By Toby Davis

Champions Manchester City suffered a stunning 1-0 home defeat to Stoke City on Saturday as their cast of attacking talents were blunted in a lifeless display that cost them their first dropped points of the season.

Mame Biram Diouf scored a superb individual goal to silence the City fans who have become used to seeing one-sided romps at their Etihad stadium, especially against the Premier League’s lesser lights.

It was an equally miserable day for City’s rivals Manchester United whose frustrations continued in a 0-0 draw at promoted Burnley with British-record signing Angel Di Maria unable to spark an improvement in their fortunes.

Di Maria, signed from Real Madrid for 59.7 million pounds ($99 million) on Tuesday, showed flashes of his talent in a 70-minute debut, but United still looked short of attacking ideas, claiming only their second point from their opening three league games.

Swansea City’s excellent start to the season continued as they swept aside West Bromwich Albion 3-0 to move top of the fledgling table with a maximum nine points, while Southampton came from behind to beat West Ham United 3-1.

Crystal Palace, playing their first game under new manager Neil Warnock, scored through on-loan Wilfried Zaha in the fifth minute of stoppage time to grab a 3-3 draw at Newcastle United and Queens Park Rangers beat Sunderland 1-0 for their first win since gaining promotion.

Chelsea can also have maximum points if they beat Everton in Saturday’s evening kickoff.

RESILIENT STOKE

Games at City’s home stadium have frequently resembled carefully scripted affairs with their glittering array of stars showering supporters with goals and entertainment.

Both were in short supply against a rugged and resilient Stoke, who scored 13 minutes into the second half when Senegal international Diouf raced 60 metres before beating City keeper Joe Hart.

This was only the second time in 71 games that City, who looked ruthless in Monday’s 3-1 win over Liverpool, had failed to score at home and ended a run of seven consecutive league wins stretching back to last season’s title triumph.

“It’s a surprising defeat because we don’t expect to lose against Stoke but these games sometimes happen,” City’s manager Manuel Pellegrini said.

“We tried from everywhere and really we are not very creative we did not find the space and that is credit to Stoke.”

DI MARIA DEBUT

It was a similarly ineffectual display from United, whose defence, ripped apart in a 4-0 League Cup defeat to third tier MK Dons on Tuesday, still looked uncomfortable with manager Louis van Gaal’s three centre back system.

With cameras panning to former boss Alex Ferguson yawning in the stands, questions are already being asked of Van Gaal, who is struggling to implement his playing style and scrambling to recruit players before the transfer window shuts on Monday.

“The progress is there,” he told BT Sport, “but you have to win.

“A club like Manchester United has to win. We have two points from nine and that’s disappointing.”

Di Maria was undoubtedly United’s best player in the first half, injecting pace and direct running into their midfield while also being the main creative force with clever flicks and pin-point passes.

The Argentine was also the architect of United’s best chance with a searching long ball that found Robin van Persie, who could not beat Burnley keeper Tom Heaton, playing against his former club.

DYER DOUBLE

Swansea, who had already beaten United and Burnley in their opening two games, maintained their 100 percent start with a comfortable win over West Brom thanks to two goals from Nathan Dyer and a Wayne Routledge volley.

Dyer rounded the keeper and slotted the ball into an empty net after two minutes before Routledge volleyed home beautifully midway through the first half. Dyer stroked home a Gylfi Sigurdsson pass to complete the scoring.

Newcastle United thought they had suppressed a spirited Palace when Mike Williamson put them 3-2 ahead in the 88th minute, but Zaha, returning from Manchester United for a second spell at the club, levelled at the death.

West Ham paraded loan signing Alex Song before kickoff and took the lead when Mark Noble scored with a deflected shot with 27 minutes on the clock, but Morgan Schneiderlin scored twice and Graziano Pelle added a third to hand Saints boss Ronald Koeman his first Premier League win.

By Richard Balmforth and Adrian Croft

Ukraine said Russian tanks had flattened a small border town and pro-Russian rebels had made fresh gains in its east, as EU leaders signalled on Saturday they would threaten more sanctions against Moscow over the crisis.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, attending an EU summit in Brussels, said he was hoping for progress in finding a political solution, but told journalists there were now thousands of foreign troops in his country.

Russia has repeatedly dismissed accusations from Kiev and Western powers that it has sent soldiers into its neighbour, or supported pro-Russian rebels fighting a five-month-old separatist war in Ukraine’s east.

But Ukraine military spokesman Andriy Lysenko told journalists in Kiev that Russian tanks had entered the small Ukrainian town of Novosvitlivka on the border with Russia and fired on every house.

“We have information that virtually every house has been destroyed,” Lysenko added, without giving details on when the reported attack took place. Ukraine’s daily military briefings typically cover the previous 24 hours.

Lysenko said the rebels had made new gains just east of the border city of Luhansk, one of the rebels’ main strongholds, after opening up a new front in another area last week.

“Direct military aggression by the Russian Federation in the east of Ukraine is continuing. The Russians are continuing to send military equipment and ‘mercenaries’,” Ukraine’s defence and security council said in a separate Twitter post.

Kiev and Western countries say recent rebel gains were the result of the arrival of armoured columns of Russian troops, sent by Russian President Vladimir Putin to prop up a separatist rebellion that would otherwise have been near collapse.

There was no immediate fresh comment from Russia on Saturday. Putin on Friday compared Kiev’s drive to regain control of its rebellious eastern cities to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in World War Two.

“NO TIME TO WASTE”

According to a draft statement, EU leaders at Saturday’s Brussels summit were set to ask the European Commission and the EU’s diplomatic service “to urgently undertake preparatory work” on further sanctions that could be implemented if necessary.

French President Francois Hollande stressed that a failure by Russia to reverse a flow of weapons and troops into eastern Ukraine would force the bloc to impose new economic measures.

“Are we going to let the situation worsen, until it leads to war?” Hollande said at a news conference. “Because that’s the risk today. There is no time to waste.”

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the EU was prepared to toughen sanctions against Russia but also that it wanted a political deal to end the confrontation.

“We are ready to take very strong and clear measures but we are keeping our doors open to a political solution,” Barroso said at a news conference with Ukraine’s president.

Poroshenko said he expected to see progress toward peace soon, without going into details.

SHOTS FIRED

The crisis started when Ukraine’s Moscow-backed president was ousted by street protests in February after he ditched a pact with the EU that would have moved the ex-Soviet republic firmly towards Europe and away from Russia.

Russia denounced the pro-Western leadership that took over as “a fascist junta” and went on to annex Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula. Pro-Russian separatists then rebelled in Ukraine’s mainly Russian-speaking east in April, setting up ‘people’s republics’ and declaring they wanted to join Russia.

A senior U.N. human rights official said on Friday nearly 2,600 civilians, Ukrainian government forces and rebels had been killed in a conflict which has led to the biggest Russia-West crisis since the Cold War.

In Kiev, Ukraine’s Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said a group of pro-Ukrainian fighters had broken out of encirclement by pro-Russian rebels near Donetsk early on Saturday, though other reports suggested many remained trapped.

Defence Minister Valery Heletey also ordered a clamp-down on information coming out of Ilovaysk, a town to the east of Donetsk.

Indicating government forces were being pulled back from the area, Heletey said on his Facebook page: “As soon as the danger for Ukrainian units has passed, all open information for the current period relating to the withdrawal of forces from Ilovaysk will be published.”

Last week pro-Russian rebels opened a new front in a separate, coastal territory along the Sea of Azov and pushed Ukrainian troops out of the town of Novoazovsk. They are now threatening the strategic port city of Mariupol.

Several shots were fired on Saturday at a car carrying Alexander Zakharchenko, leader of the breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic, but he escaped unscathed, another separatist leader, Sergei Kavtaradze, told Reuters.

“Zakharchenko wasn’t hurt. His driver was wounded and is being operated on,” Kavtaradze said, adding that an operation was under way to catch whoever had fired the shots.

By John Lloyd

THE WORLD is no longer divided by communism vs. capitalism. But it’s still divided by ideologies that have their clearest expression in the policies of Russia and the United States. That division contrasts liberal and realist views of the world.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s realist stance has won ground. No country will help Ukraine get Crimea back, which Russia annexed in March. There’s no invitation pending for Ukraine to join the European Union – the more so since the new president of the European Commission, Jean Claude Juncker, has ruled out any applications for membership for at least five years. And NATO will not rush to admit a nation that it would be pledged to defend from armed incursion.

Yet Putin’s future problems are likely to be more of a headache than Ukraine’s gradual drift toward the West. The downside of the realist position is that it pays little or no mind to the autonomy of citizens.

John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago writes in the current issue of Foreign Affairs that liberals now dominate foreign policy in the West. They believe that “the end of the Cold War had fundamentally transformed international politics and that a new, post-national order had replaced the realist logic that used to govern Europe.” In this vision, “geopolitics no longer mattered and … an all-inclusive liberal order could maintain peace.”

