kyprianos, who is Meniko’s protector-saint, is believed to ward off black magic and the evil eye.

By Evie Andreou

CULINARY tourism is the latest move by the Cyprus Tourism Organisation (CTO) to diversify Cyprus’ appeal to visitors.

It is a move the CTO believes will appeal to tourists looking for something different and will give a boost to local businesses and, of course, promote a quintessential Cypriot past time: eating.

As a first step, the CTO in cooperation with Travel Foundation, UK and the Cyprus Sustainable Tourism Initiative (CSTI), launched a pilot programme last month to urge hotels in the Paphos district to promote the Cypriot breakfast.

The consortium hired a consultant agency to carry out Cyprus breakfast seminars to the staff of participating hotels, taught by culinary arts instructors Yiannakis Agapiou and George Kyprianou, former chairman and deputy of the Cyprus Chefs’ Association, respectively. Three of the four scheduled seminars have already taken place.

“There are already 16 hotels in Paphos participating in the project, we are expecting at least 20, but at the moment it is difficult because it is a high season for the hotels and they are too busy to take the course,” said CTO official Monica Liatiri, adding that they expect more hotels to take part in September.

The trained chefs are taught how to use traditional Cyprus products such as carob syrup, epsima (concentrated grape juice), fresh goat milk and cheeses, fresh herbs and smoked meats as well as traditional preserved sweets. Restaurant staff are also trained to identify and explain these products to tourists.

“There are many ways to use these products to make breakfast recipes. Anari cheese for instance, is a great product and can be used both in sweet and savoury dishes,” said Kyprianou, adding that Cyprus cheeses and smoked meats are in no way inferior products to other better known European products.

“Why are mozzarella and prosciutto used widely and not anari and choiromeri?” he asked.

He added that by seeing and tasting these products in breakfast dishes, like omelettes, pies, pastries they would want to buy them and take them home, and maybe search for them in their local supermarkets.

He said that participants had showed great interest in the seminars and that general managers and other officials as well as kitchen staff and waiters had participated.

CTO is awaiting feedback both from participants and the tourists but are optimistic about the outcome.

“It is still too early to evaluate but I am positive the project will be a success. We will receive the questionnaires filled out by tourists and their evaluation in September and October,” Liatiri said.

If the pilot project succeeds, the aim is to introduce it island wide.

Apart from the Cyprus breakfast, the CTO is exploring the idea of promoting a common branding, also on a voluntary basis, which aims to promote culinary tourism in Cyprus.

This branding follows the international trend of consumers seeking authentic experiences instead of globalised and standardised ones.

“It will be a horizontal programme and include producers, shop-owners, restaurants, hotels, small businesses that sell traditional sweets, meat and dairy products, etc,” Liatiri said.

She added that the use of traditional products should not lead to boring standardisation of dishes with just a Cyprus twist.

“We teach them how to use the materials, we provide ideas, but the presentation is up to them. They might use the products to create traditional recipes or modern dishes, the possibilities are endless,” she said.

CTO believes that the project will also provide a promotion platform for businesses locally and abroad through the press, social media and, websites.

“It is a win-win situation; it will be a marketing tool. Once they see the cost and effect factor, they will want to participate,” Laitiri said.

“We will have a competition before the end of 2014 and hire an expert that will make the business plan first so that we know how to best proceed with criteria, conditions etc,” Liatiri said.

She also said that the brand could become an umbrella for many activities incorporated within the culinary tourism theme.

“It could be cooking courses, food festivals, tours in traditional places, organised by individuals or organisations that can all be incorporated under the umbrella of the culinary tourism brand,” Liatiri said.

Culinary branding is nothing new. In Greece a similar project is called Aegean Cuisine and Austria is also promoting their culinary products.

Kyprianou said the success of the project will depend on businesses participating seriously and maintaining standards.

“It is not about getting the brand just to increase business, you only participate because you want to do this and promote the products properly,” he said.

By Bejay Browne

THE TALE of a village in the north whose Greek Cypriot residents were torn apart and displaced by the Turkish invasion has been eloquently and lovingly resurrected by two foreigners with only indirect links to the village.

A book, and then a film containing photos of the residents of Phlamoudhi before the invasion, have given the refugees a precious link to a way of life which has now gone forever, and which they were forced to flee leaving all their belongings behind – including photos.

Ian Cohn came first. The American photographer and architect came to Cyprus in 1972 to take photos of an archaeological dig taking place near Phlamoudhi, on the coast east of Kyrenia.

