Wednesday, July 22, 2026
79fd3d4b-a137-4fdf-b143-52bc11ff39ed
| Summary | ⛅️ Clear until afternoon, returning in the evening. |
|---|---|
| Temperature Range | 24°C to 32°C (76°F to 90°F) |
| Feels Like | Low: 82°F | High: 108°F |
| Humidity | 69% |
| Wind | 11 km/h (7 mph), Direction: 151° |
| Precipitation | Probability: 0%, Type: No precipitation expected |
| Sunrise / Sunset | 🌅 05:50 AM / 🌇 07:57 PM |
| Moon Phase | Waxing Gibbous (28%) |
| Cloud Cover | 8% |
| Pressure | 1006.16 hPa |
| Dew Point | 73.46°F |
| Visibility | 6.2 miles |
By Antonia Christou
As Cyprus handed back the rotating presidency of the EU Council on June 30, one of its more consequential environmental marks is also one of its least publicised. In February 2026, under the Cypriot presidency, the Council signed off on a long-stalled directive that, for the first time, brings a whole group of PFAS, the so-called “forever chemicals”, under EU pollution limits for surface water and, for groundwater, regulates them at all; the European Parliament confirmed the deal weeks later.
Agriculture and Environment Minister Maria Panayiotou called water quality “an utmost priority” of the presidency. For an island whose economy and identity are bound to the sea, that should be more than a slogan.
But the PFAS story does not end at the water’s edge, and the headline flatters the substance. Two pieces of EU law are about to reshape daily life in Cyprus, and both come with big exceptions.
PFAS are a large family of synthetic chemicals prized for resisting grease, water and stains. That same durability is the problem: they barely break down, accumulating in soil, water, food and human bodies over decades. Regulators link long-term exposure to some of them with cancer, genetic damage, harm to reproduction and damage to internal organs.
Roughly 46 per cent of Europe’s surface waters and a quarter of its groundwater already fail to meet “good chemical status.”
The most immediate change is the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (EU 2025/40, the PPWR). Because it is a regulation rather than a directive, it applies automatically across every member state: there is no need to be transposed into Cypriot law.
From August 12, 2026, food-contact packaging cannot be placed on the EU market if it contains PFAS at or above set limits, with no grace period to clear old stock. In practice that reaches producers, importers, supermarkets, bakeries, cafés, delivery operators, hotels and catering. Reassurances that packaging is “food grade” will no longer do; businesses will need to demonstrate compliance through supplier documentation.
The PPWR goes after more than just one chemical; it targets the throwaway model itself. From February 12, 2027, take-away places must let customers fill their own cup, at the same price as a disposable. From February 12, 2028, they must also offer a reusable option through a return or deposit system. And from January 1, 2030, single-use plastic packaging for food and drink consumed on the premises is banned.
That is the headline. The exemptions are where it softens. The 2028 reusable-packaging rule does not apply to micro-enterprises, i.e. businesses with fewer than ten staff and turnover or assets under €2 million. That sounds like a small exception until you look at Cyprus specifically, where cafés, kiosks, bars and takeaways are overwhelmingly micro-enterprises.
In practice, the exemption lifts the reusable-packaging duty off many of the outlets most responsible for single-use cup waste. The businesses big enough to fall under the rule are mainly the hotels and the chains. The many small independents that sell most of the cups are not, so the exemption lets them off.
The other new measures bend too. The 2030 on-premises ban excuses venues with no access to drinking water. And the target of putting 10 per cent of products in reusable form is only something businesses are asked to “endeavour” to do, not a firm requirement.
Rules are only as good as their enforcement, and Cyprus’ record gives little comfort. Cyprus was more than a year late transposing the 2019 Single-Use Plastics Directive, passing its law only in 2022 under the threat of EU infringement action, after MPs granted repeated extensions so businesses could sell off their stock.
Charalampos Theopemptou, the former Greens MP and environmentalist, noted at the time that the earlier plastic-bag law had been rushed through days before a court appearance and ended up riddled “with many loopholes” and warned that the plastics directive was heading the same way.
The warning held up. In a 2024 EU-wide assessment, the Rethink Plastic alliance and Seas at Risk named Cyprus among Europe’s “enforcement laggards,” where banned items such as plastic straws and cutlery are still openly sold or handed out free in takeaway restaurants.
A regulation like the PPWR removes one familiar excuse: there is no transposition to stall, but enforcement still falls to national authorities, and on single-use plastics those authorities have repeatedly looked the other way.
The water directive that Cyprus helped finalise deserves the same scrutiny. During negotiations, member states aligned PFAS limits with existing drinking-water thresholds, rather than the stricter levels scientists had urged, weakened a proposed cap on pesticide mixtures and pushed full compliance out to 2039 and, with extensions, to 2045.