Mearsheimer, a realist among idealists, says Russia takes a more sensible – realist – position: All great states have large interests, he writes, and international politics is, as always, about projecting power in seeking to accommodate these interests when they conflict.

There’s no doubt that the liberal view of the world has many problems. In fact, we are witnessing one right now: the fallout from over-estimating the liberating possibilities of the Arab Spring. Western leaders were caught up in what sociologist Daniel Ritter called “the iron cage of liberalism”. President Barack Obama exemplified the point in his comments on the demonstrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in 2011. “The people of Egypt have rights that are universal,” he proclaimed. “That includes the right to peaceful assembly and association, the right to free speech, and the ability to determine their own destiny.”

But Obama was doing more than just restating liberal freedoms. He was also ditching a long-term US ally, the autocratic President Hosni Mubarak, who had long abided by a treaty with Israel and whose military the United States helped to fund and whom the demonstrations were instrumental in removing.

Now almost everywhere, the promises of liberation born in the Arab Spring have reinvigorated authoritarianism – in Egypt, where the military reasserted control, but also in the region’s real and simmering civil wars where proxies for radical Islamists and authoritarians do battle. It’s perfectly reasonable for a realist to contend that the liberals’ embrace of the upsurge of populist anger in the Middle East and its call for Western freedoms was the result of a naïve misreading of the real forces at play in Arab societies.

But the realists have their own iron cage – and its bars are thicker. The realists’ realist is Putin. Earlier this week, he met with his Ukrainian counterpart, Petro Poroshenko, to discuss the crisis in eastern Ukraine. He presented his now familiar enigmatic visage to the world even as videos of captured Russian soldiers and reports that Russia had inserted troops into at least one insurgent-controlled area, undercut his undying claim that Russia has nothing to do with the pro-Russian separatist movement in eastern Ukraine.

It is a moment of apparent strength, but will not help him in the longer term

It is one thing to sneer at the West’s naivety in the Middle East, but it’s quite another to be blind to popular forces that, in Ukraine, increasingly look west to Europe and increasingly see in Russia a threat.

Putin viewed the demonstrations in Kiev that swept a corrupt president from power as wholly caused by Western money and plotting. For him, citizens’ uprisings are always due to “outside influences”. His underestimation of what citizens united can do will rebound on him. More and more are citizens conscious of rights that should be theirs; more and more are they linked to global flows of information, and more and more are they aware of the costs of corrupt authoritarian rule. Putin squared off against protest demonstrations in 2011 and 2012 and neutralised them by discrediting and imprisoning their leaders.

But that was then. The Russian economy isn’t growing, the hypernationalist propaganda will pale and the fact that Russian actions have “lost” Ukraine because they have alienated most of its people will hit home. Russia will confront a new reality: of citizens who want rights guaranteed by the state and truth from their media. It’s not naïve to believe this will happen: it’s realist.

PHOTO: Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks to the media after talks with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Minsk, Belarus August 27, 2014. REUTERS/Alexander Zemlianichenko/Pool

• John Lloyd co-founded the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, where he is Director of Journalism. Lloyd has written several books, including “What the Media Are Doing to Our Politics” (2004). He is also a contributing editor at FT and the founder of FT Magazine.

By George Iordanou

A CYPRIOT was stopped at Stansted Airport because he was carrying emergency flares with him. Anyone likely to carry mini-explosives to an airport is either a potential terrorist or “stupid and naïve”, and it makes sense for the authorities to assume that he is the former. As it turned out, the defendant was not a terrorist.

If this were just a story about a 22-year-old with a box of mini-flares in his luggage, then there would be nothing controversial about it, besides perhaps the fact that the police actually returned the flares to him once they had charged him. But as it turns out, the problem was not the flares, but rather a book he was reading, called the Anarchist Cookbook, which was published in 1971.

Five months before his airport arrest, Andreas Pierides, a Cypriot student at the University of Southampton’s Business School, was photographed by a fellow train passenger reading the Anarchist Cookbook on his Kindle. The eager co-passenger reported Pierides to the police and handed over the pictures he had taken of Pierides reading the prohibited book.

The Anarchistic Cookbook was written to express the anger of its author William Powell who, in an interview with the Guardian, explained that he had written the book because he was “being actively pursued by the US military, who seemed single-mindedly determined to send me to fight, and possibly die, in Vietnam.” It includes instructions on how to create bombs, LSD and other fun stuff.

It is high time for an open debate about the practice of banning books. Not only because it violates people’s freedom of choice and expression, but also because it is impractical and costly. This debate needs to take place in light of the expiry of the copyrights of Hitler’s magnum opus Mein Kampf, arguably the most controversial book of the previous century. The copyrights are currently held by the Bavarian state government, which prohibits its publication in Germany. In 2015 the copyrights will expire, and the German politicians will be called to decide whether to ban the book or not.

We live in an era were only rudimentary knowledge of computers is needed in order to browse the internet almost completely anonymously. Leaving all moral justifications aside, the monetary costs are enormous; so much so that it makes it irrational to maintain that banning them is either desirable or even possible.

The enforcement of such laws require the secret service agencies, be them the NSA or the GCHQ, to constantly monitor the activities of their citizens, and to apprehend them not for the crimes they have committed, or for the crimes that they are thinking about committing, but about the potential crimes that reading a book might lead them to commit. Do we really want to live in a twisted geeky version of the Minority Report, where citizens are arrested for future crimes they had not even considered committing?

The violation of people’s privacy, albeit the most important consideration, is not the only non-moral cost involved. The motivation that drove the fellow passenger to call the police on Pierides was guided by what I assume were well-meaning concerns about public safety. If fraternisation in a democratic society is curtailed by suspicion, mistrust and security considerations, it will gradually lead to the erosion of that society, because it will undermine the capacities of its citizens for cooperation and – dare I say it – comradeship which are necessary for the implementation of any redistributive programme by the government.

Banning books is as misguided as it is banal; it ignores how societies and individuals have evolved with the popularisation of the internet. The internet created more open societies. It enabled people to transcend their cultural boundaries and to use the tools of other cultures to reform their own.

Along with a culture of openness, it created a new kind of citizen, the scavenger citizen. Citizens that have access to enormous amounts of data that they skillfully navigate in order to find what they are looking for. The scavenger citizen is much more critical than the previous, analog citizen, and much more able to examine and reject new pieces of information.

The scavenger citizen deliberates over issues online, transforming the way political debate and deliberation takes place. The fear that books will adversely influence this new type of citizen shows a complete mistrust of their abilities and creates a layer of mystery around the subject-matter of the book, making it even more attractive to young people who tend to be more susceptible to exoticised topics.

There is a dilemma here that we need to address. Will we live under a constant worry for our well-being in a securitised society that considers the private sphere as the place where potential terrorists are groomed? Or, will we try to achieve a more equal and inclusive society that trusts those living within its bounds? The more we emphasise security over equality, the more home-grown terrorists we will see. The way to tackle the problem is not by banning books or by monitoring every private moment of free citizens’ lives. The only way to make people less eager and less susceptible to influence of extreme ideologies is by providing them with a structure of equal opportunities, an inclusive society that does not exclude them because of their religion, language or skin-colour.

The issue of whether to ban books or not is not an isolated topic. It is part of a wider discussion on multiculturalism, economic and social inequality, and the freedom of choice and expression of people living in liberal countries. If people feel excluded from the society they live in because of the diminished life-chances that they have, they will be more susceptible to the influence of extreme ideologies, and more eager to radicalise. The solution is not to proclaim that multiculturalism has failed and embark on a full speed attack on people’s freedoms, but rather to try and think about multiculturalism as linked to economic and social inequality, and to figure out how best to integrate people from other cultures into your country.

Until the challenges are seen as part of a wider bundle, governments will keep censoring books and violating the privacy of their citizens to defend their “freedom from fear,” as George W. Bush used to say.

George Iordanou, a PhD candidate at Warwick university, writes at iordanou.org and tweets @iordanou

By Johan van den Kerkhof

IT’S PRETTY darn clear even to us dopes that the Central Bank has botched it big time as far as the FBME debacle goes. Sure, the bank may be crooked as a dog’s hind leg. But something stinks here.

Far be it from me to defend the banksters of the world, but whatever happened to all that ‘innocent till proven guilty’ crap? The bottom line: authorities have seized a bank based on allegations by the US Treasury. No proof, no prosecution, no court ruling , no nothing. Basically the Americans snap their fingers and the Cypriots jump up like lapdogs. And the bank goes bye-bye.

That’s what it looks like. Sure, maybe we’re missing something, but we wouldn’t know it either way because the Central Bank is keeping mum. Its treatment of FBME has been way too heavy-handed.