“I was invited to be the official photographer for the Columbia university expedition for eight weeks. Everyone was very welcoming, even though I had an outlandish appearance. We were the first foreigners who had ever lived in the village,” said Cohn, smiling at the memory of his massive Afro hairstyle.

He fell in love with the village and ended up taking photographs of some 250 villagers. Little did he know that these pictures would come to mean so much, becoming a sort of family album for a now diaspora community.

Cohn said he first photographed his assistant, villager Georgios Hadjipapaphotiou and his family, and the project grew from there.

Georgios Hadjipapaphotiou and Ian in 1972

The detailed photographs show what everyday life was like in a traditional Greek Cypriot village in the north of the island. Just two years after the pictures were taken, the villagers fled, taking nothing with them and Phlamoudhi was abandoned as Turkish forces invaded.

Loizos Chrysostomou “Melas,” shopkeeper, in the doorway of the co-op, Phlamoudhi 1972

Cohn lost touch with his new friends and the photographs were stashed away for almost 35 years until a conversation with Pavlos Flourentzos, the director of the Cyprus Museum in 2005, resulted in the architect being invited to hold an exhibition at the Cyprus Museum.

“I had made notes in 1972, but they were far from complete, so I began an email correspondence with Savvas Georgiou, a villager I had taken pictures of when he was eight,” said Cohn. “He was able to identify everyone in my photographs and the locations where they were taken. In that sense he’s a historian. I realised that this isn’t just a historical reference but something deeper. It shows the special relationships these villagers had with each other and the land they loved.”

One of the villagers Cohn had photographed died in the invasion, the shepherd, Lysandros Lysandrou, who features on the cover of his book. “I didn’t know this at the time and the villagers view him as a hero.”

The photographer said that he was overwhelmed by the response of the displaced villagers to his photographs. Most people have pictures of their homes, their parents, or grandparents, but they had left everything behind because they thought that they would return, he said

“Savvas said that until he met me again, he thought his life in the village was a dream, as his family was displaced to London. People talked about life before but no-one had a photograph,” said Cohn

In 2009 Cohn was giving a lecture in London about his book, Faces of Phlamoudhi. In the audience was the second foreigner in the story, British filmmaker Rupert Barclay.

Barclay’s wife is Cypriot and although she grew up in the UK, both of her parents are refugees. Her father is from a neighbouring village to Phlamoudhi.

”The lecture grabbed my attention; I was really touched and felt a real connection. The photos were compelling and subsequently one of the main characters in my film is Savvas Georgiou, my wife’s cousin, who had also helped Ian with his book,” said Barclay explaining how he felt compelled to make a documentary.

A year after Cohn’s London lecture, Barclay asked Cohn if he could make a film based on the book. The photographer agreed as he thought that there was a story to be told. The film is a combination of reminiscences by the villagers about daily life and how it changed. The photographs also feature.

Barclay began filming in 2010, having to fit it around his own busy work schedule as a member of a TV production unit. He finished filming at the beginning of 2013.

The documentary had its first showing to an audience of refugees from Phlamoudhi this week at Verochino in Oroklini. The response was overwhelming, said Barclay, just as it had been to Cohn’s book a few years before.

From left, Ian Cohn, mukhtar Michalis Tziortas and Rupert Barclay at the film showing in Oroklini this week

Cohn features heavily in the film and says he was overjoyed at reconnecting with the villagers and is honoured to have been officially declared as a member of the Phlamoudhi community.

“They have all accepted me into their families with open arms and hearts and it’s wonderful,” said Cohn.

“They say that I gave them back their childhood and their youth. Now they can say – this is where I lived. These are my parents, these are my grandparents. It’s overwhelming.”

Gerolemos and Koula Papaphotiou with family in the courtyard of their home, 1972

Cohn added that audiences outside Cyprus should see the film as it’s relevant to numerous current and historical situations, as there are many significant global conflicts taking place, leaving displaced people everywhere.

“The story can be viewed as a universal one,” he said.

The photographer has not only a deep rooted love for the villagers but also a huge amount of respect for how they have managed to preserve their culture and sense of community, despite all of the obstacles in their way.

“They frequently get together; they talk and try to maintain a set of values they knew as villagers,” he said.

Most of the refugees still live in Cyprus, although some also reside in London and Paris.

“It’s now a community that is based on common memory and not rooted in the soil as it was 40 years ago. And that’s a community that can last for many years to come.”

