By Maggie Fick

Iraq said on Monday it had put its Tikrit offensive on hold and senior officials called for more air strikes to dislodge Islamic State militants who have laid explosives across Saddam Hussein’s home city and still hold its central districts.

The offensive, the largest yet against insurgents who swept through northern Iraq in June, has been stalled for four days after Iraqi security forces and mainly Shi’ite militia pushed into Tikrit last week.

They have struggled to gain further ground against the militants who are holed up in a vast complex of palaces built when Saddam was in power.

Military officials in Tikrit said there was no fighting on Monday in the city that was home to more than 250,000 people before it was overrun last year.

Government forces are in control of most of the northern Qadisiya district as well as the southern and western outskirts of the city, trapping the militants in an area bounded by the river that runs through Tikrit. Though Iraqi forces and allied militiamen may have the insurgents in a chokehold, officials are increasingly citing air power as necessary to drive out the remaining insurgents.

“We need air support from any force that can work with us against IS,” Deputy Minister of Defence Ibrahim al-Lami told Reuters, declining to say whether he meant from the US-led coalition or Iran, which is playing a role in the assault.

The US-led coalition has been conspicuously absent from the offensive, the biggest to be undertaken by Iraqi forces since Islamic State seized around a third of the country last summer including Tikrit.

Interior Minister Mohammed al-Ghaban said authorities had put a temporary halt to the offensive in Tikrit, capital of the mainly Sunni Muslim Salahuddin province.

“We have decided to halt military operations in Salahuddin in order to reduce casualties among our heroic forces… and to preserve the remaining infrastructure,” the minister said at a news conference in the city of Samarra, 95 kilometres north of Baghdad.

“The situation is under control and we will choose the appropriate time to attack the enemy and liberate the area”.

KURDISH ADVANCE

More than 20,000 troops and Iranian-backed Shi’ite militia are taking part in the operation, which began two weeks ago, supported by a relatively small contingent of Sunni fighters from Tikrit and the surrounding Salahuddin province.

The assault is seen as a litmus test for any future attempt to retake the large northern city of Mosul, which is likely to be a far more complex operation.

Meanwhile, coalition air strikes helped Kurdish forces seize the villages of Wahda, Saada, and Khalid from Islamic State in the north – part of a broader week-long offensive to drive the militants away from the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

Shi’ite Turkmen fighters also clashed for a fourth day with Islamic State insurgents near the village of Bashir, south of Kirkuk.

In Baghdad, Special US presidential envoy General John Allen addressed a meeting of Iraqi and foreign officials aimed at kicking off efforts to stabilise and rebuild territories retaken from Islamic State.

The militants have been driven back by Kurdish peshmerga forces in the north, and Shi’ite militia known as Hashid Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) in the eastern province of Diyala, the Baghdad belt and north of the capital.

Allen said Iraqis were beginning to recover from life under Islamic State in Diyala and “hopefully soon” in Tikrit, but that local governance would prove difficult because many officials had been killed, were in exile, or co-operated with Islamic State.

The Prime Minister’s spokesman Rafid al-Jaboori echoed calls for more air strikes: “We have been saying we need more air support for all operations,” he told Reuters. “We welcome air support for all our campaigns against IS”.

Asked by Reuters for his response to the Iraqi appeals, Allen said it would not be appropriate for him to comment.

CONSTRUCTION companies want VAT reduced to 5.0 per cent and other incentives in a bid to stimulate the flagging sector.
The request was submitted during a meeting on Monday with President Nicos Anastasides who saw a delegation of a group of 11 organisations and trade unions of the sector.
“It is very difficult today for one to build their daughter a home with 19 per cent VAT,” said Costas Roushias, chairman of the group.
Roushias said VAT must be cut for at least two years.
“Let state actuaries do the calculations and then they will find that revenues would be much more than with the 5.0 per cent since there will be more investment than today,” Roushias said.
Among the group’s suggestions were upgrading buildings to save energy, stamping out undeclared labour, providing tax incentives, and creating a junior ministry of development that will monitor implementation of the state budget concerning projects.
Roushias said over 20 per cent of the entrepreneurs have closed their companies or have suspended operations for the year.
“Companies are closing, dragging down with them their employees,” he said.