In a rational world, you’d expect the allegations to be substantiated first, followed by the repercussions. If you prove FBME is laundering money for Hezbollah, then revoke their licence and/or fine them (not Hezbollah).

Again, FBME might well be a dodgy bank. As the adage goes, there’s no smoke without fire. But where’s the due process?

Of course we all know what’s happening here. It’s politics. US authorities have prosecuted exactly no one for the 2008 financial meltdown, which originated there. But when it comes to non-American and non-British banks, they go all Fallujah on their ass.

HSBC launders money for Iranian terrorists and Mexican drug cartels, they get a slap on the wrist the first time round and then settle out of court for $1.92bn. No charges, scot free.

More recently, we heard how the indescribable US Attorney General Eric Holder (allegedly) cut a backroom deal with Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Company, for a $13bn settlement. Apparently Sheriff Eric gets a call from Jamie the Bandit and, the charges of mortgage-related securities fraud against JPMorgan go poof. “Too big to jail” has long entered the lexicon.

At least the US government is slowly taking back some of the $700bn of taxpayers’ money used to bail out US banks in 2008. Just $650bn to go, fellas.

Meanwhile US federal prosecutors are pushing two European banks, BNP Paribas SA and Credit Suisse AG to plead guilty to criminal charges to resolve separate investigations.

Double standards? Nah.

Back home, it’s hard to wrap your head around what authorities are doing. This is truly a country of extremes: from almost non-existent bank supervision before the 2013 bust, to a shoot-first, ask-questions-later policy as now witnessed in FBME’s case.

It was during the panic days of March 2013 when the House passed the Resolution of Credit and Other Institutions Law, giving the Central Bank here sweeping powers. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, etc etc.

Who knows, maybe the Central Bank’s response has something to do with the fact Cypriots tend to get the heebeegeebees whenever someone abroad says “Cyprus” and “money laundering” in the same sentence. Given recent experience, with the island called a “casino economy” just before the bail-in smack-down, it’s perhaps understandable that these two words trigger a kneejerk reaction.

Again, maybe there’s something us saps are unaware of. But FYI to Chrystalla Georghadji: Madam, please know that nowadays what goes on in the good’ ole US of A ain’t exactly a litmus test for fair dealing. Don’t go down that road.

By Demetris Papadopoulos

WHAT DO AKEL, Athanasios Orphanides and Nicolas Papadopoulos have in common regarding the causes of the financial crisis? And how did these three entities come to form an alliance in the anti-foreclosure bill camp?

For those observing developments from behind the scenes, it is no secret that Papadopoulos’ ‘spiritual father’ and mentor is former Central Bank governor Athanasios Orphanides, who has been supporting the rejection of the foreclosure bill by the House. He is convinced that rejection will force the troika back to the negotiating table.

Orphanides expressed similar confidence to Papadopoulos (among others) after the first Eurogroup decision in March 2013. Orphanides – then considered something of an economy sage – believed the lenders were bluffing and were sure to table an improved proposal, because Cyprus posed a systemic risk to the Eurozone. This reasoning led political parties to reject the bill. By the time they realised what they had done, the economy was saddled with several billions in losses.

In an interview to the CyBC last November, Papadopoulos acknowledged that he had made a mistake. He is about to repeat that same mistake – on advice from the same man – once again with AKEL’s blessing.

When former President Demetris Christofias claimed that the banks were the Cyprus economy’s problem, his assertion was not completely erroneous. The back-to-back rating downgrades were primarily the result of the derailing of fiscal imbalances and the government’s inability to support the banks.

The cancer in the Cyprus economy was Laiki Bank, which had been bankrupt even before Greek bonds were haircut in October 2011. Since January 2011, Laiki hadn’t been in compliance with the regulatory minimum of 20 per cent required to calculate the liquidity coverage ratio. The bank’s liquidity ratio kept tumbling, and Laiki was forced to resort to Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA).

In September 2011, the bank absorbed its first ELA money – €500 million. Within a month, by October 2011, Laiki’s ELA shot up to €2.5 billion. During that same month, Laiki’s liquidity coverage ratio declined to 5 per cent for Euro deposits – for which the regulatory minimum is 20 per cent – and 5.5 per cent for deposits denominated in foreign currencies – which carry a regulatory minimum of 70 per cent. These figures included ELA funding, without which Laiki’s ratios would have been negative.

According to data from the Central Bank, in order to comply with minimum liquidity indices, Laiki required a total €5.7 billion! And all this before Greek bonds were haircut. In short, Laiki had been facing liquidity issues since the end of 2010 and was insolvent at the end of 2011.

How did an insolvent bank survive two more years? In February 2012, with ELA up to €5.2 billion, auditors PWC refused to sign off Laiki’s accounts unless the government committed in writing to supporting the bank. The Christofias government gave written assurances that it would support the bank and initiated the process of issuing a government bond for €1.8 billion – money it didn’t have.

The decision was a political one because AKEL did not want a bank to implode in its hands, while it refused to enter an economic adjustment programme. In a moment of honesty, AKEL leader Andros Kyprianou admitted as much during an interview to Sigmalive (August 27, 2013):

“With regard to the €1.8 billion to Laiki we had different approaches within the party,” he said. “Some of us argued that Laiki Bank should be left to fail, or enter resolution status, and the Bank of Cyprus protected. Others said that Laiki must be saved at all costs, and in the end we decided to rescue Laiki. This is what experts had advised us. We deferred to the experts and decided to bail out Laiki, which maybe we shouldn’t have.”

For its own reasons, AKEL decided to support an insolvent bank and saddle the taxpayer with its obligations, but why did the oversight authority – the Central Bank, then headed by Orphanides – allow it? At the end of 2011, the Central Bank was fully aware of Laiki’s predicament, and that was the reason Orphanides had forced managing director Efthymios Bouloutas and group chairman Andreas Vgenopoulos out.

If Orphanides had refused to approve Laiki’s bailout by the government and comply with the rules that forbid granting ELA to insolvent banks, the Christofias administration would have been forced to do what circumstances called for: resort to the European Stability Mechanism and pass legislation facilitating bank resolution.

So why did ‘economy sage’ Orphanides offer AKEL such an easy way out? For the reason most prevalent in Cyprus: ego. Just like the government needed Orphanides to push the hard decisions down the road, so did Orphanides need the government in order to secure his re-appointment. It is well known that Christofias would not even speak to Orphanides after he was spotted outside the Presidential Palace in a protesting crowd of Indignants immediately after the Mari explosion in July 2011. As well, the governor had sent Christofias a memo warning that the Mari explosion’s economic impact would be worse than that of 1974.

This imbalance in relations between the two men was rectified in August 2011, when Kikis Kazamias took over the finance ministry. Kazamias restored the relationship with Orphanides, worked well with him, and, according to sources close to the former governor, promised him the renewal of his mandate. In anticipation of such renewal – for which he remained hopeful until the last minute – Athanasios Orphanides did all of Kikis’ favours.

However, when the time came, Kikis resigned citing “leg pain”, and Christofias appointed Panicos Demetriades, who undertook to implement the government plan to bail out Laiki 15 days into his term. Meanwhile, upon Orphanides’ departure from the Central Bank in May 2012, Laiki’s ELA had been €5.7 billion, but June saw it spike to €9.5 billion.

It was only when Orphanides failed to secure a second term that he became a vocal critic of AKEL, but even then he served the party’s stalling tactics from behind the scenes. As is well known, Orphanides was the godfather of disputing PIMCO’s estimates for the recapitalisation needs of Cypriot banks.

The Christofias government had agreed to an adjustment programme since November 2012, which had been missing only PIMCO’s number. The government had no authority to determine the number, but its consent was required in setting it. In October 2012, AKEL’s Central Committee decided to exhaust all options, irrespective of consequences, leaving the programme decisions to the next government. By disputing PIMCO’s figures, which proved rather modest in the end, Orphanides gave AKEL the perfect cover to drop decision-making into the new government’s lap, with all the dramatic aftermath that ensued.

These days, grasping at the foreclosures bill, Orphanides is once again suggesting to the political world options and tactics that risk pushing the country off the cliff. His motives are once again the same. He was not utilised by the Anastasiades government, and so he is undermining it, obviously in hopes that its fall will allow his glorious return through Nicolas Papadopoulos.

By Loucas Charalambous

I HAVE written many times about our lack of seriousness as a state. This is illustrated regularly through the activities of officials and representatives of this country on all levels.

I hear people every day saying: ‘nothing works properly in this country, there is no state and we are lamentable.’ I would say that we are joke. In reality we do not have a normal state but an imitation of a state. And we should at some point ask ourselves whether we are more of a pseudo-state than that in the north. I have little doubt that we are and I do not think we should be ashamed to admit it.