Listing a chemical is not the same as getting it out of the water, and national transposition is due only by December 2027.
For an island that lives off clean water and a living coastline, the direction of travel is right. But direction is not delivery. On current form, the risk is not that Cyprus lacks the rules, it actually has them in abundance, but that it treats them, once again, as paperwork to be managed rather than pollution to be stopped.
Antonia Christou is the President of the Board of Friends of the Earth Cyprus
The prison officers’ union Isotita (Equality) on Tuesday accused Justice Minister Costas Fitiris of staging a “PR stunt” during his recent visit to the central prisons.
In a statement, the union said the minister visited the prison 48 hours after a fire broke out in Wing 4, arguing that the damage had already been repaired and additional fire safety measures implemented by the time he arrived.
Equality also rejected what it described as the ministry’s “false and offensive” claim that a meeting with the union’s leadership could not take place because its president and secretary were absent.
According to the union, five of its officials, including its secretary, were on duty at the prisons during the minister’s visit but “were neither sought nor informed” that Fitiris was at the facility. It called on the ministry to withdraw the statement.
The union further questioned who had briefed the minister on working conditions and prison safety, arguing that officers who tackled the fire and those injured during the incident were not given the opportunity to share their experiences or concerns.
It also complained that it had been excluded from discussions on prison safety despite representing frontline staff, adding that issues relating to prison conditions have already been raised before European and international organisations.
Equality said it was still awaiting written responses from the minister to concerns raised in an earlier statement.
It maintained that key safety problems at the prisons remain unresolved, alleging that wing doors continue to operate manually, overcrowding persists and prison officers are still required to work in conditions which, it said, “endanger their safety”.
The European Union remains committed to supporting United Nations efforts to achieve a comprehensive settlement of the Cyprus issue, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said after speaking with UN envoy Maria Angela Holguin on Tuesday.
The telephone conversation took place ahead of Holguin’s visit to Brussels on Wednesday and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ visit to Cyprus next week as diplomatic activity intensifies around renewed efforts to restart negotiations.
In a post following the call, Kallas described it as “a good phone conversation” and said the pair had discussed recent developments on the Cyprus issue.
“The EU remains firmly committed to supporting the UN led efforts for Cyprus,” she said.
Kallas added that they also discussed “the importance of maintaining momentum towards a comprehensive settlement of the issue” and agreed to continue their discussions during the UN General Assembly in September.
Holguin is due to meet European Commission Cyprus envoy Raffaele Fitto in Brussels on Wednesday, before travelling to Ankara for talks with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Friday.
Her meetings come ahead of Guterres’ visit to the island next week, during which he will hold separate meetings with President Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman before chairing a joint meeting between the two leaders.
The renewed diplomatic contacts form part of wider efforts to create conditions for the resumption of formal Cyprus settlement negotiations, with Holguin also working towards convening an enlarged meeting involving the two sides, the three guarantor powers and the United Nations later this year.
Both Christodoulides and Erhurman have said any future meeting must produce meaningful progress rather than becoming an end in itself.
Turkish Cypriot ‘foreign minister’ Tahsin Ertugruloglu on Tuesday met Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister Kemal Bozay in Nicosia, with the former having been something of an outlier in refusing to offer his support for, and at times being outright critical of the “new initiative” being undertaken with the aim of bringing about a resumption of negotiations in earnest on the Cyprus problem.
Ertugruloglu’s office reported that during Tuesday’s meeting, the pair had discussed “relations between the ministries and regional developments”.
Criticism of the “new initiative” on the ‘ministry’s’ part came most notably last week in its reaction to the announcement that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will visit Cyprus next week, highlighting thatUN envoy Maria Angela Holguin had in July last year said that no common ground for a solution exists between the island’s two sides.
The state of affairs has changed since then, with pro-federal solution candidate Tufan Erhurman being electedas Turkish Cypriot leader in October last year, with he and President Nikos Christodoulides agreeing in December last year that “the real aim is a solution … with political equality”, and Guterres having undertaken a “new initiative” to bring about talks in recent months.
Despite this, the ‘ministry’ asserted that “the TRNC entirely rejects these new developments as initiatives aimed at mortgaging the will of the Turkish Cypriot people”, and warned that “bringing back previously failed models in different forms does not contribute to the search for an agreement”.
Instead, it said, it “only serves to perpetuate the current status quo which benefits the Greek Cypriots”.
It therefore called on the UN to “recognise the just and legitimate status of the Turkish Cypriot people, to lift the isolation of the TRNC without further delay, and to respect the existence of two sovereign, equal states and two peoples on the island of Cyprus”.