Christina (H’Tinou) Charalambous, Phlamoudhi 1972

Barclay said he aims is to show his documentary at as many film festivals as possible, in Cyprus, the UK and France. He is also hoping to get it shown on Cyprus TV.

Barclay said he is particularly grateful to the community leader of Phlamoudhi, Michalis Tziortas, as he was instrumental in helping him film in Cyprus. He organised a schedule of interviews and accompanied Barclay to the north to film at the village.

“This is my first film and I have undertaken the entire process myself. I’m the producer, director, camera and sound man. I also did a rough edit but had help with the final cut,” he said.

The editor is a Greek Cypriot who grew up in London and speaks Greek which was a great benefit.

“His family members are in the film as well,” said Barclay. “There is a real connection between everyone on so many levels.”

The film has both English and Greek subtitles.

To find out more about the book: – www.facesofphlamoudhi.com

By Patroclos

THE MOANING about the Bank of Cyprus falling into the hands of American ‘vultures’ that would engage in ruthless asset stripping, did not last as long as was expected because by Wednesday the parties and newspapers focused their attention on the foreclosures bill that was approved by cabinet on that day.

The anti-American papers were quick to point out that US hedge funds would take control of as much as 40 per cent of the bank’s shareholding, lamenting the fact that the Russian shareholders would be sidelined.

Much was also written about billionaire investor Wilbur Ross – labelled a ‘vulture’ by the US media – who specialised in taking over distressed companies, turning them round and then selling them for a big profit. Ross will control a large chunk of BoC shares and has already expressed an interest for seat on the board.

Nobody mentioned the positives. A one billion euro investment in a struggling bank is a big show of confidence in its future prospects, especially when the money has been put up by greedy American investors whose only concern is profit.

And the Yanks should know a few more things about how to turn a bank around than both the Russian uninsured depositors, who ended up with sizeable shareholdings and seats on the board as compensation for the seizure of their deposits, and the Cypriot directors appointed by the parties and bank employees’ union.

ARCHBISHOP Chrysostomos also felt obliged to impart his wisdom on the issue, especially now that he is the chairman of the association of old shareholders of the B of C that is threatening to take legal action against the government for leaving them with just one per cent of their shares.

When he is not offering spiritual guidance to his flock – he hardly ever does nowadays – Chrys works as a business and economics analyst for Trito radio show uttering his naïve theories for our benefit. He was particularly unhappy with the developments at the BoC which had gone from being a bank of the Cypriots to being one of the foreigners – first of the Russian and now of the Americans.

This was the result of the actions of some ‘achairefti’ (there is no exact English translation for this wonderful word, the closest being a ‘good-for-nothing individual’ and ‘loser’) running the bank and the mistakes of the Central Bank.

His astute economic analysis failed to mention what had happened to the Church’s bank – Hellenic – which fell into the hands of a Russian company and a US investment firm earlier this year. Some ‘achairefti’ ensured that from majority shareholder the Church became a minority shareholder in what is now not a very Hellenic bank.

DESPITE his efforts to prevent the new issue of capital, the chairman of the BoC Christis Hassapis was in good spirits – although not at happy bunny highs – after the board’s marathon session on Monday that decided to issue some four billion new ordinary shares and thus raise €1 billion.

“The fact that high calibre institutional investors were interested and participated successfully in this exercise is testament to their confidence in the bank and also in the economy of Cyprus,” he said after the meeting. “This successful placing will significantly strengthen the bank’s capital position and is essential step in the restructuring of the group.”

But if this is the case why had Hassapis and his fellow directors done everything they could to prevent it from happening? Why did they not want to “significantly strengthen the bank’s capital position” and only grudgingly went ahead with it, when the Central Bank governor threatened to sack all the members of the board?

The directors even tried to stop the issue that “will significantly strengthen the bank’s capital position” on the day the book of offers was to be opened by getting the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission vice-chairman to declare the prospectus ‘misleading’.

THE BOARD will have one last chance to block the capital issue and keep the capital position of the bank weak at the EGM scheduled for August 28. The increase in capital will have to be approved by 75 per cent of the shareholders and the board could urge them to vote against it.

Hassapis will be chairing the EGM, despite an attempt to have him replaced before then. At its last meeting the board of directors of the Central Bank discussed a proposal to axe him, but there was no consensus so it was put to the vote. He survived by one vote, so he could carry on being a happy bunny for a few more weeks.

Once the all-devouring American vultures fly in, however, Hassapis will have to vacate the chairman’s office, because Wilbur is unlikely to allow a union/party appointee and apprentice banker to have a big say in a bank in which he has invested hundreds of millions.

