Current Events

Akamas National Forest Park’s famed “Avakas Gorge” trail is now officially closed on account of safety issues.

Cyprus’ Department of Forests has announced that the development comes after unfavorable observations such as slip-prone terrain, higher water levels and the gorge being vulnerable to falling pieces of soil and rocks.

They have further stated that the trail shall remain closed until the risks are fully eliminated.

They apologized to the public for causing the unintentional inconvenience, but stressed how the measures were in fact being taken in their best interest.

A violent incident in a school gym led to a student sustaining injuries and losing consciousness.

Local news platform Phileleftheros has reported that a group of 3 students picked up and threw him up, which led to him collapsing on the floor.

The victim in question lost his consciousness the moment of the impact.

The school authorities called the ambulance, which took the injured student to hospital.

The student is not in any danger of losing his life. Preliminary exams showed that the victim sustained an injury to the shoulder blade.

Meanwhile, it was found out that one of the three students was expelled for injuring another student in an altercation prior to this one.

The school is taking the necessary steps to take action against the perpetrators, while helping the victim’s parents find alternate ways for him to continue education.

The Cyprus Police have charged the man they caught for driving under the influence of alcohol.

The man, who underwent a breathalyzer test ended up testing six times more than the permissible limit.

Specifically, the police said that the man registered 138 mg on the alcohol test, as opposed to the 22 mg maximum.

The man was arrested by the police and charged at the station, whereupon he was released.

His car remains under police custody.

The meteorological department of Cyprus has announced its predictions of moderate temperatures and cloudy skies.

They have said that Sunday will expectedly be normal with cloudiness and potential cases of rain showers, fog or mist – especially in the eastern regions.

Winds shall flow towards the north-east, and is expected to be variable. They will be medium in intensity and go up to 3 or even 4 on the Beaufort scale.

The sea, on the other hand, will remain smooth and mellow.

Temperatures will expectedly be roughly 13 degrees Celsius in the mountainous regions, 22 degrees Celsius inland and 23 degrees Celsius in the coasts.

In the latest developments, Cyprus Airways is launching direct flights from Larnaca to Dubrovnik in Croatia.

The news comes after Cyprus Airways revealed their flight schedule for summer 2024.

The direct flights will run for two days a week – on Fridays and Mondays from the 1st of July to the 6th of September.

OECD’s PISA test results have revealed that a major percentage of Cypriot students lack even the basic required proficiency in reading.

According to PISA international assessments, over sixty one percent of children of 15 years of age are insufficient at reading.

In the same age bracket, fifty two percent of students had subpar skills in physical science and fifty two percent lacked math skills.

Average score in Cyprus for mathematics was 418 – lower than PISA’s 472 average and the average score of forty seven nations. The island nation’s scores are at par with Bulgaria and Moldova and are above thirty two other countries.

Average score in Cyprus for physical science was 411 – lower than PISA’s 480 average as well as the average score of fifty one countries. Cyprus’ scores are equal to nine other countries, with twenty other nations behind it.

Average score in Cyprus for reading comprehension was 381 points, much less than the 468 PISA average and lower than sixty-one other countries. Cyprus’ scores are similar to that of three nations, and stands above that of sixteen other nations.

The Cyprus Police have determined the clothes and human remains found in Akamas to be of a British man.

The man was 69 when he went missing in the month of April in 2023.

A police officer on off-duty-time found the remains while on a hunting trip with friends.

According to Michalis Nicolaou, the spokesperson for the Paphos police, the bones belonged to one person and put together constituted a full skeleton.

Nicolas Charalambous (the police’s forensic pathologist) along with the Cyprus Institute of Neurology and Genetics’ anthropologist led the investigation together.

Genetic tests results are still pending, but they believe that the remains and clothes do in fact belong to the missing British man.

A fire that broke out at a sauna station on the ground floor of a building has been put out with the combined power of 3 fire engines.

The fire was reported by the Moutayiaka house’s owners, who reported the outbreak to the fire department.

After firefighters reached the scene, they took some time but ultimately put the fire under control.

The fire services and the police are now investigating the fire.

Over twenty thousand Ed Sheeran concert tickets were sold within the span of 24 hours for his upcoming Larnaca concert.

Roughly ten thousand people visited Cyprus’ Ticketmaster website the moment the tickets became available to the public, which was roughly at 10am in the morning.

A total of 21,863 tickets were sold within 24 hours.

The concert, slated to take place in September 2024 already has their A-tier and D-tier tickets sold out. It will have English artists Callum as the special guest.

The Larnaca concert is a part of Sheeran’s world tour, which he will start from Bahrain in 2024 January.

A fire has destroyed over a hundred hay bales and a tractor in an agricultural region near Paphos.

Michalis Nicolaou, the spokesperson for the police in Paphos declared that the fire in question broke out at around 4 am in the morning in Neo Chorio’s neighboring area of Kokkinogremos.

According to Nicolaou, the tractor was worth €5,000 and value of all the destroyed hay bales also stood at €5,000, bringing the total to €10,000.