To an extent, President Nicos Anastasiades has admitted this. In his effort to persuade us of the need to establish positions of deputy ministers so that he can distribute them among his cronies, he said a few days ago that the ministries were full of kingdoms, duchies, princes and dukes.

What he refuses to admit is that his actions contribute to cementing this situation instead of fighting it. Two more illustrations of this behaviour were provided recently.

On July 17, it was revealed that the deputy chief of the National Guard, General Andreas Papapavlou, showing an incredible level of irresponsibility, invited two Greek Cypriot security officers from the British bases to investigate whether bugs and secret cameras had been placed in his office, because he suspected that he was under surveillance. Other officers alerted the police who arrested the bases officers in the ground of the National Guard HQ and took them in for questioning.

This was a serious issue, the president was informed and on his orders the two men were released because there was a possibility of a diplomatic incident with the British. Papapavlou tendered his resignation over what happened, but on August 11 it was announced that Anastasiades “had not accepted the resignation”.

The explanation given for this bizarre decision was that the attorney general had come to the conclusion that no criminal offence had been committed and “despite the fact that the action was undoubtedly mistaken, in regard to which very strict recommendations had been made, the President of the Republic, considers that the priority at this time was the preservation of a climate of calm and unity within the ranks the National Guard.”

Now, what kind of calm is likely to prevail now the hero of this comical story has been kept in his place, only Anastasiades can explain. Is it really possible for the deputy head of the army of a state to call in officers working for an army of another state to search for possible bugs placed in his office by his colleagues, and for the president that appointed him, instead of sacking him, leaving him in his position by arguing idiotically that, in this way, unity will be preserved? When the last private of the National Guard is having a laugh about his deputy chief’s antics, what “climate of calm” is the president talking about? And who does he think he is kidding?

Two weeks later, on August 27, the chairman of Cyprus Airways (another appointed mate of the president) Tony Antoniou, who had been investigated in connection with financial irregularities, submitted his resignation on “on grounds of sensitivity”.

Even though the investigation had not found any criminal offence had been committed, in this case, the president accepted the resignation. Presumably he decided that the “climate of unity” at the bankrupt company was not in danger from Antoniou’s resignation.

These are the kind of things that are happening in our ridiculous state. And nobody protests about them or seem in the least bothered. This could be because we have come to consider these bizarre happenings simply part of daily life in our joke of a state.

By Patroclos

OUR POLITICAL parties stopped just short of organising a book-burning bash outside the presidential palace, after the stern announcement by the embassy of Mother Russia expressing its strong disapproval of the contents of the latest book written by Makarios Drousiotis, the journalist and author currently employed as an advisor to the president.

This was only because the 1,500-word announcement issued by the embassy and published in Phil, did not call for the offending book, which deals with the duplicitous role played by the Soviet Union during and after the Turkish invasion, to be burned. If it had, the parties would have dutifully bought a few copies of the book and arranged for supporters to place them on the fire in order to underline their loyalty to Mother Russia.

Rather than engage in Islamic practices, our mum’s embassy restricted itself to declaring the book “of an extremely low scientific level and politically unacceptable”. As for the writer, he was accused of being “an amateur researcher that does not know the scientific methodology of historical research and the principles of historical study and impartiality and does not know how to analyse and evaluate events.”

This must be because he was not educated at a Soviet university which would have ensured he picked up the principles of historical study and impartiality and learnt never to question the official version of events.

THE RUSSIAN ambassador, Stanislav Osadchiy, on whose instructions the book-bashing announcement was written is behaving like some Soviet overlord posted in the DDR or Bulgaria during the time of the Warsaw Pact, issuing instructions and advice to errant locals that have unwisely strayed from the true path of socialism.

How else could he have thought he had the right to interfere in our affairs so brazenly, pillorying a writer because he did not agree with what he wrote and complaining about the fact that he was working for the president. In the final paragraph of the announcement it says:

“The only thing that bothers us in relation to the extremely low scientific level and politically unacceptable book is the fact that it was not written by an amateur, compulsive writer, but by a special associate of the president. Is this a coincidence?”

The motherly advice from our Russian overlord was very clear: people who work for the president must not write anything bad about the Soviet Union, because it will upset the Russian embassy and make it think we are no longer a Soviet satellite.

AMBASSADOR Osadchiy has made a habit of interfering in our affairs and issuing motherly advice, always with our interest in mind.

Back in March he went on TV to tell us Moscow was not happy with Cyprus’ alignment with the EU, regarding the imposition of sanctions against Russia over Crimea. And he warned that “our businessmen would pull out capital and repatriate their activities.”

Then, as now, our political parties wasted no time in trying to please the ambassador. The House issued a resolution warning against jeopardising our “valuable ties” with Mother Russia, which it described as “a steadfast supporter of the Republic of Cyprus at critical times throughout its history”.

How strange that our big dick politicians, who are ready to take on the whole world in defence of our national pride and dignity, are happy to be Moscow’s lap-dogs.

If the US or British embassy had issued an abusive announcement, intimidating and belittling a Greek Cypriot writer and rubbishing his work, our politicians would have gone crazy, bravely pontificating about the right of free speech, demanding the government made official representations and organising mass demonstrations outside the embassy buildings.
But when Russia wants to suppress free speech in Kyproulla it has the full backing of our principled politicians.

FOUR PARTIES – EDEK, AKEL, DIKO, Alliance – issued statements fully supporting the embassy’s announcement and questioning the employment of a man with Drousiotis’ unacceptable views as an advisor to the president. If Drousiotis had written in favour of paedophilia there would not have been as hostile a reaction.

AKEL was worried by the fact the announcement “clearly touched the policy followed by the government towards the Russian Federation”. But otherwise, it was satisfied with the “documented answers the embassy gives to the author’s arbitrary claims about the role of the USSR in 1974”.

DIKO was worried because the “activities of Drousiotis were dynamiting Cyprus’ relations with a powerful, traditional and valuable ally such as Russia”.

The most valuable advice was contained in the dumbest announcement, issued by the Alliance of Lillikas, which said: “After the official, damning announcement by the Embassy of the Russian Federation, the President of the Republic has the obligation to take a position, restoring the historical truth and safeguarding the relations of Cyprus with the friendly country Russia.”

What qualifications does the president have to “restore the historical truth”? Does he “know the scientific methodology of historical research and the principles of historical study and impartiality”, to “restore the historical truth” in a way that would satisfy the Russian embassy?

PREZ NIK has been making a complete fool of himself recently. As soon as the Drousiotis book was published, he arranged a meeting with the Russian ambassador to grovel to him and tell him that he had nothing to do with its publication. The views expressed by the writer did not reflect his views, a contrite Nik assured.

This information was contained in a statement issued on Wednesday by the government spokesman. However there was no mention of any plans by Nik to restore the historical truth.

This was nothing compared to the way Nik has been making a fool of himself with regard to the foreclosures bill, grovelling to the party leaders and in particular to the jumped up Ethnarch Junior, whose arrogance and demands for changes grew by the day. All that the spoilt brat Junior had to say was that he was not satisfied with the government bills and Nik would tell his minions to make more changes.

At Thursday’s meeting with the party leaders Nik was adopting every change to the bills that they demanded. It was no wonder that they all emerged from the palace with a triumphal air. Neither Nik nor the leaders gave any thought to the Troika’s reaction to their chopping and changing that would ensure the foreclosures law would be unenforceable.

THE ONLY person who tried to introduce a note of sanity to Thursday’s meeting was finance minister Harris Georgiades. He tried to argue that the changes being proposed would never be approved by the Troika, but after being overruled by Nik a couple of times at the start of the meeting, he gave up and stayed completely silent the rest of the time.

In the last week or two there has been a nasty whispering campaign against poor old Harris, who is by miles the ablest and most sensible of Nik’s ministers. He is being accused of having let down the country by not negotiating forcefully enough with the Troika over the foreclosures bill. The source of this campaign is unknown, but it is gathering steam.

Could there be a plan to hang Harris out to dry in order to cement the new-found harmony between Nik and the party leaders? It would be sad day when this happens.

IN ANOTHER part of today’s paper you will read about an attempt by Greek Cypriot businessmen backed by deputies, to get their hands on 3,500 donums of land near Kalo Chorio village. The only obstacle is that the land belongs to Evkaf, the Islamic charity organisation that owns huge expanses of real estate that its charter does not allow to sell.

The resourceful Geek Cypriots, however, have found a way to bypass Evkaf – a Turkish national claiming the ownership of the land. Her name is Susan Dikraz and she has visited the Republic in the hope of reaching a deal with the businessmen, before Evkaf interferes and blocks the transaction; the two sides are discussing the leasing of the land for 99 years.