THE BANK-BASHING commies of AKEL do not hate all banks equally. For example, they seem to have a fondness for FBME and their party has issued two strongly worded announcements in the last 10 days criticising the Central Bank for the way it had treated the bank.

In its first announcement it asked five questions – perfectly legitimate – about the CBC’s decision to put the bank under the Resolution Authority while in the second announcement, issued a few days later by deputy parliamentary spokesman Stavros Evagorou, he asked why the questions had not been answered.

He said the party was waiting for governor Georghadji to arrange a meeting at which she would give answers to the comrades and provide documentation that justified her decisions. This touching communist sensitivity to the plight of FBME was never displayed when the former governor and party apparatchik Professor Panicos was screwing the Cypriot banks.

AKEL posed no questions and demanded no meetings with the then governor so he could provide documentation for his decisions that were designed to destroy the Cypriot banks.

THERE are several possible explanations for AKEL’s principled defence of FBME. First, the bank bought €250 million worth of short-term junk bonds issued by comrade Tof’s government when nobody else would touch them and agreed to roll over payment when funds were not available.

Second, the allegations against the bank were made by the Treasury Department of the hated US and any enemy of the US is a friend of the commies. Third, Akelite, former finance minister Kikis Kazamias is a consultant/director of the bank, even though he has been keeping a low profile. Fourth, the bank may have made a contribution to party coffers. And fifth…if there are any other explanations of how AKEL turned from bank-bashers to bank-lovers, we would love to hear them.

MEANWHILE, DISY chief Averof Neophytou has gone in the opposite direction and turned into a bank-basher. The week before last, out of the blue, he called a news conference which he devoted to slamming the banks for their extortionate interest rates and for having turned into debt-collection agencies that offered no help to the economy.

He was absolutely right in everything he said, but what had triggered this untypical outburst? Apparently, the party’s communications advisor organised focus group discussions to establish why, despite DISY’s very good showing in the European elections, the party leader’s approval rating was low.

According to the focus groups Averof was perceived as being on the side of the banks at a time when so many people were being shafted by them. He was also viewed as a defender of the interests of the big developers, so do not be surprised if he calls a news conference in the next few weeks to express his outrage about the NPLs of Aristo and Leptos.

PROFESSOR Panicos was back in the news recently, being quoted in a New York Times report about the bail-in and the role played by consulting firm PIMCO which he had chosen to estimate the capital needs of the banks.

The Professor used one of the lamest excuses imaginable to justify his decision not to inform the government about a Black Rock report that estimated the capital needs of the bank to be one billion euros lower than the PIMCO figure. The lower figure may have prevented the deposits hair-cut if it was cited by the government at the Eurogroup meeting.

However, the Professor chose not to tell the government of the Black Rock study “because he said that the issue was too technical for top officials to understand.” If it was too technical for the finance minister at the time – Michalis Sarris, formerly a long-serving World Bank official with plenty of technical knowledge – surely a prominent professor of finance like Panicos could have explained it to him.

AKEL has not yet issued a statement asking why Panicos suppressed the Black Rock study, probably because it did not affect FBME.

AFTER the publication of the NYT article, the professor issued a response to his favourite web-site Stockwatch, in which he repeated the standard AKEL propaganda about the collapse of the banking system. He said:“The triple merger of Laiki Bank, which was approved by the previous administration of the Central Bank in March 2011, while the Greek crisis was deepening, caused losses to Cyprus of many billions of euro.”

This is a blatant lie which Panicos never tires of repeating. The merger took place without Central Bank approval because such approval was not legally required. The Central Bank was simply notified of the court decision on the merger that required only the approval of the Registrar of Companies.

This was mentioned by the Alvarez & Marsal investigation into the banking collapse and also in a letter sent to the House Finance Committee by senior manager at the Central Bank, Yiangos Demetriou, last September, when Panicos was still governor.

The law must be too technical for top professors to understand.

OPPOSITION to the foreclosures bill is gathering momentum and every 10 people that get together seem to set up a group to defend primary residences while group leader is invited on the Trito radio show for an interview.

Last Friday it was the turn of the leader of the Movement Against Foreclosures to expound his views. His movement wants no foreclosures for three years. After three years, the economy would have recovered and borrowers would be in a position to repay their loans, he said.

The Archbishop is obviously not the only fruit-cake that expounds simpleton views on Trito.