This position has come in direct contravention to that of the foreign ministry in Ankara, with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan having last month signed a joint declaration offering his support for Guterres’ efforts in Cyprus with the EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos, and Internal Affairs Commissioner Magnus Brunner.
Guterres visit to Cyprus will be preceded by Holguin travelling to both Brussels and Ankara, where she is expected to meet Fidan on Friday, while Fidan also discussed the Cyprus problem with Guterres during a telephone call last week.
With Turkey having offered its support for Guterres’ efforts in Cyprus, efforts have been made to bring dissenting voices in northern Cyprus onside.
The north’s ‘transport minister’ Erhan Arikli disclosed earlier this month that Turkey’s foreign ministry had telephoned him to tell him that “my comment was very unfair, wrong, and incomplete” after he criticised Turkey’s endorsement of Guterres’ ongoing efforts.
He said he had been told to “be patient” and to “not panic”, and said that he now “regretted” not having consulted his contacts in Ankara before issuing the initial criticism.
The search for a solution to the Cyprus problem is not served by “policies of isolation or wise words”, House President Annita Demetriou said on Tuesday, with efforts both in Cyprus and abroad ramping up with the aim of bringing about a resumption of negotiations in earnest.
She told her party, Disy’s annual event to mark the anniversary of Turkey’s invasion of the island that both United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ “new initiative” and the European Commission’s appointment of Raffaele Fitto as its Cyprus problem envoy are “important”.
As such, she said, a “new window of diplomatic mobility is being created”.
“We do not have the right to not take it. We must be present, reliable, and constructive, persistently presenting our positions and demands,” she said
She added that “at this critical juncture for the Cyprus issue, our party is ready to stand its ground”.
“We will not be part of easy rhetoric or cheap criticism. We will support every effort which serves our national goal and strengthens the international position of the Republic of Cyprus,” she said.
In line with this, she said that her party’s position “is not built on easy slogans”, but on “strategy, seriousness, and consistency”.
“The goal remains singular and non-negotiable: the liberation of Cyprus and the reunification of our homeland into a state with one sovereignty, one citizenship, and one international personality, which will operate in accordance with the resolutions of the United Nations and the principles and values of the European Union,” she said.
Disy’s position, she said, is to “demand the truth about every missing person, justice for war crimes, the return of the displaced to their ancestral homes, the protection of our cultural and religious heritage”, and “a free and reunited Cyprus, without occupying troops, without anachronistic guarantees, and without intervention rights”.
She then made reference to the party’s founder, late president Glafcos Clerides, who was initially installed as acting president after the fall of the Greek-backed military junta in July 1974, saying that “in the most difficult moments of the modern history of Cyprus, he chose the path of responsibility instead of populism”.
“At a moment when Cyprus was counting its wounds, with thousands of displaced struggling to rebuild their lives, with families still searching for their loved ones on the lists of missing persons and with democracy deeply wounded, Glafcos Clerides put the burden of the homeland upon his shoulders,” she said.
She added that Clerides had worked “with composure, with insight, and with a sense of responsibility”.
“And so, Disy was founded in 1976, to unite, house, and express those who believed that Cyprus could rise again. It was created not to seize power, but to serve the homeland,” she said.
A 38-year-old woman was injured after two men riding a moped snatched her handbag while she was walking in Larnaca on Tuesday morning.
According to police, the incident happened at around 6am when the woman was approached by two people travelling on a moped.
Police said the passenger grabbed the woman’s handbag, causing her to fall to the ground before the pair fled the scene.
The stolen bag contained €30 in cash, personal documents and other belongings.
The woman was taken to Larnaca general hospital, where doctors found she had suffered minor abrasions and friction burns to her hand and foot, providing first aid before being discharged.
Police have launched an investigation into the robbery and are searching for the two suspects.
The circumstances surrounding the incident remain under investigation by the Larnaca CID.
A day after sirens rang out in the Republic – audible in the occupied north – to mark July 20, the anniversary of the 1974 invasion, we asked people on both sides how it makes them feel to hear the sirens.
Kevin Keegan, a two-time Ballon d’Or winner and former England captain, visited Cyprus on several occasions during the 1980s, taking part in exhibition matches that remain part of local football history.
Tributes were shared on Tuesday following his death, with clubs and supporters recalling his appearances in Cyprus and his interaction with fans.
His first major appearance on the island came in 1984, when he accepted an invitation from former Liverpool teammate Peter Cormack, who was managing Anorthosis Famagusta at the time, to play in a friendly match against Omonoia Nicosia.
Keegan wore the blue and white shirt of Anorthosis, giving supporters the opportunity to see one of the biggest names in European football play in Cyprus.