By Mike Collett

Sunderland parted company with manager Gus Poyet on Monday with the club facing a battle for Premier League survival after losing 4-0 at home to Aston Villa on Saturday.

“I would like to thank Gus for his endeavours during his time at the club, in particular last season’s ‘great escape’ and cup final appearance, which will live long in the memory of every Sunderland fan,” chairman Ellis Short said in a statement on the club website (www.safc.com).

“Sadly, we have not made the progress that any of us had hoped for this season and we find ourselves battling, once again, at the wrong end of the table.
“We have therefore made the difficult decision that a change is needed.”

Sunderland are 17th in the 20-team league with 26 points, one place and one point above the relegation zone.

By Andrea Kades
POLITICAL leaders have called for Central Bank governor Chrystalla Georghadji to quit, after accusations of conflict of interest over her estranged husband who, until Monday, was the lawyer for former Laiki Bank strongman Andreas Vgenopoulos.
“Under the current situation, it seems inevitable that not only should the governor quit but the Central Bank board of directors should too,” ruling DISY said in a statement.
They highlighted that to reach a suitable solution discussions must be held with the European Central Bank (ECB) of which Georghadji is a member of the governing council. According to CyBC state radio, ECB president Mario Draghi has been informed. He stressed that he could not intervene as long as procedures complied with those of the EU and were being followed.
The calls for Georghadji’s resignation have echoed across the political spectrum, but opposition parties have also called President Nicos Anastasiades to task for his handling of the affair.
The government has insisted it was not aware when Georghadji was appointed in April 2014 that her estranged husband was the lawyer for Vgenopoulos, the Greek businessman at the centre of investigations over the collapse of Laiki Bank in March 2013.
AKEL has cast doubt on whether the president, who said he had not known of the conflict of interest when he appointed Georghadji, was really unaware. Even if he had not known then, “the matter was publicised in November when parliament, political parties, media and society as a whole realised there was a conflict of interest. The president, instead of acting accordingly, simply changed her contract,” the party said in a statement.
Nicolas Papadopoulos, DIKO chief also called for the Central Bank governor and board of directors to step down and said Anastasiades should publically apologise to the people for the low level all institutions have fallen to.
According to a statement, Papadopoulos questioned why a criminal case against Vgenopoulos had not begun and why two years after the haircut, not one legal representative had gone to Greece for at least a statement. He added that he had asked the president why he offered reassurance that all problems had been solved but a few months down the line, there were still discussions over conflict of interest.
EDEK leader Marinos Sizopoulos demanded that whoever fell short of their job title should quit. According to a statement, he said it could fall on to the people to take action if the institutions failed.
He reiterated that anyone involved in scandals or serving interests that had negative repercussions for the public should be brought to justice.
DISY parliamentary representative, Nikos Tornaritis, went even further when he called for all parliament to quit and have early elections. His party were quick to distance themselves from his statements saying they were his own views and had not been discussed.

By Evie Andreou
FAILURE to apply environment-friendly legislation Cyprus introduced after its EU accession is severely hampering the collection of battery, electric and electronic waste, waste management company Green Dot’s general manager Kyriacos Parpounas said on Monday.
Two organisations – AFIS and Electrocyclosis – cooperate with Green Dot and since 2008 and 2009 have collected 175 tonnes of batteries and 6,500 tonnes of electric and electronic waste, Parpounas told the Cyprus News Agency on Monday.
AFIS aims to collect 45 tonnes of batteries in 2015, with an annual target of 80 tonnes in the foreseeable future, while Electrocyclosis aims to collect 1800 tonnes of electric and electronic waste, eventually reaching 3500 to 4000 tonnes, Parpounas said.
“So far the development of infrastructure is faster than the original plans. AFIS has already a network of 2800 battery collection bins island wide. Electrocyclosis receives materials from municipalities, electronics shops, scrap yards and schools.”
Despite increasing public participation, the lack of a recycling network such as green spots – recycling areas where the public can transfer domestic waste for proper management and disposal – is hampering further development.
“The Green Spot network was to be implemented by the government but many delays are being recorded since the network was supposed to be created a decade ago,” Parpounas said.
“The public’s response is encouraging and there is increased interest; at the same time to reach these high goals even greater vigilance by all stakeholders is needed to promote the public’s participation even more.”
In the case of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) there are technical difficulties in addition to simply raising awareness.
“Old appliances have metals and are attractive for the scrap metal industry where they are being sold as scrap with important consequences to the environment,” he said. “Unfortunately the consequences of the economic crisis have affected the ability of local authorities to set networks for the collection of WEEE, leaving them at the disposal of illegal collectors that sell them as scrap metal creating a series of environmental dangers for themselves and the country,” he said.
He added that this is regulated by legislation but that the state is not implementing it.