FOR THE FIRST time since the decision to bail in depositors, there is a real sense of public discontent and disquiet. This has been caused by the foreclosures bill that was approved by the cabinet on Wednesday and presented in a television broadcast by President Anastasiades later the same day. None of the assurances about the protection of the primary residence given by the president in his speech seem to have eased people’s anxiety or convinced them that they had nothing to fear.

Groups opposing the bill have sprung up voicing strong opposition to the bill and pledging to fight it all the way. These are not controlled by the political parties, but groups made up of citizens who want to defend their interests from what they see as the injustice of the foreclosures bill which would allow the banks to seize their properties. They are not only protecting primary residences, but also business premises and real estate used as collateral for loans.

The more militant groups do not want to hear about restructuring of loans or mediation, but are demanding there be no foreclosures until the economic recovery in two or three years’ time. A group representing land developers, who are supposedly more pragmatic, has made a similar demand which seems to have support from a cross-section of society. For now, each group is fighting its own corner, but if they united they could become a social force that could not be ignored.

It is not known whether the government is aware of the danger of being confronted by a popular movement opposed to the bill, but Finance Minister Harris Georgiades’ decision to meet all the parties and try to secure their support was a good move. How successful he will be remains to be seen considering the parties’ reactions to the bill have ranged from strong objections to outright opposition. Even pro-government DISY has voiced some reservations and said it would propose three improvements to the minister.

AKEL is vehemently opposed to the bill, as is the Alliance of Citizens, while DIKO and EDEK have voiced strong objections but have said they would take a position once they had studied it properly. The populism that has always poisoned politics is very much at play and it is very difficult to see any of the parties acting responsibly and taking a stand that went against public sentiment.

Georgiades has a thankless task convincing parties to support such an unpopular bill and his assertion that he would brief them about the provision but not engage in negotiations was not very wise. If making some tweaks to the bill will secure enough backing to see the bill through it should be pursued. However, any changes will need the approval of the troika which has warned that if the bill is not approved by the end of August, it would not release the next tranche of financial assistance. Troika’s representatives were involved in tough negotiations with Georgiades for many days in order to finalise the bill last month, and might not be inclined to accept more changes.

Finding a compromise that will satisfy enough parties to secure a House majority and also have the consent of the Troika is a big challenge for Georgiades. But even if he pulls this off, the government may be faced with popular opposition and social unrest that would be difficult to control. Until now, there have been negligible public protests or opposition to measures imposed by the memorandum, people accepting them as necessary.

They seem unlikely to be so compliant and acquiescent to a law that could cause them to relinquish ownership of their real estate, the only asset universally considered safe and of sound value. After what has happened to shares, bank deposits and bonds in the last 18 months this unshakeable faith in real estate will have been further strengthened. This explains why so many groups, with the sole purpose of blocking the foreclosures bill, have been formed. How far they would be prepared to go to achieve this objective nobody can predict, but we could witness public unrest and the first mass protests against the memorandum.

It is entirely possible that none of this would happen. The majority of the parties might act responsibly and approve the bill while the pressure groups might fail to rally adequate support. But the government should still prepare for trouble.

By Angelos Anastasiou

ALTHOUGH ONE of the stated objectives of licensing the first casino resort complex in Cyprus is to attract foreign investment, this in no way excludes Cypriot investors who may submit proposals, the government said on Saturday.

The “integrated casino resort policy outline” which was released in full on the commerce ministry’s website on Saturday predicts the creation of a “world-class complex that will include not only a hotel resort and casino, but also a combination of sights and activities,” so that it can be “classed as a top-tiered casino resort in Europe, and one of the finest in the world”.

One of the stipulations of the bill is that the hotel that is to be part of the complex “will exceed requirements for a five-star hotel [...] and offer a minimum of 500 luxury rooms”, the description on the website said.

The outline includes the aim of attracting foreign investments to Cyprus, but the government spokesman on Saturday denied this meant that the government’s preference would be for a foreign investor to land the job.

“There is absolutely no such preference,” said Nicos Christodoulides, before qualifying his denial. “Our understanding is that even proposals from Cypriot investors will most likely include joint ventures with international firms, which is where foreign capital would come from. But if a Cypriot concern can raise the money to go it alone, there is nothing to stop them.”

This does little to explain quite how the goal of attracting foreign capital would be achieved if Cypriot investors secured the casino deal, but the government insists it had no intention of favouring foreign investors at the expense of Cypriots.
“Everything else notwithstanding, that would be illegal,” the government spokesman said.

After the release of preliminary details on Friday, Christodoulides said that the government’s aim was to select and license a casino operator within less than a year. The duration of the licence will be 30 years, with the government pledging to refrain from issuing another licence during the first 15 years from the day of licensing.