Anorthosis paid tribute to Keegan, describing the occasion as “a moment that remains forever etched in the memory of our club” and remembering the former England captain as a player who “left an indelible mark on the history of the game”.
Keegan returned to Cyprus three years later for the Cyprus Super Cup, a friendly tournament held in Nicosia in May 1987 involving Apoel, Omonoia, Arsenal and Luton Town.
The event brought together two of British football’s most recognisable figures, with Keegan playing for Apoel and George Best appearing for Omonoia.
Students from The English School Class of ‘88 also served as ball boys during the matches.
During his time in Cyprus, Keegan visited The English School, where he coached the school football team and met students.
Petros Hadjichristodoulou, who interviewed Keegan during his visits to Cyprus as a sports journalist for Phileleftheros, recalled the former striker as a player who remained approachable despite his global reputation.
Speaking to the Cyprus Mail, Hadjichristodoulou recalled Keegan as a player whose personality matched his public image, describing him as “an excellent guy, a very approachable person and great company”.
“He was from that generation of footballers who were working class, down to earth and easy to talk to,” he said. “Despite everything he had achieved in football, he never carried himself like a superstar.”
Hadjichristodoulou, who interviewed Keegan during one of his visits to Cyprus at Romylos in Nicosia, said the former England captain was comfortable mixing with supporters and journalists away from the pitch.
“He was the type of footballer people liked being around. He had a great sense of humour, he was very open with people,” he said.
Recalling the footballers who visited Cyprus during that era, he said Keegan represented a generation of players who remained closely connected to ordinary supporters.
“They were big names, but they were still very grounded, most of those guys being working class. Keegan was very down to earth as a man,” he said.
Keegan’s appearances in Cyprus came after a career that saw him achieve success with Liverpool and Hamburg before later becoming a manager, but for many local fans his visits to the island remain a memorable chapter in his connection with the sport.
A large Elam banner remained displayed above a road outside Ledra Palace on Tuesday, a day after the party held a protest marking the 52nd anniversary of the Turkish invasion.
The banner, stretched across the street near the Ledra Palace crossing point, features the party’s initials on one side and the slogan “Cyprus is Greek” alongside its emblem on the other.
Photographs of the banner were published by Efi Xanthou, a Volt member and former candidate in the parliamentary elections, prompting questions over whether its placement complied with relevant regulations and whether any required permission had been granted.
The banner was reportedly left in place following the event organised by Elam, with images showing it suspended above the roadway outside the Ledra Palace area.
According to Politis, Nicosia mayor Charalambos Prountzos has been informed of the matter and assured that he was examining whether the issue falls within the jurisdiction of the municipality.
The Elam event was held on the anniversary of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in July 1974, with the party staging a gathering near the buffer zone to commemorate the occasion.
A 38-year-old man wanted in connection with the discovery of firearms and ammunition at a residence in Larnaca was arrested on Tuesday during a coordinated police operation.
According to police, the man, an Oroklini resident was located and arrested in a village in the Larnaca district after an arrest warrant had been issued against him.
He is wanted in relation to offences involving the illegal possession and transportation of a firearm and explosives.
The suspect is expected to appear before the Larnaca District Court on Wednesday, where police will request his remand.
The arrest follows a search carried out at a residence in Larnaca last week by members of several police departments after information was evaluated and analysed.
During the court authorised search, officers found and seized two automatic firearms, a pistol and a quantity of cartridges of various calibres.
The items recovered will undergo scientific and forensic examinations to determine whether they were used in previous criminal activity.
The weapons were discovered at the home of an elderly woman, who police said was not believed to be involved in the case.
Investigators have been focusing on her grandson, who was wanted in connection with the findings.
Police spokesman Kyriakos Theodorou previously said the suspect had allegedly used the residence to conceal the weapons and described him as “well known to the police for various cases”.
Investigations into the circumstances surrounding the weapons remain ongoing.
A turbine at the Dhekelia power station that malfunctioned early on Tuesday, but which was later repaired and put back online, broke down for a second time later in the day, the Cyprus Mail has learned.
The second glitch did not impact the grid or cause any power outage, as the power station was meanwhile operating with reserves.
In the morning, the same turbine had stopped working, causing a power outage in various areas that lasted less than 20 minutes as technicians quickly installed and turned on a back-up machine.
The faulty turbine had meanwhile been taken for repairs, and delivered back to Dhekelia on the same day. But hours after it was turned back on, it broke down again.
In a typical year, anywhere from six to 20 instances of turbine breakdowns happen across the island’s power stations due to wear and tear of the machines.
The Dhekelia plant is particularly susceptible as it runs by default on 40-year-old steam turbines. Technicians have taken to calling them ‘old grannies’.