By Elias Hazou
A Munich court on Monday ordered the repatriation to Cyprus of 34 ancient artefacts found in the possession of Turkish art dealer Aydin Dikmen.
In its ruling, the Munich Higher Regional Court ordered the return of the 34 items, 24 of which are ecclesiastical and the rest prehistoric artefacts.
The repatriation process is expected to be completed by the end of April, said Bishop Porfyrios, President of the Brussels-based Synodical Committee for Monuments and Art of the Church of Cyprus.
“It is a partial vindication, as the court also found that the Republic did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that 49 other items we were also claiming belonged to Cyprus,” he told the Mail.
As such, the Munich court said those 49 artefacts belonged to Dikmen, who in the past was confirmed by a US court to be a dealer in looted relics.
“The struggle continues,” the bishop added.
Monday’s announcement by the Munich court was a summary of its findings; the full ruling is expected in one to two weeks.
Meantime Cyprus plans to recover the 49 other artefacts via a separate process with the Munich municipal court, which is expected to put up these items up for auction.
“The Republic will not pay anything extra if it recovers these items through the auction, because the amount will be offset against the €0.5m in fines which Dikmen has previously been ordered to pay the Church,” explained Bishop Porfyrios.
Repatriation of the remaining 49 items would “close the cycle” as far as Cyprus is concerned, he added.
The ruling represents the winding down of a protracted legal battle.
An estimated 20,000 religious, historic and prehistoric artefacts were smuggled out of Cyprus in the seventies and eighties. In October 1997, Dikmen was found in possession of several thousand items from various countries of which Cyprus laid claim to around 300. The estimated worth at the time of all of the items found in Dikmen’s possession was put at more than $40 million.
Dikmen was arrested in Munich, where he lived, after dozens of antiquities were found hidden behind fake walls and under the floors in two apartments he occupied. In addition to the frescoes and icons, Bavarian police also found statues, terracotta pots and coins.
In September 2010 a German court ordered the return of a large number of the artefacts ruling that the church had succeeded in proving provenance for each item.
Dikmen appealed but just over two years later in March 2013, the appeals court ruled that part of the stolen religious artefacts should be returned to Cyprus, which they were later that year.
The church had proved that the 173 artefacts had come from 51 different churches in the north of Cyprus, but it was only a partial decision.
The latest ruling on Monday concerned the remaining 83 items.
The Mail understands that the court decision in the civil case does not entail any other penalties or liabilities for Dikmen, who continues to practice as an art dealer.
In a statement released on Monday, Walk of Truth, a registered charity with a network of culture crime watchers worldwide, said it was “appalled” at the ruling.
“It is shocking to us that the benefit of the doubt should be awarded to an individual who was confirmed by the Court of Indianapolis as a dealer in looted artefacts after he sold four Kanakaria mosaics to a US collector. The German legal system has effectively put his claim on an equal footing with that of a national cultural heritage that has suffered devastating losses.”
The organisation said it has intervened to demand that German authorities return no artefacts to Dikmen for at least one year, as well as publish a full list of the more than 5,000 artefacts seized in his apartment “so that other nations have a chance to identify and claim any treasures of their cultural heritage lost to looting.”

By Andria Kades
IN A BID to rein in its non performing loans, the Housing Finance Corporation (HFC) will hire additional staff to handle arrears, the organisation’s chairman Loizos Papacharalambous told MPs on Monday.
He told the House finance committee that 28 per cent of HFC’s €776 million loan portfolio was non performing but added that all its loans were covered by collateral as it only offered housing loans.
The HFC was created by the state in the 1980s to provide long-term loans to first-time buyers or to low and middle income families that owned no prior property.
Its core tier one capital was 90 million euros or 18 per cent.
The chairman said the HFC planned to raise its provisions for bad debts from 12 per cent to 20 per cent by the end of 2015, on the instruction of the auditor general and the Central Bank.
The organisation also announced it was cutting its interest rate to 3.75 per cent from the current rate of 4.25 per cent starting April 1.
The HFC website was expected to be updated on Monday to include all new loans that will be offered and the new interest rates that will come with more conditions.

