TUCKED away in a corner of Prodromos is a colonial stone building with a beautifully-kept courtyard, neatly-cut grass dotted with bright pink flowers and towering pine trees.
Situated 1,406 metres above sea level, the location suggests luxury hotel or quiet retreat. It is in fact a college – the Cyprus Forestry College – some of the graduates of which have been all over television screens in the past month gallantly battling a spate of summer forest fires.
Students at the college say they love the place but sometimes find it isolated given that the nearest town is at least an hour’s drive away, so no skipping off to the city to sit in a café, between lectures.  Winter is especially hard, they say but snowy Prodromos is also a fantastic sight... Read on

A 12-YEAR-OLD Paphos boy has overcome a brain tumour and gone on to play in the under-14 finals representing Cyprus at the Arsenal International Soccer festival in London.
Odysseus Alexandrou is one of two boys who were scouted from Paphos to play for the under 14’s Cyprus Warriors. The youngster plays for the Paphos warriors, which is an Arsenal soccer-school affiliated football team.
His mother Cathy Alexandrou who is also the Paphos Warriors spokeswoman said: “Three years ago Ody [Odysseus] started failing at school and after several tests doctors in Cyprus diagnosed he was deaf. But they couldn’t work out why.” He was then taken to London to visit a number of specialists... 2 comments

JUST OVER 20 years ago, in August 1990, I broke the Asil Nadir Polly Peck story in a Sunday newspaper. I had discovered that there was a massive Inland Revenue inquiry into the personal tax affairs of the tycoon who was then ranked   as the 36th richest man in Britain.
From his opulent base in one of London’s most exclusive squares, he controlled a conglomerate that included the Del Monte fruit packing business and sansui electronics, as well as a clothing business from which the company derived its name.
Dubbed the sultan of Berkeley square, he employed more than 40,000 people worldwide, had rich and powerful friends and had been a massive donor to the Tory party, giving more than £500,000 to the party... 8 comments

A HOT BREEZE rustled in the trees overhead, bringing a faint stench of rotten meat and an ominous rumbling sound. Our party came to an abrupt halt.
False alarm: the sound is just truck passing over a nearby hill, but for a moment I imagined a crocodile’s gaping jaws as it lunges out of a nearby rock pool, and I began to wonder if a mackerel fillet and a long stick were adequate protection for the task at hand.
This was the scene in a murky wood below Oikos village on Friday where, after two sightings, I had come in search of an elusive-crocodile like creature that was terrorising villagers... 13 comments

 
HEAD down towards Ayia Thekla just before you reach the busy Ayia Napa strip and you’ll come across a beachside joint that is nothing to really look at, but boasts a lovely character and one very hard-working couple.
Pop your head round into the swelteringly hot kitchen and you’ll meet the cheerful 67-year-old Gabriel and 61-year-old Martha Yianni, busying themselves in this little place rented from the local council for the past 13 years.
Having lived in England for much of their lives, Martha always longed for the day that she would come back to her homeland and set up base in the place she loves the most... 1 comment

“DOES this say ‘playful luxury’ to you?” asks an immaculately-attired Andreas Panayiotou as he sprawls across his penthouse office’s marble floor in front of a silver throne.
Two minutes later he’s stretched across the boardroom table, submitting to the Evening Standard photographer’s every request.
Despite a reputation as one who rarely gives interviews, Panayiotou, who rose from a family of Greek Cypriot dry cleaners in London’s East End to 158th place in the Sunday Times Rich List via inspired property development in the East End, is clearly enjoying himself... Read on

FOR MOST, the onset of summer means travel and adventure, for the relatives of the Helios crash victims, August makes the weight of the dead on their backs that bit heavier.  Five years have passed since the aviation crash that sent spasms through society and prompted a wave of public grief unprecedented in peacetime. For the relatives of the victims, little has changed since the day the ground was ripped from under them.On the fifth anniversary, the Sunday Mail visited two families struggling to deal with the most penetrative and resilient kind of grief: personal loss... 6 comments

FIVE years on, the tragic events of 14 August 2005 continue to haunt the families and friends of the 121 souls who perished aboard flight ZU55 of Helios Airways.The flight, which left Larnaca t 09:07 local time, was en route to Athens, and was scheduled to continue to Prague. Hours later, the Boeing 737-300 hurtled to the ground north of Marathon, Greece, after running out of fuel. No one on board survived the impact.According to the subsequent fact-finding report, the airflow valve was set at a 14-degree angle from the manual position, allowing for partial pressurisation. For this type of Boeing, it should have been set on auto before takeoff... 2 comments

FAMILIES and holidays - that annual period of quality time we’re told is so vital for healthy family life - should be the perfect mix. So why does it so often go so very wrong?
According to a recent article by BBC News Magazine, British travellers pinpointed the journey to a holiday destination as being one of the most stressful parts of going away, while others said that most falling out is because spending a lot of time together as a family is strange after being unused to doing so at home.
“Many modern day couples spend most of their time surrounded by other people so when they’re away together for extended period of time they find no common ground so that creates insecurities and tensions,” explains clinical psychologist and life coach, Annie Pattichi... Read on

WITH the grape harvest now well underway and with wineries slashing the amount they can buy, agricultural union officials fear there could be a massive glut of up to 12 million kilos of grapes this year.
“Normal production levels of grapes are around 30 million kilos, but the wineries this year plan to buy around 15 million kilos,” Panicos Leonida the district secretary of EKA, the Agriculture Union told the Sunday Mail, adding that last year wineries purchased around 22.5 million kilos.
He said that although two-and-a-half million kilos were destroyed by the recently introduced green harvest methods, that still leaves around 12 million kilos of excess grapes... 10 comments