The Electricity Authority of Cyprus (EAC) has back-up turbines in case of emergency.
British Cypriot member of parliament Nesil Caliskan has been moved to Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s new “No 10 North” as part of his new initiatives to move government offices from London to Manchester.
Caliskan has since may been the United Kingdom’s parliamentary undersecretary of state for devolution, local growth, and communities, with that role having previously been a part of the country’s housing ministry.
However, British Lord Privy Seal Angela Smith announced on Tuesday that Caliskan’s office would be transferred from the housing ministry to the new “No 10 north” structure.
“To ensure places are at the very heart of government strategy, the prime minister is establishing No 10 North as the engine room of devolution and good growth in every postcode, across government and the wider economy,” she said.
She added that the move will ensure “that local economic growth policy and regional empowerment are no longer isolated from one another”, thereby “establishing No 10 North as the dominant driver of the UK’s economy”.
The name “No 10 North” is a reference to the UK prime minister’s official residence, 10 Downing Street in London, with Burnham having said that the plan to relocate government offices and functions to Manchester will constitute “the biggest rebalancing of power our country has ever seen”.
He added that No 10 North will be the “nerve centre of a rewired Britain”, though on this front, he has faced criticism from opposition figures, with Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch saying that Burnham “doesn’t know what to do so he wants to pass the problem to someone else”.
Likewise, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said that “people have heard this sort of talk before only to be badly let down because nothing changes”, and warned Burnham not to “repeat that mistake”.
“If he’s serious about firing up growth and cutting the cost of living, Burnham must ditch Labour’s old red lines on Europe and take Britain into the single market,” he said.
Caliskan represents the London constituency of Barking, and was appointed to the undersecretary role by Burnham’s predecessor, Sir Keir Starmer, in May.
Burnham became prime minister on Monday, and said that “in doing so, I am acutely conscious that I am the sixth person in the last ten years to walk up this street, the seventh Prime Minister since 2016”.
“I know people at home are fed up with politics. I hear you. And I want to be honest with you. We have not been good enough, and we need to be better. We will be. We will make this moment a circuit breaker for Britain, bringing forward the biggest changes in the last 40 years,” he said.
He went on to say that “in the 1980s, Britain took some wrong turns”, and added that “political power was centralised, economic power privatised, large parts of the country de-industrialised, and they still haven’t recovered”.
“That’s why we will change politics, to make it more collaborative, more about problem solving than point scoring. We will take power out of here and carry it into every postcode in the land so that they can do more,” he said.
Justice Minister Costas Fitiris on Tuesday made a ‘surprise’ visit to the central prisons, less than 48 hours after inmates there started a fire that led to one officer being hospitalised with inhalation problems.
During the visit, the minister was also shown the infamous Wing Four where the fire took place.
“The damage has been repaired, and the wing is operating normally,” an official statement said.
Fitiris met prison personnel and management, and was briefed on various matters – including staffing shortages, work conditions and the perennial overpopulation issues.
The minister also met Pasydy union reps for prison wardens, “listening to their views and recommendations”.
Fitiris was informed about the actions taken since Sunday night’s incident and “gave instructions for the constant monitoring of security matters and for the best possible functioning of the central prison at this difficult time”.
On Sunday evening, three inmates at the maximum-security wing deliberately set fire to their cells and a corridor, according to prison authorities.
A prison warden was taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation, and the wing was evacuated.
The incident prompted renewed calls to address overcrowding at the facility.
A new QR code for Cyprus’ agricultural and farming products that will allow consumers access to information such as origin and quality, adds value to every product, which is particularly important for Cyprus as it cannot produce in bulk but can promote characteristics that contribute to competitiveness and resilience, Agriculture Minister Maria Panayiotou said on Tuesday.
Presenting the new national quality certification system to agricultural and producer organisations, professors and representatives of state services and authorities, Panayiotou said the initiative was taken in the framework of the strategy for the development of the primary sector.
She said the new system met the rising demand of consumers for transparency and gained their trust, thus opening new prospects for producers.
“For a country like Cyprus, quality is a strategic choice, as it cannot compete in production bulk, but can create greater value through quality, authenticity, innovation and reliability of its products,” she said.
The new national quality mark, she added, was “the identity of Cypriot products, the proof that behind every product there is a producer who responsibly invests in quality, food safety, protection of the environment and constant improvement”.
It also aspired to become a “strong ambassador” for Cyprus abroad, as the products would be more recognisable, which would create new opportunities for exports.
For the producers, participation in the system means advantages in investments, upgrading and modernisation, along with incentives that will encourage more producers to join.
Apart from the QR code’s access to origin, certification and quality information, a star system would indicate other criteria, such as food safety and environmental footprint.