The government-sponsored bill lays out the rules under which the casino resort will be administrated, as well as the mandate of the National Gaming Authority (NGA) that will be tasked with overseeing its operations.

The lengthy document provides for the strict supervision of the casino’s operation, and affords the gaming authority extremely broad oversight and control powers.

The choice of venue, long an issue of heated debate among municipalities clamouring for the lucrative privilege of hosting the casino and various groups who perceived its existence as a threat to their interests, has been left to the casino resort’s licensee, although the NGA reserves approval rights.

This provision likely represents a compromise solution by the government, aiming to appease dissenters and fend off criticism by local authorities who will be left out.

“This was the plan all along,” Christodoulides told the Sunday Mail. “It was never a matter of whether the government decides or not. The party investing the money gets to choose the site.”

The hoteliers’ association PASYXE last year tabled a proposal to license one casino per district, which would help tackle the issue of political turf wars over location. Such a decision would also help avoid a concentration of new tourists to the casino area.

“Our only objection to the bill related to the fact that we had proposed one casino per district. But the government decided to license only one, so that’s what we have,” PASYXE chairman Haris Loizides told the Sunday Mail. Along with the one-per-district proposal, PASYXE had reportedly also proposed to restrict the size of the resort’s hotel. Still, the association appears fully deferential to the government’s plan.

“We do not oppose the hotel provisions,” Loizides said. “This is a free market and anyone who wants to build a hotel, however big, is free to do so, whether a casino is involved or not.”

In addition to the main casino resort complex, the government bill allows – but does not require – the licensee to operate up to four smaller gambling establishments, which may include up to 50 electronic gambling machines, but no table games. These will be licensed on proviso that they are constructed in each of Cyprus’ districts other than the one hosting the main casino resort.

The casino itself must offer at least 100 gaming tables and 1,000 electronic gaming machines. If the administrator wishes to operate more than 200 tables or over 2,000 machines he must file a request with the NGA.

According to the bill’s provisions, the project will offer permanent revenue streams for the government to the tune of an annual ‘licence fee’ set at €2.5 million for the first four years and €5 million annually for years five to eight. From then on, the bill allows the NGA to amend the licence fee as its own discretion every four years, in order to “support its operating cost”.

A further ‘revenue tax’ of 15 per cent will be levied on gross revenues from the casino’s gambling operations. In the bill, gross revenues are defined as all gambling income minus winnings paid to customers.

After detailed proposals are invited by interested investors, a shortlist of the three most attractive ones will be submitted to the Council of Ministers to choose from. Once a licence has been issued, the government has pledged that all permits and related decisions will be issued and communicated to the licensee within no more than three months.

The casino may be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but its administrator will need to submit a timetable laying out hours of operation for NGA approval. Only persons 21 and above will be allowed to gamble.

Gambling facilities will be excluded from the smoking ban law, so smoking and consuming alcoholic beverages will be allowed in gambling establishments.

By Andrew Both

The largest crowd to watch a soccer match in the United States – 109,318 – poured into Michigan Stadium on Saturday to see Manchester United beat Real Madrid 3-1 in a friendly.
The appeal of two of the world’s most iconic sports teams attracted fans to the International Champions Cup match at the ‘Big House’ – the University of Michigan’s American football stadium in Ann Arbor.

The previous U.S. record attendance for a soccer match was 101,799 at the 1984 Olympic final between France and Brazil at the Rose Bowl in California.
The largest crowd ever to watch a soccer match was at the 1950 World Cup in Rio de Janeiro when 173,850 paying spectators came to the Maracana for the Brazil-Uruguay final clash, though unofficial estimates put the attendance as high as 210,000.

Two first-half goals by Ashley Young proved enough to help United beat the European champions on Saturday despite Real’s world record signing Gareth Bale scoring from the penalty spot.

United’s win means they advance to Monday’s final in Miami, where they will meet traditional English rivals Liverpool.
The crowd got an added bonus when Cristiano Ronaldo made a surprise appearance for Madrid in place of Alvaro Arbeloa in the 74th minute, having been ruled out of contention before the match with what was reported to be an injured left knee.

Young had opened the scoring in the 21st minute when he capped off a 20-pass move to beat keeper Iker Casillas at his near post from about 12 metres.
Real equalised in the 27th when Bale was fouled in the box by United defender Michael Keane and then got up to convert the penalty by sending David De Gea the wrong way.