One of the politicians that acted as Dikraz’s chaperone on her visit was the bash-patriotic EDEK deputy Giorgos Varnavas, who has been very quiet recently. We have not heard him say a single word against the foreclosures bill, in contrast to his party comrades that have been railing against it. Varnavas, in the past, zealously embraced noble causes aimed at protecting the poor and vulnerable, but not this time.

Could this be because he does not want to upset prez Nik, whose help is necessary for the land deal to go through?

IF YOU can’t beat them, join them, goes the old saying. This is exactly what the Bank of Cyprus’ happy bunny chairman is doing. Having spent the last three months pulling out all the stops to prevent the capital issue that would save the bank but threaten his position as chairman, at Thursday’s EGM he was its most fervent supporter.

He told shareholders about the new era that would be created by the injection of one billion euro into the bank and even made a joke about his long hair. Having conceded defeat, like a good Cypriot, he joined the winners and became a happy bunny again, after a long period as an unhappy one.

Now it would seem he is focusing his attention on keeping his seat on the board. And he obviously decided that the best way to do this is by buttering up the new main shareholder – American billionaire Wilbur Ross who will control 18 per cent of the bank’s shareholding. On Friday the happy bunny put in a request to the Central Bank for the appointment of Ross to the board, presumably in the hope that the Yank would show his appreciation when he takes control of the bank.

EVERYONE felt sympathy for the way Omonia was knocked out of the Europa League last Thursday, conceding a goal in the fourth minute of injury-time to Dynamo Moscow in Nicosia and losing 2-1. A draw would have been enough to see Omonia through, after the club had secured a 2-2 draw in Moscow.

Needless to say, the defeat was attributed to a conspiracy. This was not just the view of brainless fans but it was shared by Akelite apparatchik Christos Christofides who posted his conspiracy theory on his Facebook page. It went like this:
“Now to the reasons for being knocked out. A few days ago I took a call from a friend who is in the know, closely follows Cypriot and European football matters. He told be me, ‘Friend, Omonia will not go through….did you see who the referee is?’ I replied that it was a Romanian but I was not too sure. He said ‘friend it is not a Romanian, it is the guy who killed Ael against Zenith. These people serve special missions: they take orders and execute them, not to mention that they have a reputation of being selling themselves for a sandwich..’ I heard this in disbelief…Of course I know the European federation is not saint, that cash counts more than anything, I was also worried because our little people here talk to them…

“I told many friends that I was worried about the refereeing… Unfortunately I was proved right. Omonia scored three goals, conceded one and was knocked out because of a referee on a special mission, possibly with Cypriot encouragement. This is clear.”

This guy is meant to be one of AKEL’s promising young politicians. It was worth noting that he did not blame the Russians for bribing the referee with a sandwich, even though it was a Russian club that benefited from the refereeing bias. He obviously did not want to upset the Russian embassy. But it is to his credit that he resisted the temptation of blaming this shameless conspiracy against Omonia on NATO.

WHEN NICOS Anastasiades was standing for the presidency, this paper held the view that he would provide the strong and decisive leadership that the country had so desperately lacked in the previous five years. After a year-and-a-half in office, Anastasiades has proved that this view was nothing more than fantasy. He has provided nothing resembling strong leadership, often displaying many of the weaknesses that made his predecessor such a poor president.

Like his predecessor, he seems more interested in his popularity ratings, keeping as many political parties as possible happy and minimising any potential cost to himself by avoiding taking personal responsibility when difficult decisions need to be taken. This very Cypriot style of leadership that is at the root of most of the country’s problems has been evident in Anastasiades’ term in office, especially in his approach towards the Cyprus problem. And in recent weeks he has displayed it, in all its glory, in his mishandling of the foreclosures bill. In the process, he has turned a manageable problem into a potential disaster for the country.

The president showed no resolve in defending the bill his finance minister had negotiated with the Troika, opting to pander instead to the reckless populism of the party leaders, inviting them repeatedly for consultations, chopping and changing the bill and ordering the drafting of accompanying bills that would supposedly offer more protection to people with NPLs. And when the party leaders claimed that they could not trust presidential assurances that foreclosures on primary homes would not be pursued before the insolvency bill was ready by the end of the year, Anastasiades appeared to agree with them and came up with additional measures to ease their reservations.

It may sound absurd, but the president appears to have joined the recklessly populist and irresponsible opposition. At the last meeting he had with the party leaders on Thursday he adopted every suggestion they made, giving instructions to have them included in the bills that were being prepared. Reservations expressed by the finance minister, on the grounds that the additional proposals would not be accepted by the Troika, were brushed aside by the president who was determined to satisfy even the most absurd demands of the opposition leaders.

The result of the meeting was that the voting on the bills that was meant to have taken place on Monday was put back to Friday so that the additional measures, decided by the presidential palace committee, could be discussed at House committee level and incorporated into the bills. Whether the Troika will agree to all the changes, which seem designed to make implementation of the foreclosures bill very difficult, remains to be seen.

Meanwhile a press report on Saturday, quoting sources at the Bankers’ Association, said that cash withdrawals from the banks had increased significantly in the last few days, attributing this to low public confidence. The report claimed the withdrawals were triggered by statements by the president of the National Economic Council, Nobel prize-winner

Christoforos Pissarides, who warned that failure to pass the foreclosures bill could lead to another haircut of deposits as the banks would need to recapitalise again and be unable to draw capital from anywhere, once the adjustment programme had been derailed. Pissarides was not being alarmist, as the press report suggested, but stating a fact – without a foreclosures law the banks will not get through October’s EU banking stress tests and need new capital.

Blaming the messenger is standard practice in Cyprus. However the blame for the uncertainty and falling confidence lies squarely with a dithering president who has chosen to behave as irresponsibly as his new-found allies – the populist, party leaders. If he was capable of providing strong and decisive leadership, Anastasiades would have announced that no more changes would be made to foreclosures bill two weeks ago, and it would have been submitted for approval as scheduled last week. He would also have informed the public of the devastating consequences to the economy of not approving it and left the demagogues -Papadopoulos, Omirou, Kyprianou, Lillikas – to take the responsibility for plunging the country into another crisis.

They would have backed down and approved the bill, which even the militant associations defending the interests of borrowers were satisfied with. But with the president betraying an embarrassing degree of weakness, the party leaders kept pushing for more changes which have resulted in bills that are highly unlikely to secure the approval of the Troika. What happens next is anyone’s guess.

By Stefanos Evripidou

NEW TURKISH President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrives in the occupied part of Cyprus on Monday riding a wave of euphoric exaltation, but the question raised by his successful consolidation of power is how, if at all, will this impact upon the moribund peace talks.

Tradition dictates that the newly-elected Turkish leader makes his first visit abroad to the north, but his arrival at a time when peace talks appear to be dying a slow death has the potential to do one of three things: inject new life to the process; strangle it further with some offensive, off the cuff remark; or nothing at all.

The dire state of the talks was made more evident by the UN’s decision late on Friday to postpone next Tuesday’s leaders’ meeting. The UN released a statement saying new UN Special Adviser Espen Barth Eide will be in New York next week for consultations with UN chief Ban Ki-moon and other senior UN officials before heading to Cyprus for his first official visit on Friday.

He will stay four days on the island to hold talks with the leaders and their negotiating teams, during which time the Norwegian will consult with the two leaders on an appropriate date for their next meeting.

Given the way the talks ended before the summer recess, with no agreement on content, methodology or confidence-building measures (CBMs), observers had expected work to be done in August to patch up the ailing process so the leaders could forge a path forwards at their next scheduled meeting on September 2.

Multiple sources close to the negotiations told the Sunday Mail the two sides were struggling to reach agreement on substance and form.
S
ome hoped Erdogan’s visit on Monday would provide a new impetus to the talks; others said they would be happy if he simply avoided harming the process.

Sources close to both negotiating teams said as things stand, the two sides do not have a common understanding on how to move forward with the process. The Turkish Cypriots want to move to the give-and-take phase and adopt a road map setting out a timeframe for referenda before a deal has even been reached.

The Greek Cypriots want to see where they stand on the core issues before entering into a give-and-take process. They argue that Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu has muddied the waters regarding past convergences, theoretically adopting one ‘outdated’ version of convergences while at the same time tabling divergent positions at the negotiating table.

They propose the two sides draw up a document where the convergences achieved to date, near convergences and divergences are put into three separate baskets. Despite Eroglu rejecting this idea, the Greek Cypriot team has nearly completed such a document, in the hope this will identify where the biggest gaps are so the focus can be on reducing the distance between the two sides.

Until the gap on fundamental core issues is narrowed, the Greek Cypriot side is not prepared to move to the next phase.
“It is difficult to see how we can move on. Hopefully, when our paper is made available to (the Turkish Cypriot team), it will be clear that on a lot of things we are not very far. Maybe they can be convinced to engage at least using it as a tool to identify what we can focus on,” said a Greek Cypriot source.