The Met Office has issued an orange warning for extreme high temperatures, with inland areas expected to reach 43C on Wednesday.
The warning was issued on Tuesday and will be in force from 12pm until 5pm on Wednesday.
According to the department, maximum temperatures are forecast to climb to around 43C in Nicosia, while temperatures in Troodos are expected to reach approximately 32C.
An orange warning is issued when exceptionally high temperatures are expected to pose an increased risk to public health, particularly for vulnerable groups and those exposed to the heat for prolonged periods.
The warning comes as Cyprus continues to experience an extended heatwave, with authorities urging the public to take precautions during the hottest part of the day.
Ten months after its launch, the automated import system (AIS) continues to cause issues for customs agents and importers, the agents association said on Tuesday.
Head of the association, Christos Akaros said that their earlier concerns had been confirmed, with the system repeatedly causing “technical malfunctions, outages and delays.”
These issues, he said, translated into delayed customs clearances, additional storage costs, as well as delays in deliveries, loss of productive working hours and put pressure on the entire supply chain, having tripled the regular customs clearance time.
“The poor planning, the wrong priorities and the poor management of the project before its final implementation in September 2025, put the customs office in an electronic maze and unfortunately involved customs agents, shipping agents, freight forwarders and indirectly importers, who are waiting days to receive their cargoes,” Akaros said.
He attributed the problems to both the software and design issues, as well as programming and project management, noting that while the system complied with applicable legislation, it failed to bring feasible results.
“Those who made the decisions to formulate the system’s specifications had to take into account the lack of personnel that is consuming the customs department and the entire state body,” he said.
He added that as per the new system, 85 per cent of the volume of information is entered by customs agents, 10 per cent by shipping agents and freight forwarders and only 5 per cent by the customs department, which exercises the relevant controls.
Recalling that the association had not been requested to contribute to the formulation of the specifications and the workflow of the new system, he said that this led to problems that appeared later in the application of the system.
“When the primary users and front-line operators are not meaningfully involved from the outset, problems that are overlooked during the specification phase surface later in production, and by then, correcting them is more expensive, more difficult, more time-consuming, and sometimes completely impossible,” he said.
According to Akaros, the association has submitted a detailed list of technical and practical issues along with recommendations for corrections and improvements in October 2025, however, the majority of the problems persisted.
In the ongoing trial of Giorgos ‘Zavrantonas’ Christodoulou on Tuesday, the defence suggested that the quantity of narcotics presented as evidence is not the same as that seized by police during a raid taking place in early 2019.
Christodoulou is on trial before Nicosia criminal court, facing charges of importing 15kg of cocaine with intent to sell.
The case is being re-tried after the appeals court overturned his December 2022 conviction which sentenced him to 22 years in prison. The appeals court had ordered the case to be retried from scratch.
In January 2019, following surveillance, police arrested two men – Yiannis Andreou and Aristos Kyprianou – at Andreou’s residence in Lakatamia.
At the time police found and confiscated an army-style duffel bag containing around 15kg of cocaine. The narcotics were found inside Kyprianou’s car, parked outside Andreou’s residence. Andreou later named Christodoulou as the mastermind and the person who smuggled the drugs into Cyprus.
Testifying in court on Tuesday was an employee of the state lab, brought on as a witness for the prosecution.
She had analysed the seized narcotics brought to the state lab by the police.
The witness said there were 14 packages, all containing cocaine, with a total net weight of 15kg. The analysis indicated South America as the provenance of the cocaine.
The cocaine was on average around 75 per cent pure. The witness said this was the usual purity observed in similar cases, ranging from 75 to 85 per cent.
The witness added that no analysis was done for any other banned substances or additives for the samples in question.
Under cross-examination by Christodoulou’s lawyer, she was asked if she could specify where the substances were manufactured. The witness said she could not.
Before the samples were brought to the state lab, they had undergone DNA analysis at the Institute of Neurology and Genetics.
Asked if the state lab could determine the time of manufacturing/packaging, the witness said no.
At this point, the defence attorney submitted that the quantity of cocaine brought to the state lab was not the same as that inside the duffel bag seized by the police.
Responding, the witness said only that the items were sealed.
The attorney next referred to two scales found with traces of cocaine and cannabis, which may point to previous samples being used. The witness said it was possible.
Lead prosecutor Vasilis Bissas then informed the court that they wished to add two individuals to the witness list. The defence did not object. That will bring the number of prosecution witnesses to 22.
The court set the next hearings for July 30 and July 31.
A wildfire northwest of the Ergates industrial area was brought under control on Tuesday after burning around seven hectares of land and causing minor damage to a solar park.