The police and fire department have sealed off the scene till they conclude their investigations.

So far, the cause of the fire is not known.

A major operation led by European border protection agency FRONTEX in collaboration with the Cyprus Police has sent back 14 individuals from foreign nations who were illegally residing in Cyprus.

This is the eleventh such operation, which will now have sent over one-hundred-and-seven individuals back to their nations of origin.

The current set of fourteen individuals shall be sent via air by Greece under FRONTEX supervision.

Overall, over 7,790 people living illegally in Cyprus have been deported.

The Cyprus Meteorological Service has announced that the island nation will see sunny skies, with some gentle breeze in after noon.

On the other hand, winds are set to vary between a force 3-4 on the Beaufort scale, with moderate-to-strong winds going north to north-easterly.

The winds will be variable, moderate to strong, northerly to north-easterly, force 3 to 4 Beaufort over a smooth to slight sea.

The temperatures are set to go up to 12 degrees Celsius in the mountainous regions, 23 degrees Celsius inland and 22 degrees Celsius to 23 degrees Celsius in the coasts.

The phone call which was previously set to take place between UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides has been postponed by one day.

The alteration in schedule was announced on X (previously, Twitter) by Victoras Papadopoulos, the Director of the Press Office for the President of Cyprus.

The president, who is currently in Berlin to attend the working dinner with Olaf Scholz (the Chancellor of Germany) as host and Charles Michel (the president of the European Council) as the convenor.

The aforementioned dinner is one out of the four working dinners President Michel is convening for the discussion of the European Union’s 2024 agendas.

In the latest incident, the Paphos Police has arrested a man for stealing a machine used for construction purposes.

The police said that the theft in question was reported by the company’s owner, 55. He reported the theft of an assortment of tools and materials, which were kept in the open within the premises.

The investigation thereupon conducted then led to the issue of a warrant and the arrest of the man, 39, a Paphos resident.

The high dust levels in Cyprus have been a major issue in the past couple of weeks, but that is set to go away very soon.

The Cyprus Meteorology Service has informed that the fine particles of dust in the air are present at the moment but will soon disappear.

Additionally, the weather will clear up further and be warmer for the next few days, before falling. Winds shall range from mild to moderate over somewhat rough seas and with a force of 3-4 on the Beaufort scale.

The rise in temperature is expected to go to 29 degrees Celsius inland, 28 degrees Celsius – 29 degrees Celsius in the coasts, and 21 degrees Celsius in the mountains.

Furthermore, these 3-4 days shall be largely clear, with the possibility of partial cloudiness and potentially isolated incidents of mild rain in the western region and/or mountains.

The number of those who are unemployed have reduced by a major number.

According to the Office of Statistics, as of October 2023, the island nation has seen an unemployment rate lowered by 17.4% – which equals over 1,951 people. This has made the total number of those who have been registered as unemployed stand at 9,232 – a far cry from 2022’s 11,183 individuals.

Speaking specifically with season-wise fluctuations in view, October this year recorded 11,747 individuals who were officially unemployed – which again is less than 11,897 in September of the same year and 13,695 from 2022 October.

Several factors are being considered among the reasons for the rather sharp decline – this includes lower people entering the workforce and a hiring boom in sectors like construction, administration, food, accommodation and trade.

All of these factors indicate that the employment scene in Cyprus is set to undergo a positive transformation.

A young man riding a scooter was run over by a vehicle.

The young man, aged 17, was riding his scooter between Chlorakas and Coral Bay when a car ran him over.

The car in question left the hotel car park and moved into the road, which is how it hit the scooter.

The injured man was taken to Paphos General Hospital’s A&E wing, where doctors treated his broken left femur and tended to his various injuries. He is expected to recover.

The police in Paphos are currently making their investigation into the matter.

The Cyprus Police has announced that they have arrested twelve people for living and working in Cyprus illegally.

The arrests, which happened as part of a police raid of three properties in their campaign against illegal staying and working, was done in cooperation with the immigration services of Cyprus.

The police found eleven individuals working in catering services, and a twelfth staying in the country illegally.

The employers of all three places were told by officials from the labor office that they will be fined for employing undeclared workers.

A a young Invernesian boy who was found in a swimming pool unconscious has passed away.

The boy, aged six, was vacationing with family (specifically his sister and their mother) in Cyprus’ Paphos, when the unfortunate incident occurred.

According to the Cypriot police, the boy (who shall remain unnamed) apparently accidentally fell in the pool and lost consciousness.

He was given first aid by the pool lifeguard, and then taken to the hospital in the state of unconsciousness.

Given his condition, here was then taken the Makarios III specialist hospital, where he later passed away.

Police investigation is currently underway.

The migrant crisis has intensified incredibly. This latest of development includes the incident of a man setting himself on fire near the office of migration services in Larnaca after his asylum application was rejected by the authorities.

The man did survive, however, and is being treated for burns at the A&E department of Larnaca’s General Hospital.

The man, 24, did this act to protest the rejection of his application for asylum. He even brought the flammable substance in the bottle to make it happen, thus anticipating such a development.