However, it took United only 10 minutes to regain the lead when Young curled in what looked like a cross from the left. United’s England forward Wayne Rooney timed his run perfectly but did not appear to make contact with his attempted header.

His presence distracted Casillas, though, with the keeper reacting too late to stop the ball curling inside the far post.
United, playing under new manager Louis van Gaal, padded their lead in the 80th when substitute Javier Hernandez headed home an exquisite pass by Shinji Kagawa from close range.
“I think we were fantastic from the first minute to the end,” Young told Fox Sports.

By Umaru Fofana and Clair MacDougall
HUNDREDS of troops deployed in Sierra Leone and Liberia on Monday under an emergency plan to fight the worst outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus, which has killed more than 826 people across West Africa.
Panic among local communities, which have attacked health workers and threatened to burn down isolation wards, prompted regional governments to impose tough measures last week, including the closure of schools and quarantine of the remote forest region hardest hit by the disease.
The hemorrhagic virus, which has no known cure, has infected more than 1,400 people in its first outbreak in West Africa, straining the capacity of under-funded health systems and aid groups to breaking point in one of the world’s poorest regions.
Despite pleas for help from aid groups, the number of cases is also creeping steadily higher in Guinea, where the outbreak originated in February. And Nigeria’s megacity of Lagos on Monday recorded its second case of Ebola in a doctor who treated US victim Patrick Sawyer.
Long convoys of military trucks ferried troops and medical workers on Monday to Sierra Leone’s far east, where the density of cases is highest. Military spokesman Colonel Michael Samoura said the operation, code named Octopus, involved around 750 military personnel.
Troops will gather in the southeastern town of Bo before travelling to isolated communities to implement quarantines, he added. Healthcare workers will be allowed to come and go freely, and the communities will be kept supplied with food.
In neighbouring Liberia, President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and ministers held a crisis meeting on Sunday on putting in place a series of anti-Ebola measures as police contained infected communities in the northern Lofa county.
Police were setting up checkpoints and roadblocks for key entrance and exit points to those infected communities and every resident would be stopped. Nobody would be allowed to exit quarantined communities. Troops were fanning out across Liberia to help to deal with the emergency.
“The situation will probably get worse before it gets better,” Liberian Information Minister Lewis Browntold Reuters. “We are over-stretched. We need support; we need resources; we need workers.”
The World Health Organisation plans to launch a $100 million response plan and is holding urgent talks with donors and agencies to increase resources to the region. WHO chief Margaret Chan warned regional leaders on Friday that Ebola was outpacing their efforts to contain it and warned of “catastrophic” consequences if the situation deteriorated.
Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which normally spearheads the fight against Ebola, has only a small team in Liberia and says it does not have the capacity to increase it.
Health workers say they are overwhelmed by the number of cases, a scenario exacerbated by the departure of some international staff following the infection of two US staff of the Samaritan’s Purse charity in Liberia.
One of them, Kent Brantly, was improving on Sunday after being flown back to the United States for treatment. The second staff member, Nancy Writebol, was expected to arrive back in the United States by midday on Tuesday, according to Samaritan’s Purse.
The normally bustling streets of Sierra Leone‘s capital Freetown were eerily quiet on Monday after President Ernest Bai Koromo called on residents to stay home and pray, a Reuters reporter said.
Ambulances and police vehicles lined the streets while radio stations played interviews with health ministry officials and a musical jingle informing the local population of symptoms.
Highly contagious, the deadliest strain of the Ebola virus can kill up to 90 percent of those infected, though in the current outbreak the rate is running around 55 percent. Symptoms initially include muscle pains and joint aches, though they worsen to vomiting, diarrhoea and internal and external bleeding in the final stages.
Officials seeking to bury Ebola victims faced protests at a burial site in a suburb of Monrovia this weekend and about 25 soldiers were called in to guard the site.
Director of Liberian National Police Chris Massaquoi said last week that troops would place forces in areas where crowds had previously stoned health workers. He added that all protests, demonstrations and marches had been forbidden.