The blaze, which spread through dry grass along a riverbed, also affected premises where old vehicles and machinery were being kept.
Fire brigade spokesman Andreas Kettis said a large-scale operation was mounted to contain the fire, with eight fire engines deployed alongside three Forestry Department vehicles and a unit from the Game and Fauna Service.
Organised volunteer groups also joined the operation, supported by two water tankers and two excavators provided by the Nicosia EOA, while four firefighting aircraft carried out water drops from the air.
The chief fire officer and the head of the fire brigade’s operations centre coordinated the response together with the assistant district commander of the Nicosia fire stations, who directed crews at the scene.
The cause of the fire is being investigated by the fire brigade in cooperation with police.
United Nations envoy for the Cyprus problem Maria Angela Holguin will travel to both Brussels and Ankara ahead of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ visit to the island next week.
Holguin will meet the European Commission’s newly appointed Cyprus problem envoy Raffaele Fitto in Brussels on Wednesday afternoon, with it having earlier been reported that she will also meet European Council President Antonio Costa.
After leaving Brussels, she will travel to Ankara, where she is expected to meet Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Friday.
According to Turkey’s Anka news agency, the meeting is expected to see the pair “assess the recent acceleration of diplomatic contacts on the Cyprus issue, the positions of the sides, and the topics planned to be discussed during Guterres’ visit”.
Guterres will then arrive in Cyprus next Monday. He will hold an informal evening meal with both President Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman on Monday evening, before holding separate meetings, first with Christodoulides and then with Erhurman, at their official residences on the Tuesday morning.
Later on Tuesday, he will visit the Committee on Missing Persons, before holding a tripartite meeting with both leaders on Wednesday.
The travels of Holguin and Guterres come with efforts both in Cyprus and abroad ramping up with the aim of bringing about a resumption of negotiations in earnest on the Cyprus problem.
Holguin’s return to the island will, in part, be geared towards efforts to convene an enlarged meeting on the Cyprus problem at some point this summer.
Such a meeting would involve the island’s two sides, its three guarantor powers, Greece, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, and the UN, though both Cypriot leaders have stressed that the meeting is not an end in itself.
Erhurman, for example, used his July 20 anniversary speech on Monday to stress that “we do not want negotiations for the sakeof negotiations, or a five-plus-one meeting for the sake of a five-plus-one meeting”, and that “we want to be result-orientated”.
Earlier, Christodoulides had said that the outcome of an enlarged meeting must entail “the resumption of talks”, but made clear in his own remarks on Monday that, in his view, “everything depends on Turkey”.
Holguin herself went further, calling on Cypriots to “seize this historic opportunity to negotiate a lasting solution” and saying that Guterres is “evaluating which could be the next phases that will convince both parties to take concrete steps towards a final solution”.
The appeals court has upheld a nine-month prison sentence imposed on a woman convicted of distributing intimate photographs and videos of another woman without her consent, rejecting arguments that the punishment was excessive.
The judgment, made public on Tuesday, upheld the Nicosia district court’s decision to impose an immediate custodial sentence after finding no grounds to reduce or suspend the penalty.
The woman had admitted distributing sexually explicit photographs and videos of the complainant to both a third party and the victim herself.
According to the case, the complainant had been involved in a relationship with the appellant’s husband, who claimed she acted out of revenge after receiving the material from a co-defendant rather than creating it herself.
In her appeal, the woman argued that the sentence was manifestly excessive and should have been suspended, citing delays in the criminal proceedings, the circumstances in which she obtained the material and what she described as provocation arising from the personal dispute.
The court rejected those arguments, ruling that none justified reducing the sentence.
“The seriousness of the present offence has a direct impact on the dignity, psyche and psychological integrity of the victim,” the court said, adding that intimate moments “are shared with third parties” despite the victim’s expectation that they remain private.
The court also warned that offences involving the distribution of intimate sexual material are increasing.
“The offence of sending sexual material is on an alarming rise,” it said, adding that the trend “justifies the imposition of even more deterrent penalties.”
Judges also rejected the argument that the complainant’s conduct or the appellant’s motive of revenge should be treated as mitigating factors.
“These are not circumstances that argue in favour of suspension. Quite the opposite,” the judgment said.
The court further ruled that suspending the sentence “would not serve the multiple purposes of the sentence” and “would send the wrong messages” to both the appellant and other potential offenders, dismissing the appeal in its entirety.
Gemini 3.6 Flash, Google’s latest Flash model, is now rolling out in GitHub Copilot. It is designed for web and app development, coding, and longer-horizon agentic tasks. It has configurable reasoning effort and support for parallel tool use across complex workflows. In early testing, Gemini 3.6 Flash demonstrated higher task-completion rates and better token efficiency than Gemini 3.5 Flash across coding and agentic workflows.