The source added the Greek Cypriots did not expect any significant progress on how to proceed until Eide comes to the island and chairs the next leaders’ meeting.

A Turkish Cypriot source argued that the talks were not just “slow”, they were “regressing”, with past agreements being lost. “Even the issue of CBMs took a big hit after the failure of (US Vice President Joe) Biden’s visit,” said the source, who blamed the current quagmire on President Nicos Anastasiades’ refusal to respect past convergences.

If the leaders agreed on what kind of functional federation they want by converging on the issues of power-sharing, EU affairs and economy, they could then move with greater confidence to discuss territory, property and security, argued the source.

If Anastasiades wanted to change a few points, he could have endorsed past convergences while making suggestions for certain changes. Instead he took a blanket approach, refusing everything and creating a defensive attitude on the Turkish side, the source added.

By doing so, Anastasiades is inadvertently increasing Eroglu’s chances of re-election to the Turkish Cypriot leadership next April. Eroglu can tell his constituency that he did his utmost by respecting past convergences (which he had opposed at the time when Demetris Christofias and Mehmet Ali Talat agreed on them), while Anastasiades had gone back on them, said the source.

“Instead of engaging in tactical moves, I would really engage Eroglu, build on what has been agreed so far, suggest improvements on a win-win basis, and rapidly move into real unresolved issues like property, territory, security.”

It’s not clear whether the decision to postpone the leaders’ meeting is a result of this inertia, or has to do with an effort to put some distance between Erdogan’s visit and the first leaders’ meeting after the summer break, thereby lowering expectations on what the unpredictable Erdogan might say or do vis-a-vis the peace talks.

Turkish Cypriot ‘foreign minister’ Ozdil Nami acknowledged the importance and symbolism of Erdogan’s visit to the north on Monday but did not foresee any major development.

He told the Sunday Mail he expected Erdogan “to underline the well known position that the Turkish side wants to see a rapid solution to the Cyprus problem in line with the agreements of the leaders and will give full support to that process. And at same time I expect him to reiterate the great support Turkey gives to the economic development of north Cyprus”.

He added: “Nobody should expect anything that falls out of line with this. Don’t expect big surprises there.”
On the talks, Nami said he found the lack of progress “very discouraging”. He hoped at their next meeting the two leaders would acknowledge past progress, allowing them to concentrate on unresolved issues.

“Right now, the two sides don’t see eye to eye on even how to move forward.”

At his swearing-in ceremony last Thursday, Erdogan received a letter from Anastasiades congratulating him on his election, and calling on him to get personally involved to achieve a Cyprus solution that would benefit all sides.

Erdogan has already made history as the first directly elected president of Turkey. His next declared intention is to transform Turkey’s political system into a presidential one and boost his largely ceremonial role with further powers.

Taking no prisoners, Erdogan clinically sidelined his predecessor Abdullah Gul to ensure the faithful Ahmet Davutoglu was elected head of the ruling AKP, and subsequently appointed prime minister. It is widely understood that with this set up, Erdogan maintains full control over government and party. Davutoglu will be replaced at the foreign ministry by the mild-mannered outgoing EU affairs minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.

Throughout the election campaign, Cyprus barely registered as a blip on the radar. On winning, Erdogan exhibited his readiness to play an active presidential role, announcing the new government’s top priorities. Fighting the “parallel state” of the Fethullah Gulen movement was one of them. So was resolving the long-standing Kurdish issue. Cyprus was not.

The next milestone for the AKP government is the June 2015 national assembly elections where the party needs to win a significant majority to change the Turkish constitution and realise Erdogan’s dream of running a powerful presidency.

According to a government source, the fact Cyprus did not come up during the election campaign is positive as it means the island is no longer considered a big impact issue in internal Turkish politics. In theory, this frees Erdogan to push ahead with constitutional changes and the Cyprus problem in tandem as movement on the latter should no longer be a limiting factor for him.

Another source said the government has been led to believe by the US that there will be movement on the Cyprus problem after Turkey’s presidential elections.

“The Americans and the Turks know that the next three months will see very important developments in the energy field, and the Turks do not want to be left out the picture. So the Americans have been saying to them, ‘you have to do something on this’,” said the source.

The Americans know Erdogan has the power to influence the peace process, but find him to be unpredictable, preferring instead to deal with Davutoglu. The latter may have just received a promotion, but the one thing everyone agrees is that it’s Erdogan who’s running the show, ushering a “new Turkey” into a “new era”. Whether Cyprus is part of that remains to be seen.

By Steve Keating

World number ones Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams advanced safely to the next round of the U.S. Open on Saturday but the women’s draw saw yet another big upset as Wimbledon winner Petra Kvitova was sent packing by a 145th-ranked qualifier.

Third-seed Kvitova fell victim to 21-year-old Serbian Aleksandra Krunic, leaving only three of the top eight women’s seeds still in the tournament. Simona Halep (2nd), Agnieszka Radwanska (4th), Angelique Kerber (6th) and Ana Ivanovic (8th) have already been shown the door.

While the women’s draw has been ravaged by upsets the top 10 men are still in the hunt, with number three Stan Wawrinka, number five Milos Raonic, eighth seed Andy Murray and number nine Jo-Wilfried Tsonga all moving on.

The shock of the day was delivered by the little-known Krunic, who stung the unsteady Kvitova 6-4 6-4.

The diminutive Serbian, who aims to graduate from university this year with a degree in economics, was a blur as she sprinted and slid into splits while stretching for returns.

“It was an honour for me to be on the same court as Petra, who is a great champion,” said Krunic, who will come up against Victoria Azarenka in the next round.

“Of course, I didn’t expect to win. Of course, I hoped to. I’m very happy.”

Twice Australian Open winner Azarenka secured her spot in the last 16 with a 6-1 6-1 win over Russian Elena Vesnina.

Eugenie Bouchard, a semi-finalist in the previous three slams, including a runner-up finish at Wimbledon, had to fight to keep from joining the list of upsets, the seventh-seeded Canadian holding her nerve to earn a 6-2 7-6(2) 6-4 win over Czech Barbora Zahlavova Strycova.

Williams is the last American standing at the U.S. Open after the remaining home-grown hopefuls said goodbye to Flushing Meadows on Saturday.

A total of 29 Americans (12 men, 17 women) started the year’s final grand slam on Monday and by the time the gates to the U.S. National Tennis Center closed on Saturday only the world number one was still in the hunt for a singles title.

The last two hopes of the men’s draw, 13th seed John Isner and Sam Querrey, both bowed out in the third round, while Nicole Gibbs and Varvara Lepchenko also made third-round exits, leaving home fans pinning their hopes on Williams heading into the second week.

GRAND SLAM CASUALTY

Five-time U.S. Open champion Williams played her part in the American demise, dispatching three of her compatriots in rapid succession.

After dismissing Taylor Townsend in the opening round and Vania King in the second, Williams chased the 52nd ranked Lepchenko with a 6-3 6-3 victory.

Williams, who has failed to reach the quarter-finals of any of the previous three grand slams this year, was just happy not to be one of the U.S. casualties.

“I’ve been a casualty this whole year at grand slams,” said Williams, who will next face Kaia Kanepi of Estonia, a 7-5 6-0 upset winner over 15th seed Carla Suarez Navarro. “I’m just hoping to keep staying in there.

“I just treat every round as if it’s your last. Do the best that I can. Just stay positive, you know, because I want to continue to do the best I can.”

Djokovic, a U.S. Open finalist the last four years and winner in 2011, has also done his part to spoil America’s grand slam party.

The Serb squashed another American hope on Saturday, pounding Querrey 6-3 6-2 6-2 to reach the fourth round for the eighth straight year while improving his record to a perfect 8-0 when facing U.S. opponents at Flushing Meadows.

Isner bombarded Philipp Kohlschreiber with 42 aces and never lost his serve but still dropped a 7-6(4) 4-6 7-6(2) 7-6(4) decision to the German.

Briton Murray, the 2012 Open champion and 2013 Wimbledon winner, double-faulted to send his match to a fourth set, then swiftly took charge in a 6-1 7-5 4-6 6-2 win over Russian Andrey Kuznetsov.

That set up a clash against Tsonga, a 6-4 6-4 6-4 winner against Pablo Carreno Busta of Spain.

Raonic won three tiebreakers in a straight-sets win against Dominican Victor Estrella Burgos to set up a fourth-round duel with Japanese 10th seed Kei Nishikori, who beat 23rd seed Leonardo Mayer of Argentina in straight sets.

Australian Open winner Wawrinka was given a walkover into the fourth round when Blaz Kavcic of Slovenia defaulted because of a right foot injury.