By Katharine Houreld

Pakistan hanged 12 convicts on Tuesday, the Interior Ministry said, amid a growing uproar over plans to execute a man whose lawyers say was 14 when he was tortured into a confession of killing a child.

Tuesday’s hangings, including one man whose lawyers say he was arrested when he was 16, were the largest number of people executed on the same day since an unofficial moratorium on capital punishment was lifted in December.

The death sentence cannot be used against a defendant under the age of 18 when the crime was committed. Testimony obtained by torture is inadmissible. Pakistan says the ages of the defendants whose lawyers say they were juveniles is unclear.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif lifted the moratorium on Dec. 17, a day after Pakistani Taliban gunmen attacked a school and killed 134 students and 19 adults. The killings put pressure the government to do more to tackle the Islamist insurgency.

At first, the government said only militants would be executed. But last week it emerged that officials had quietly widened the policy for all prisoners on death row whose appeals had been rejected.

So far, 39 people have been hanged since December. More than 40 are scheduled to hang in the next week, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.

The ministry is reviewing the cases of hundreds more whose appeals have been exhausted. There are more than 8,000 Pakistanis on death row.

Shafqat Hussain is among those due to be executed. Lawyers say he was 14 when he was arrested a decade ago for the kidnap and killing of a child, and that his conviction was based on a confession extracted after nine days of torture.

Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had promised an investigation into his age, but Hussain’s lawyers say neither they nor the family were contacted.

“It’s just a sham, there was no inquiry conducted at all,” said Shahab Siddiqui from Justice Project Pakistan, the legal aid group representing Hussain, who is due to hang on Thursday.

The moratorium on executions had been in place since a democratic government took power from a military ruler in 2008.

Human rights groups say convictions in Pakistan are highly unreliable because its antiquated criminal justice system barely functions, torture is common and police are mostly untrained.

Some of Pakistan’s allies have criticised the executions.

“Executing a person who committed a crime when he was underage is in violation of international law,” said European Union Ambassador Lars-Gunnar Wigemark.

“We do not believe that the death penalty is a deterrent. We are furthermore concerned with possible miscarriages of justice.”

The ministry spokesman said of the 12 executed on Tuesday: “They were not only terrorists, they included the other crimes, some of them were murderers and some did other heinous crimes.”

By Anthony Deutsch

Police raids across Greece last week smashed an international people trafficking ring that made $8 million in profit from smuggling Syrian migrants into Europe, and 16 suspects were arrested, officials said on Tuesday.

The operation served to “reinforce our actions against…the ruthless criminals who facilitate irregular migration to Europe through the Mediterranean Sea,” said Dimitris Avramopoulos, European Union Commissioner for Migration and Home Affairs.

“We are confronted with an unprecedented increase in people embarking on dangerous journeys, to escape wars,” he told reporters in The Hague, alluding in part to Syria’s civil war, which has displaced about half the country’s population.

Rob Wainwright, chief of the European police organisation Europol, said Greek authorities backed by the Netherlands-based Europol dismantled the gang in a two-day sweep last week, the first by a new Europol task force dealing with maritime crime.

He said police staged 20 raids across Greece, arresting 16 suspects – including Syrian, Iraqi, Egyptian and Romanian nationals – and seizing 280 passports, dozens of mobile phones, computers, vehicles and 64,000 euros in cash.

In 2014, more than 220,000 migrants entered Europe, compared to 60,000 a year earlier, and more than 4,000 have died since 2013 attempting the sea crossing, Wainwright said at a media briefing in The Hague.

He said the gang had smuggled 350 people, mostly Syrians, by boat to the Greek islands of Kos and Rhodes, charging as much as 9,000 euros per person, Europol said.

The EU’s executive Commission is drafting a new immigration policy, due to be adopted in May, that would offer expanded opportunities for legal migration as a way of reducing a wave of illegal migrants from the Middle East and Africa.