By Natalia Zinets and Richard Balmforth
UKRAINE said on Monday it was in talks with Moscow over the return of 311 Ukrainian soldiers and border guards who had been forced by fighting with separatists to cross into Russia, but Russian border authorities said the troops were seeking asylum.
Both sides seemed set to use the fate of the troops to score propaganda points as Ukrainian government forces extended steady gains it has made against the pro-Russian separatists since a Malaysian airliner was downed over a rebel-held area on July 17.
Ukrainian defence spokesman Andriy Lysenko said a group of soldiers and border guards, who had been caught between the Russian border to the east and rebel positions in the west, had crossed into Russia in the early hours of Monday.
He put their number at 311, telling a news briefing they had retreated into Russia for safety reasons after helping their comrades break through rebel lines.
Kiev, he said, was now negotiating with Russian authorities for their return.
In Moscow, authorities acknowledged that Ukrainian troops had crossed into Russian territory – though they put the number at 438 – and Russian border guards said they had crossed during the night seeking asylum.
“They were tired of the war and wanted no further part in it,” Vasily Malayev, spokesman for the border guards in the Rostov region of Russia, told Reuters by telephone. However, he added that 180 would be returned to Ukraine later on Monday.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking to Itar-Tass and Rossiya24 TV, said Russia would facilitate the return of the Ukrainian soldiers but suggested they would be vulnerable to prosecution for desertion once they returned home.
“I expect Ukrainian authorities to understand that it is absolutely unacceptable, when Ukrainians … are forced to fight with their own people, to treat those who refuse to do so as traitors to the motherland,” Lavrov said.
Ukrainian government forces recaptured the important railway hub of Yasynuvata on Sunday from the rebels, Lysenko said, adding that five soldiers had been killed and 15 others wounded in fighting in the 24 hours up to Monday.
However, the rebels, who seized Yasynuvata – which lies just north of the city of Donetsk – in May, denied that government forces had retaken the railway hub.
Government troops, who have been battling the rebels since April, have now all but encircled the separatists’ second-largest stronghold of Luhansk and rebels have declared a “state of siege” in Donetsk, the largest city they hold.
Luhansk has been left without electricity or running water and the mobile network is also down, local officials said.
At the crash site of the Malaysian Boeing, international experts resumed their recovery and investigative work on Monday.
“After a delay due to fighting, the team of Australians, Dutch and Malaysian experts began work,” a statement by the Dutch mission said.
A large group of international experts began work there on Friday after a lull in fighting in the area allowed them finally, after lengthy delays, to reach the site. The victims included 196 Dutch, 27 Australians and 43 Malaysians.

PARALIMNI police are seeking information regarding a hit and run, which resulted in a Bulgarian woman’s both legs being broken.

The incident happened at 11.50pm on Saturday while the woman, 48, was trying to cross Pernera Avenue, police said.

She was hit by a car whose driver abandoned the scene. The woman was rushed to hospital in a private vehicle where she was treated for fractures to both legs.

The woman reported the incident to police on Sunday, after she was released from Famagusta hospital.

Police appealed to anyone with information about the incident to call Paralimni police station.

By Angelos Anastasiou

THE number of rural fires in the three months from May to July has significantly decreased by 48.1 per cent compared to the same months last year, according to Fire Service acting chief Marcos Trangolas.

He said that patrols in rural areas will be enhanced by police patrols, as well as volunteer rural watchmen, an initiative that came to life last Friday, in collaboration with the non-profit group Reaction Youth for the Prevention.

In comments to the Cyprus News Agency, Trangolas stressed the magnitude of risks posed by fires and pointed out that the Fire Service places great emphasis on preventing fires in August, which has proven critical over the last years.

Upon spotting a fire, citizens should notify the service on 112 or 199, or the Forestry Department on 1407.

Month-to-month statistics indicate that rural fires in May dropped to 228 from 541 a year earlier – a decrease of 57.8 per cent. June showed a lower drop of 41 per cent from 477 rural fires last year to 281 in 2014. In July, the rate of decrease ticked up to 43.2 per cent, with rural fires falling from 382 in 2013 to 217 this year.

In rural areas, Trangolas said, the Fire Service operates 19 fire stations and 20 observatories. These are manned by 172 seasonal firemen – up from 120 in previous years – all of whom operate under the direct instructions of the permanent staff in charge of rural stations.

The Fire Service chief deemed Cyprus’ firefighting aircraft, as well as fleet of vehicles, as satisfactory.

“However, the extent to which they are satisfactory depends on the number and scope of the fires that could break out simultaneously across Cyprus, in combination with the weather,” Trangolas said.

Causing a rural fire, whether negligently or intentionally, is an offence punishable by up to three years imprisonment, a €8,543 fine, or both.

“The message we want to pass to everyone is that the issue of fires is a social one, as it risks lives, property and the environment,” Trangolas said. “Everyone’s contribution and cooperation in prevention is vital. If we keep up the rate of decrease, by the end of November we will have prevented over 2,000 rural fires compared to last year.”