Results from the U.S. Open Men’s Singles Round 3 matches on Saturday
16-Tommy Robredo (Spain) beat Nick Kyrgios (Australia) 3-6 6-3 7-6(4) 6-3
9-Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (France) beat Pablo Carreno (Spain) 6-4 6-4 6-4
8-Andy Murray (Britain) beat Andrey Kuznetsov (Russia) 6-1 7-5 4-6 6-2
1-Novak Djokovic (Serbia) beat Sam Querrey (U.S.) 6-3 6-2 6-2
5-Milos Raonic (Canada) beat Victor Estrella (Dominican Republic) 7-6(5) 7-6(5) 7-6(3)
10-Kei Nishikori (Japan) beat 23-Leonardo Mayer (Argentina) 6-4 6-2 6-3
3-Stanislas Wawrinka (Switzerland) beat Blaz Kavcic (Slovenia) walkover
22-Philipp Kohlschreiber (Germany) beat 13-John Isner (U.S.) 7-6(4) 4-6 7-6(2) 7-6(4)

Results from the U.S. Open Women’s Singles Round 3 matches on Saturday
7-Eugenie Bouchard (Canada) beat 30-Barbora Zahlavova Strycova (Czech Republic) 6-2 6-7(2) 6-4
17-Ekaterina Makarova (Russia) beat Zarina Diyas (Kazakhstan) 6-2 6-4
Kaia Kanepi (Estonia) beat 15-Carla Suarez Navarro (Spain) 7-5 6-0
1-Serena Williams (U.S.) beat Varvara Lepchenko (U.S.) 6-3 6-3
16-Victoria Azarenka (Belarus) beat Elena Vesnina (Russia) 6-1 6-1
29-Casey Dellacqua (Australia) beat Karolina Pliskova (Czech Republic) 6-3 3-6 6-4
Aleksandra Krunic (Serbia) beat 3-Petra Kvitova (Czech Republic) 6-4 6-4
11-Flavia Pennetta (Italy) beat Nicole Gibbs (U.S.) 6-4 6-0

By Tom Hayward

Liverpool produce an irresistible performance to dismantle a toothless Tottenham Hotspur 3-0 and Arsenal were held 1-1 by Leicester City in the Premier League on Sunday.

Raheem Sterling, Steven Gerrard and Alberto Moreno were on target as Liverpool bounced back from defeat by champions Manchester City with a classy performance at White Hart Lane that ended Tottenham’s perfect start to the season.

Arsenal missed the chance to move up to third in the table after they were frustrated by a dogged performance from promoted Leicester.

Alexis Sanchez opened the scoring with his first Premier League goal but Arsenal were pegged back within two minutes by Leicester’s record signing Leonardo Ulloa.

Gabriel Agbonlahor and Andreas Weimann scored as third-placed Aston Villa maintained their unbeaten start to the campaign with a 2-1 victory over Hull City at Villa Park.

Liverpool handed a debut to enigmatic striker Mario Balotelli who made amends for his wasteful finishing with an impressive and hard-working contribution.

Liverpool moved up to fifth in the table, level with Tottenham on six points.

“It was great link-up play by Daniel (Sturridge) and Jordan (Henderson). The manager has been telling me to get inside the post and try add to my goal tally and that’s what I’ve done,” Sterling told Sky Sports.

“Mario and Daniel up front is always a threat and I’ve got to try be in the box to get some goals.”

EXPLOSIVE START

Balotelli nearly enjoyed a dream start inside three minutes but his powerful close-range header was parried by Tottenham goalkeeper Hugo Lloris.

Spurs had been joint league leaders after winning their opening two games without conceding a goal but were left reeling by Liverpool’s explosive start.

Sturridge and Henderson linked up well and the latter’s cross was steered in from an acute angle at the far post by Sterling in the eighth minute.

Tottenham took just one point from eight games against last season’s top four, conceding 27 goals and scoring two, and Sterling’s goal signalled the start of another forgettable day.

Liverpool started the second half with the same intent and Gerrard coolly converted a penalty after Joe Allen had been needlessly pulled back by Eric Dier.

Moreno added a third with a superb solo run and finish after he had dispossessed Andros Townsend on the halfway line.

IMPRESSIVE ULLOA

Arsenal dominated for long spells but appeared to miss the presence of last season’s top scorer Oliver Giroud, who faces up to four months on the sidelines with a broken leg.

They sit seventh in the standings while Leicester, in 15th, remain winless but have performed well in their three games against three of last season’s top five since returning to the Premier League.

“I am happy because we have one point more and the team played well,” Ulloa told Sky Sports. “The cross was fantastic. I worked hard for that (goal) and I’m happy.

“It’s important for me to continue my work and to score.”

The Gunners opened the scoring in the 20th minute through Sanchez.

Santi Cazorla opened up the Leicester defence with an audacious chip and Yaya Sanogo’s unconvincing effort fell to the Chile forward who fired home the loose ball.

Within two minutes the hosts had restored parity through Ulloa who scored his second goal in three games for Leicester with a bullet header.

Ulloa should have put his side in front shortly after the break but he shot into the side netting after he had done brilliantly to create space for himself.

Leicester had another chance to win the game but energetic substitute Jamie Vardy’s powerful drive was beaten away by Arsenal goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny.

Aston Villa suffered a shock 1-0 home loss to third-tier Leyton Orient in the League Cup on Wednesday but they reacted positively against Hull.

The lively Agbonlahor opened the scoring in the 14th minute with a pinpoint finish from Weimann’s clever layoff.

The hosts doubled their lead after 36 minutes when Weimann capped a flowing move with an accurate shot.

Villa were coasting but were made to sweat when Nikica Jelavic headed home in the 74th minute to set up a tense finale.

Chelsea and Swansea City top the table on nine points from three games.

John Arne Riise, the most capped Norwegian footballer has signed for Cyprus champions APOEL on the very last day of the transfer period.

Riise shot to fame during his seven year stay at Anfield where he won a champions league and FA Cup final medal. He had been transferred to Liverpool from AC Monaco for £4 million in 2001.

After losing his place in the Liverpool side he moved to AC Roma in 2008 where he regained a place in the starting eleven and managed 99 appearances for the Giallorossi.

He returned to the Premiership in 2011 signing a three year contract with Fulham. He remained at Craven Cottage till May of this year when he became a free agent.

The thirty three year old signed a two year contract with APOEL.

Labour Minister Zeta Emilianidou is being treated in a private hospital after a heart attack, the government said on Monday.

Reports said her condition was good.

The Cyprus News Agency (CNA) said the minister had been hospitalised on Friday.

“Her condition is good and stable and not life threatening,” CNA said, quoting an unnamed source close to the minister.

CNA said the minister had undergone a procedure to reopen the arteries at the American Heart Institute.

The government issued a statement on Monday afternoon saying Emilianidou had been hospitalised after a “mild” heart attack.

The six-line statement said President Nicos Anastasiades had visited the minister on Monday.

BANK OF Cyprus (BoC) said on Monday it expected its shares to re-list on the Cypriot and Athens stock exchanges by the end of October.
Shares of the bank were suspended from trading in March 2013, caught up in the tumult of an international bailout for Cyprus which forced the lender to convert 47.5 per cent of uninsured deposits exceeding €100,000 into equity to recapitalise the bank.
On August 28, the bank obtained shareholder approval to raise capital by an additional €1 billion, designed to bolster regulatory capital and assist in a restructuring programme ahead of European Union-wide stress tests later this year.
New shareholders include investors represented by US investor Wilbur Ross and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Upon completion of the capital issue, the bank said it would proceed with a retail offer of up to €100 million in shares to existing shareholders, at € 0.24 a share, the same price offered in the €1 billion issue.
“Subject to obtaining the necessary regulatory approvals, the Bank currently anticipates that the retail offer and the listing of its ordinary shares on the Cyprus Stock Exchange and the Athens Stock Exchange will take place by the end of October 2014,” the bank said in a statement.

LIMASSOL police arrested a 21-year-old man on Monday on suspicion of possessing child pornography.
The suspect was arrested after members of the cyber crime squad conducted a search of his home in Limassol, police said.
Preliminary examination of a laptop and three external hard drives seized at the house came up with archives containing child pornography, police said, without providing more details.