The new Europol task force will bring together leading intelligence experts from European countries most affected by illegal migration. Working in The Hague, they will share key data and coordinate actions against human traffickers.

By Andreas Rinke

Several senior Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens have for the first time said Germany should consider paying reparations to Greece for Nazi crimes committed during World War Two, breaking ranks with Angela Merkel’s government which has ruled this out.

Relations between Germany and Greece are deteriorating by the day as Athens tries to renegotiate its bailout terms and Berlin fears it will ditch previously agreed financial promises.

Leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, due to meet Merkel in Berlin on Monday, has accused Germany of using tricks to avoid reparations. One of his ministers raised the prospect of seizing German property to compensate victims of a Nazi massacre.

While Berlin says it has honoured its obligations, including a 115-million-deutschemark payment to Greece in 1960, some mainstream politicians have contradicted the government and say it is impossible to draw a line under the highly-charged issue.

“We should make a financial approach to victims and their families,” said Gesine Schwan, a respected member of the Social Democrats (SPD) who share power with Merkel’s conservatives.

“It would be good for us Germans to sweep up after ourselves in terms of our history,” she told Spiegel Online. “Victims and descendants have longer memories than perpetrators and descendents,” said Schwan, twice nominated as a candidate for German president.

Germany, keen to avoid setting a precedent by reopening the issue, argues that the 1990 “Two Plus Four Treaty” signed by then-East Germany and West Germany and the four World War Two allies before German reunification drew a line under future claims.

Resentment runs deep. Nazi forces destroyed scores of Greek villages and killed more than 20,000 civilians between 1941 and 1944. In a chat show on ARD television on Sunday, Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said it was about morals, not money.

“Personally I would be happy if one euro is paid. As long as there was a recognition that this moral debt has been settled,” he said, adding that he was speaking as an individual.

A further question hangs over an “occupation loan” forced on the Bank of Greece which some experts put at 11 billion euros.

Schwan said the occupation loan must “of course be repaid”.

SPD deputy chairman Ralf Stegner, representing the party’s left, said reparations should not be linked to the euro crisis.

“But independently, we must have a discussion about reparations,” Ralf Stegner told Spiegel Online. “After decades, there are still international legal questions to be resolved.”

Greens co-leader Anton Hofreiter said the issue could not be brushed off as it was “neither morally nor legally closed”.

By Stelios Orphanides

The Central Bank of Cyprus’s non-executive board members said governor Chrystalla Georghadji is to blame for the leaking of information about debt of lawmakers to Bank of Cyprus adding she undermined confidence to the institution.

The leaking of information about lawmaker debts, including non-performing loans, angered political parties, forced Bank of Cyprus to apologise for the leak and triggered president Nicos Anastasiades’s intervention which resulted on Sunday in a decision to initiate a procedure to have Georghadji removed from office.

A fire that destroyed a car used by a first division referee appears to have been the work of arsonists, police said on Tuesday.
The 2am fire destroyed a company car used by Leontios Trattos. The vehicle was parked at the building where the 42-year-old referee lives.
Preliminary investigations showed the fire had been set deliberately.
Trattos was also targeted in February last year when a bomb destroyed a car parked outside his home.
This was the latest in a string of attacks in the past year against referees. There have not been any injuries so far.
Late last month, unknown perpetrators placed a bomb on the car used by the wife of referee Vassilis Demetriou.
The vehicle was parked outside their house in Aradippou.
In January, a bomb exploded outside the home of the mother of referee Thomas Mouskos in Limassol, prompting officials to boycott cup and league fixtures.
Cyprus Referee Association (CRA) secretary Charalambos Skapoulis told the Cyprus Mail that the association was considering boycotting football matches fearing things would only get worse.
“This is the most possible scenario. We cannot carry on as usual since it could result in a more serious attack,” he said.
However, abstaining from matches would create problems with the match schedules. The league is now in its final stage, the play-offs.
“We are very much aware of this but something needs to be done. We are going to weigh all options and come up with what we think is the best decision,” Skapoulis said, adding that the CRA meeting will take place either late on Tuesday or Wednesday.
He also expressed his displeasure over the lack of progress in tracking down those behind the attacks on referees.
“If I’m not mistaken this is the sixth time a referee was the target of an attack over the last 12 months. No arrests have been made and no one has answered for these crimes,” he noted.
Trattos himself commented on the attack in an open letter, calling on justice minister Ionas Nicolaou to take immediate action and accusing police of ineffectiveness.
“I’m deeply troubled regarding the state’s inability to do what needs to be done and track down these cowards that have terrorised sports fans. One wonders why none of these cases has been brought to justice, since police have been so effective in other instances. Whenever a referee is the target of an attack, everyone involved repeats the same thing over and over and release the same statements asking for the culprits to be punished and that measures are taken. When three to four days pass the matter is forgotten and everyone goes back to their post,” said the referee.