This model is billed at provider list pricing under usage-based billing. See GitHub Copilot’s pricing for models and requests for details.
Gemini 3.6 Flash will be available to Copilot Pro, Pro+, Max, Business, and Enterprise users.
You’ll be able to select the model in the model picker in:
Rollout will be gradual. Check back soon if you don’t see it yet.
Copilot Enterprise and Copilot Business plan administrators must enable the Gemini 3.6 Flash Preview policy in Copilot settings before anyone in their organization can select it.
To explore all models available in GitHub Copilot, see our documentation on models and get started with Copilot.
Join the GitHub Community to share your feedback.
The post Gemini 3.6 Flash is now available in GitHub Copilot appeared first on The GitHub Blog.
Copilot Business and Copilot Enterprise users can now see how many AI credits they’ve used this billing cycle, even without an individual budget. Find this on your GitHub Copilot usage page in your GitHub settings.
Previously, the page showed usage only as a percentage of a budget. Many users don’t have an individual budget, so that percentage gave them no view of their monthly usage and no way to contextualize their token usage.
Now the page reflects your actual usage:
To learn more, see Budgets for usage-based billing.
The post Copilot users can now see AI credits used per billing cycle appeared first on The GitHub Blog.
When AI coding assistants like Claude add packages to your project, they often pick whatever version sounds right — without checking whether it has known security vulnerabilities, whether the package is still actively maintained, or whether the name is a typo away from a malicious lookalike.
safer-dependencies is a security layer for Claude Code that audits packages before they’re added to your project. It detects and fixes risky dependencies, including CVEs, typosquats, abandoned packages, version-age issues, and adds package-cooldown periods across npm, PyPI, RubyGems, Maven, Go, and Rust.
I have been building Rice - a minimal embeddable scripting language for Go applications.
Here are its features:
Rice currently runs as an interpreter, with a bytecode virtual machine planned for a future release.
You can try Rice at https://rice-playground.vercel.app/
Learning Rice: https://github.com/anhcraft/rice/tree/main/guides
Check out the repository at https://github.com/anhcraft/rice
I am looking for feedbacks and stars xD
High speed JSON encoding options using only the std library. I don't have specific code to show, but thought this was an interesting topic. I was in the process of changing from std json.Encoder to writing the raw json to a bufio.Writer, but discovered the new json/jsontext pkg provides great features for high speed json writing. See jsontext encoding.
My particular use case (single http response type that includes pre marshalled data) is a good fit for these techniques. Until recently I did not realize what options were available. I also tried replacing [][]byte with []json.RawMessage, but that approach was not helpful.
There are other related topics such as using compression and sync.Pools for the bufio.Writer and gzip.Writer.
AI (Gemini) seems to give inconsistent recommendations in this area, so beware.
This is basically an appreciation post and also curious on the community's opinion. I came originally from R (I'm a data analyst, not a dev) and there was F-all error handling. I did a lot of automation work in R and compelled to learn Python because all the API drivers were written for Python (was never intending to touch Java) and it was basically an "easy" language to pickup. I dabbled in Go since 1.11 probably but never got the chance to really build a project. Around that same era I was learning data-driven web applications, and got my hands on Django 2, which was awesome. I could ingest all these data from all these APIs and have it run on a browser. But the bloat got to me and swore on Flask.
Then came containerization. Which at the time I had no idea was fundamentally built by go (docker, podman, kubernetes , etc). Which I used a lot especially since I had to work a alot with cloudrun. It was always a flask or python app on cloud run. But after all that, no error handling, I almost never used try catch unless explicitly needed. The pivotal moment for me to try Go again was when net/http fixed its routing capabilities -- 1.22 I think, it was more like flask/django so naturally, I felt at home. But the error handling annoyed me at that time.
Now I'm building some sort of sentiment and relevance analyzer (another LLM wrapper of course, 'tis the trend of the season) and damn it I love the explicit error handling, especially with slog.Error, its like I was really missing out all these years. The way it reminds me to tag all the issues so i can easily troubleshoot is a godsend. I've heard a lot of people shitting on this saying its bloat but honestly for me it makes me more mindful.
I am trying to write Go code, but I have no idea in which IDE to write it, nor the secondary memory to install additional IDE like Visual Studio Code.
So how to write Go code in Visual Studio Community or Notepad? I have installed Go though.
Currently, the only html formatter library I found are github.com/yosssi/gohtml and github.com/Joker/hpp.
However, they do not format javascript within <script> tag.
wasm fmt, a vscode extension, can format html and javascript within. However, its codebase is js+ts.
Anyone has any suggestion?
PS: I am looking for go library, not cli tool.