By George Psyllides
TURKISH PRESIDENT Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday it would be impossible for his country to accept a solution that did not entail two states and political equality as he called on Greece to adopt a more positive approach in reunification talks as a guarantor country.
“Political equality is a must,” he said during a news conference in the Turkish occupied northern part of the island, his first official visit since he was elected president of Turkey.
“Everyone must know that Turkey will never accept a Greek Cypriot government turn Turkish Cypriots into a minority,” Erdogan said.
The government condemned the visit and said the comments the Turkish president made were not in line with UN resolutions.
“We also consider unacceptable the frequent call for the involvement of Greece in the dialogue in an effort to equate the responsibilities for the ongoing occupation in Cyprus for which Turkey is solely responsible,” government spokesman Nicos Christodoulides said in a statement.
The spokesman also pointed out that Turkey’s pronouncements regarding its desire to contribute to reunification were nothing but empty words.
“The repetition of statements such as ‘Turkey will always be one step ahead,’ remain, so far, devoid of any content since in practice the policies that Ankara follows demonstrate just the opposite,” Christodoulides said.
The Turkish president said his country supported a fair, viable and comprehensive solution and it was impossible for them to accept unfair proposals.
“We fully support the efforts of the Turkish Cypriot side for a bicommunal (federation), political equality, two founding states, in a new co-operation on the basis of the UN parameters,” Erdogan said.
Turkey hoped efforts made since 2008 would yield results, he added.
“Everyone should understand that the current window of opportunity will not remain open forever. Nobody has the right to use the time given by the UN and keep the Turkish side and the international community waiting,” Erdogan said.
He also announced that Turkey will supply water to the north in two to three months, followed by electricity.
The Turkish president said the water was not only for the north but for the whole of Cyprus “as long as they (Greek Cypriots) take the hand of peace we are offering”.
Erdogan also denied having received a letter from President Nicos Anastasiades, which had been taken to Ankara by Greek Foreign Minister Evangelos Venizelos last week.
But the government spokesman told the state broadcaster later on Monday that they knew “the letter had been delivered to the recipient”.
Anastasiades’ letter was made up of two short paragraphs, one congratulating Erdogan for winning the first direct presidential elections in Turkey and the second expressing hope that he would make a personal contribution to achieve a Cyprus problem solution which would benefit all interested parties.
All the Greek Cypriot political parties condemned Erdogan’s visit.

By Evie Andreou

THE fourth Septemberfest Nicosia Beer Fun Festival is opening its gates in Aglandjia on Friday and the organisers, Display Art, promise an upgraded event with concerts, competitions and of course local and imported beer.

Display Art chairman, Savvas Nicolaou, said that the aim is to enrich events taking place in the capital and to attract visitors from other towns and tourists.
Visitors will be able to choose from 80 beers from around the world and taste traditional beer food.

“We have brought bacon from Germany and pork shank will also be available, which is traditionally served with beer in Germany,” Nicolaou said. Fish and chips will also be offered.

The festival includes live music and shows with alternative, pop and rock music performed by Greek and Cypriot singers and bands.

Performers include Pyx-Lax rock band’s members Philippos Pliatsikas and Pampis Stokas on Friday and popular Greek singer Glykeria on Saturday, as well as rock and blues music on Sunday from the pop and rock cover band Minus One and The Zilla Project blues band. On Monday, the Greek singer Dimitris Mpasis, along with Asmation Live and the Mitropanos Orchestra will perform songs of the late Dimitris Mitropanos. Georgos Tsalikis will perform on Tuesday, while the Melisses pop band and 40+ Rock Band will perform on Wednesday.

An all-expense paid trip to Oktoberfest in Munich will go to the winning couple of the salsa dance competition that will take place at the festival. Interested parties can apply through the event’s Facebook page. Participants pay €5 to receive a number, available at the festival’s stands. There will also be a children’s singing talent show.

Nicolaou also thanked Education Minister Costas Kadis for initiating a dialogue with Aglandjia district school board, allowing for the festival to take place.
The event had been called into question earlier last month when the minister said he would not hear of it being held next to a school, a decision he reconsidered last week.

The school board had refused to adhere to the ministry’s concerns and instead allowed Nicolaou to use Akadimia park, as a venue for the festival.

Septemberfest is one of the two beer festivals taking place in the capital, the other, later in the month, is organised by Nicolaou’s former partners – the Nicosia municipality, Nicosia Tourism Board (ETAP) and the Nicosia Chamber of Commerce and Industry (NCCI).

Nicolaou decided to organise his festival after being informed he was not included in the consortium of organisers of this year’s municipality-sponsored beer festival which has taken place since 2011. He has taken out legal proceedings against the consortium organising this year’s event, seeking compensation for their use of the logo and for unfair competition.

The hearing was last week with a ruling expected on September 4.

Nicolaou said that his former partners had tried to stop him from organising Septemberfest and that they had put pressure on other municipalities in the capital not to cooperate with him and host the event, claims the Nicosia municipality says they are not true.

“In no way does the municipality accept the accusations concerning the beer festival,” said the municipality in an announcement last week and added that the claims require no further comment.

Display Art’s Septemberfest will take place from September 5 to 10. Entrance is €5 with one beer. Entrance is free for children up to 14 years old. For information visit www.facebook.com/NicosiaBeerFestival

The municipality-sponsored Nicosia Beer Festival will open on September 10 and will run until September 14 at the Constanza Moat. Opening hours: 7pm until midnight. Entrance: €5.

By Angelos Anastasiou

THE DECISION to suspend broadcasting of Cytavision’s – CyTA’s TV arm – Sports Plus package hours ahead of the announced cut off point for the month of free viewing left viewers infuriated in the middle of Sunday’s Tottenham-Liverpool Premier League fixture.

Sports Plus is a recent addition to Cytavision’s TV package, following a deal struck with Lumiere TV (LTV), and comprises three additional sports channels with content previously broadcast by LTV – including the English Premier League, the German Bundesliga and the home matches of Cyprus league powerhouses APOEL and Anorthosis.

When the deal with LTV was struck, Cytavision had announced that the Sports Plus channels would be made available for “free to existing Full Pack and Value Plus subscribers for the whole of August”, but as of September 1 would be made available only to subscribers at an additional monthly cost of €21 upon request.

But early in the afternoon of Sunday, August 31, many subscribers found their Sports Plus channels had been cut off hours ahead of time, with no prior warning or explanation.

One individual who complained to the Cyprus Mail had his connection cut off while watching the Tottenham-Liverpool Premier League fixture.

Upon contacting the CyTA call centre, an operator’s response that Cytavision “may have decided” to remove the service earlier did little to assuage his wrath.

“What do you mean?” the subscriber asked. “If the power company says I have until Friday to pay my bill, would they be allowed to cut off my power on Thursday, and without even telling me?”

“One is a paid service, the other is free,” he was told.

As it turned out, the issue boiled down to logistics.

As per its own announcement, Cytavision would be cutting off the broadcasting of the Sports Plus package for all subscribers, save for those who requested it, meaning that any subscriber found to have access after midnight on Sunday would get charged.

But Cytavision’s system cut off access serially, and the provider tried to ensure that everyone who had not asked for access to the pack was removed, to avoid unwanted charges.

The programme that would remove subscribers who did not request the pack was initiated early, sometime in the afternoon, and those listed first in the database were removed first from the access list.

“This was an unfortunate incident,” CyTA spokesman Lefteris Christou told the Cyprus Mail. “We apologise to any subscriber who suffered as a result, and especially to those who missed part of the Premier League game – it was, after all, the only game broadcast yesterday from these channels.”

FOR SOME time there has been a dispute between the education ministry and a private Nicosia-based school that wants to raise its tuition fees for the new school year which was scheduled to commence on Monday. The school has argued that its fees had remained the same for the last four years because of ministry directives, adding that this had caused it financial problems. It added that that if it did not raise its fees it would be unable to maintain its high standards and would be prevented from moving to new premises that would allow it to expand.

A meeting between ministry officials and the owner of the school was scheduled to take place on Monday or Tuesday, but it seems unlikely the dispute can be resolved, given the position of education minister Costas Kadis. Kadis was quoted as saying by the Sunday Mail, that “Due to the economic crisis we will not accept any (fee) increase in any private school.” This has been the ministry’s policy for the last few years and has also been imposed on private universities which had expressed strong objections. However, they went along with it because the ministry policy had strong political backing.

Although well-intentioned, this is a misguided policy of unjustified state intervention in the free market. Private schools and universities are businesses just like auditing firms and the state has no business interfering in their pricing policies. Would the state offer financial assistance to a private school that had become unviable because of its losses? Certainly not, so on what grounds is the education ministry telling a school the level of tuition fees it should charge? If the current fees do not cover the operating costs and expansion plans of a school, it has every right to increase them because the ministry will not come to save it if it became insolvent.

If parents deem those fees too high, then parents could move their children to another private school of which there are plenty in Cyprus. The only obligation of the ministry is to ensure, through regulations, that parents are given adequate warning of any fee increase – at least a school year in advance – so they have the time, if they do not want to pay more, to find another school. It is unacceptable for a school to inform parents during the summer term or during the school holidays that from the new school year they would have to pay higher fees. This constitutes a sharp practice, leaving parents no time to make alternative arrangements, and should not be permitted by the education ministry.

Apart from this type of protection to parents, the ministry should not be interfering in what business model a private school wants to follow. There is, after all a free market.