By Andria Kades
The Bank of Cyprus may extend working hours to meet client needs, spokesperson Michalis Persianis said Tuesday.
“There is an international tendency in the banking system which is becoming more client centred and thus we should improve our services. The days where clients would run to the bank are over,” he said.
The plan is currently in preliminary stages and is expected to be enforced this year.
All staff will continue to work 37 hour weeks and there will be a restructure from within to adapt to the changes. Persianis added that this would be an opportunity for staff to develop their careers and be promoted.
Bank Employees’ Union (ETYK) spokesman Christos Konomis said they had asked for more details on the matter before they could voice their opinion.
“We need to know to what extent this will benefit people and see any studies that can prove it or further analyse it. We cannot have an opinion without all the details we want.”
He questioned whether the plan could be enforced by 2015 as there were many factors that would be affected by this change and would require many negotiations and talks which “may or may not lead to a solution”.

By George Psyllides
The five bills that make up the insolvency framework will not be heading to the plenum on Thursday as more time is needed to process them but an effort will be made to get them there before Easter, lawmakers said on Tuesday.
The decision was taken unanimously by the House Finance and Interior Committees.
“At least as far as DIKO is concerned, an effort will be made to complete the examination of all the bills, all five, before Easter,” DIKO and House Finance Committee chairman Nicolas Papadopoulos said.
The bills were now expected to reach the plenum on April 2.
“We never claimed the issues we were examining were simple,” he added. “I had said that every effort is being made to conclude examination of the bills as soon as possible.”
Papadopoulos said parliament was not responsible for amendments made by the government, without however, blaming the executive.
“We understand they are complicated bills and there are issues that may need to be clarified through discussion in parliament.”
He also challenged those who thought the framework was not sufficient to submit better proposals.
The framework is seen as a safety net for vulnerable groups affected by the crisis.
Interior Committee chairman and AKEL MP Yiannos Lamaris said the bills had weaknesses, adding that they would look into the possibility of having additional sessions.
The main sticking point is provisions regarding loan guarantors, which do not appear to satisfy the majority of parties.
EDEK MP Nicos Nicolaides said the bills had basic deficiencies and gaps.
“We will try to submit all the amendments necessary to make the law on foreclosures and the insolvency framework as fair and comprehensive as possible,” he said.
The two most important areas were protection of insolvent borrowers and protection of guarantors, especially in bankruptcy and foreclosure cases.
The delay means opposition parties will seek to suspend the foreclosures law until April 2.
The suspension caused the interruption of the island’s bailout programme as having effective repossession legislation had been included in the terms.
The International Monetary Fund has withheld some €85 million pending compliance.

By Constantinos Psillides
The mother of a four-year-old girl claimed in a letter addressed to the Education ministry on Tuesday that her daughter was sexually harassed by three boys in pre-school, accusing the ministry of not handling the incident properly and trying to cover up for the teachers.
In her letter, she claims the three four-year-old boys held her daughter down while in the toilets and sexually harassed her. She also claims that her daughter is not the only girl who has been harassed in the class.
The mother also claims that this is not the first time a case of sexual harassment has been reported in the school. A year ago a four-year-old sexually harassed other children – according to the mother – which prompted parents to first contact the ministry.
The child was removed from the school by his parents and enrolled in another pre-school.
The mother claims that following the first incident the pre-school teacher instructed all children not to tell their parents of any incident of a similar nature but instead to report it to her alone.
The mother said that the parents only found out about it after questioning their children.
The education ministry issued a statement in response saying they are fully aware of the incident and that a probe has been launched to determine whether the accusations laid against the teacher are true and whether she neglected her duties.
The ministry pointed out that this is a sensitive issue and should be treated as such. “Children of this age are often overcome by curiosity in matters of sexuality, which is natural,” the statement said.
“Sometimes though things are more serious than they look. It is for this reason that the ministry makes all of its resources available to children and their parents and has ordered for a full investigation to determine if anyone is to blame.”
Head of primary education Elpidoforos Neocleous also asked for caution in dealing with the issue, making clear that under no circumstance was any child sexually abused and explained that children at this age are not fully aware of their actions.
Neocleous also spoke of the incident that took place last year.
“It was an innocent game. One of the boys used to harass both girls and boys while playing with them. When his behaviour was reported we took the parents aside and advised them to seek help to find out why their child was acting in such a manner. They decided to enrol him in a different school and heeded our advice. The boy now is absolutely fine,” Neocleous said, adding that he personally instructed the teachers of the pre-school to monitor kids more closely and to not leave them unattended.
“The full report will be on my desk by the end of the week. If indeed the teachers are to blame then you can rest assured that proper disciplinary action will be taken. We are not sweeping anything under the rug. We want incidents like that reported so they can be handled by professionals,” he said.
Neocleous pointed out that once the second incident was reported, the ministry decided to dispatch a second teacher to monitor the class and arranged for a psychologist to visit the school and assess the situation.

By Maria Gregoriou

Cyprus is very aptly referred to as Othello’s island, as Shakespeare’s play is set on the island. This reference is also taken up by the third annual conference on medieval and renaissance art, literature, social and cultural history, taking place from Friday until Sunday at the Centre for Visual Arts and Research in Nicosia.

We may be home to Othello, but there is much more history to our island. The medieval Kingdom of Cyprus was one of the wealthiest and most sophisticated royal courts in Europe, whose legacy continues to have an impact on European culture.

While the upcoming get together of great academics focuses on past times and history, it is also a way for us to take a step forward, and discuss new ways to think about certain aspects of the history of this period and ways in which they may be linked together.

Apart from the main conference events, there will also be some extra activities goes on.

On Friday there will be a public lecture by Dr Chris Laoutaris of the Shakespeare Institute, who is the author of the book Shakespeare and the Countess. After the lecture there will be a conference meal where further discussions and socialising can take place.

As Saturday in World Poetry Day, all those involved in the conference can view a number of screenings and listen to some poetry and prose readings at the Home for Co-operation, under the name White Flags: Bridges within and between Lebanon and Cyprus.

The conference officially ends at 6pm on Sunday but on Monday there will be a trip to the painted churches of the Troodos Mountains going on.

Othello’s Island 2015
Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Art, Literature, Social and Cultural history. March 20-22. CVAR, 285 Ermou Street, Nicosia. 10am. Registration and full programme on www.othellosisland.org. Tel: 22-300999

By Elias Hazou
Natural gas from the Aphrodite gas field can be channelled to Cyprus for domestic energy consumption as well as to regional exports, the head of the Cyprus Hydrocarbons Company (CHC) Toula Onoufriou said on Tuesday.
Approximately one billion cubic meters (bcm) a year would be sufficient to cover the island’s energy needs, with the bulk of the gas diverted to exports, the official told the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Conference.
The Aphrodite play, operated by Texas-based Noble Energy, holds an estimated 4.5 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas.
Onoufriou said that talks are underway between the government and the Block 12 partners, Noble and Delek, for selling the Aphrodite gas and exploring regional markets for export.
Last weekend the CHC and its Egyptian counterpart, EGAS, signed a memorandum of understanding for a technical study into a subsea pipeline and onshore infrastructure options for exporting the gas to Egypt.
Currently Egypt faces fuel shortages and Cyprus can satisfy part of these needs, Onoufriou noted.
On diverting some of the Aphrodite gas to the domestic energy grid, she said authorities and the Block 12 partners are examining the method as well as timeline for piping the gas from floating platforms.
Financing was one of the aspects being looked at, she added, and there were various possibilities, including investment from third parties.
There has been a great deal of interest from organisations in investing in the facilities, the CHC head said, but did not elaborate.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the conference, John Burley, Vice President of Business Development for BG Group Egypt, said the company’s facilities there can absorb gas from both Aphrodite and Israel’s Leviathan field, provided that part of this gas would be channelled to domestic demand in Egypt.
The CHC has been holding talks with BG Egypt for the possible export of Cypriot gas to the company’s LNG facilities in Idku.
BG Group recently signed a provisional deal with two Egyptian state-owned gas corporations. The company has agreed to invest $4 billion (€3.4 billion) into a joint venture to supply domestic gas in Egypt and for export to the group’s international customers. In exchange, the Egyptian government has committed to repay BG the approximately $900 million that it owes and to enter talks to agree a better price for domestic gas.

A French comedian was found guilty on Wednesday of condoning terrorism for a joke posted on his Facebook account after Islamist attacks in Paris that killed 17 people in January, but escaped a possible jail sentence.

The Paris court sentenced Dieudonne M’bala M’bala to a suspended sentence of two months in jail. He had risked up to 7 years in prison and a potential 100,000 euro ($106,000) fine.

Dieudonne – who has repeatedly been fined by the courts for hate speech – wrote just days after the attacks on Facebook that he felt “Charlie Coulibaly.”

That was a play on the ubiquitous “I am Charlie” slogan of solidarity following the attacks against cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo weekly, using the last name of one of the Paris attackers.

Amedy Coulibaly killed one policeman in the attacks and four Jews during a raid on a Jewish supermarket.

Dieudonne has been found guilty seven times for slander or anti-Semitic statements, while his shows have been banned in some cities as a threat to public order. Authorities say he owes thousands of euros in fines related to past convictions.

The comedian, who insists he is not anti-Semitic, is credited with inventing the “quenelle”, a gesture critics have likened to an inverted Nazi salute.

Dieudonne posted his Facebook comment on the eve of a huge public march of solidarity in Paris in which more than 3.7 million people, many carrying “I am Charlie” signs, honoured the journalists, policemen and shoppers killed by Islamist gunmen.

By Emily Stephenson

Real estate mogul and TV personality Donald Trump took the first steps on Wednesday toward launching a 2016 presidential campaign, a sign the businessman may jump into the Republican race after publicly considering it in years past.

Trump said he had formed an exploratory committee to determine whether to run, and that he had hired staff in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Those states are among the first to hold Republican and Democratic presidential nominating contests.

“We have lost the respect of the entire world,” Trump said in a statement Wednesday. “I am the only one who can make America truly great again!”

Trump, who owns several hotels and hosts the reality show The Apprentice on NBC, has toyed with running before but has indicated that this time, he is serious about considering it.

A growing list of Republicans is weighing White House runs, including Florida Senator Marco Rubio, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

Trump has garnered attention for his sharp criticism of President Barack Obama’s policies. But he also ruffled feathers with discredited questions over whether Obama was born in the United States, which led to Obama releasing his long-form birth certificate to end the controversy.

Trump will not renew his contract for The Apprentice while he explores running, according to The New Hampshire Union Leader newspaper. Trump said in the statement that he would go to New Hampshire Thursday to meet with business owners and veterans.

By Caroline Copley and Matthias Sobolewski

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Wednesday time was running out for Greece, which is trying to renegotiate the terms of its international bailout, and urged the government in Athens to focus on regaining competitiveness.

Greece has not made much progress with the implementation of reforms since its bailout deal was extended in February and euro zone officials have called on Athens to stop wasting time, given that the country could run out of money by the end of March.

At a news conference in Berlin about the German government’s spending plans, Schaeuble said Greece had repeatedly said it didn’t want a third bailout programme.

“We have the impression, and everyone who is dealing with the question shares the impression, that time is running out for Greece. They obviously have certain problems,” he said.

The conservative minister also rejected a debt restructuring and said the discussion should focus on how the country can make its economy more competitive.

“A debt restructuring is not the issue but rather how Greece can get back on track to become competitive and regain access to financial markets,” he said. “Whoever is talking about a debt restructuring shows they don’t realise what the problems are.”

Tensions between Germany and Greece have simmered in recent weeks but Schaeuble rejected criticism that his tough comments on Greece had exacerbated relations between the two countries.

“I don’t know of any impolite statement from me towards Greek politicians,” he said, adding he had always behaved correctly towards his Greek counterpart Yanis Varoufakis.

Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel leapt to Schaeuble’s defence and warned against reducing the debt crisis to a duel between the two nations.

“There is no conflict between Germany and Greece,” he said.