Monday, August 3, 2026
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| Summary | ⛅️ Clear throughout the day. |
|---|---|
| Temperature Range | 22°C to 32°C (71°F to 89°F) |
| Feels Like | Low: 72°F | High: 98°F |
| Humidity | 59% |
| Wind | 12 km/h (7 mph), Direction: 265° |
| Precipitation | Probability: 0%, Type: No precipitation expected |
| Sunrise / Sunset | 🌅 05:59 AM / 🌇 07:48 PM |
| Moon Phase | Waning Gibbous (66%) |
| Cloud Cover | 2% |
| Pressure | 1010.09 hPa |
| Dew Point | 65.71°F |
| Visibility | 6.28 miles |
There was a time long, long ago when the journey was as much part of any holiday as the destination. This used to be true of flying as well prior to 9-11, low-cost mass travel and the clinical homogeneity of today’s airports. Flying is now just something you need to do to get somewhere fast. It has no other redeeming features for the average person.
A recent trip down memory lane to the Greek island of Ios with a friend of 45 years ended with taking the ferry back to Cyprus rather than flying home. Aside from the fact we could not remember a thing about Ios other than the hotel where we’d stayed during the early 80s due to alcohol-induced memory loss, the anxiety of flying back dogged my waking hours.
It had nothing to do with endless queues or having your knees compressed. We’re all entrained by now to endure those annoying discomforts. But what overshadows every flight I take is the possibility of experiencing Grade III Aerosinusitus, “the bends in the air”.
Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it’s mild and stops on landing when pressure is equalised. Other times the hot pokers stabbing into your head on descent linger for a week or more.
You’ve taken all the precautions, acupressure travel bands, saline nose drops, pain killers, ear plugs, headphones, chewing gum, suggested facial manoeuvres that make you look silly. Sometimes nothing works. It’s a gamble every time and I lost on that particular flight to Athens.
“Hand it over to Jesus,” a friend says sometimes about life’s little tribulations. I really tried but Jesus wasn’t on the plane that day. Why would he be when he could just walk from Cyprus to Greece?
That’s why I got the ferry back and swore to never set foot on a plane again. I’ve said that before and with family in Ireland the choices are limited. This time however there was another direct way back.
Sure it was going to cost extra but I wanted to enjoy the deblurring of memory lane on Ios and not be stuck to a screen researching what could be done to mitigate the half hour from hell on the way home.
I’m literally too old for that s*hit, a fact that places me way closer to the possibility of burst blood vessels and exploding ear drums. Anyone who’s seen the 1981 movie Scanners and has Aerosinusitus knows what I’m on about.
After navigating the ferry website and with a call to Orthodoxou Travel in Larnaca to assist, I had to book a cabin for four but was assured I could reclaim the port taxes for the three empty beds, which they promptly did the day after my return.
The taxes were €36 per person and the bunks €30 per person so the final fare with refund was €150 for two nights aboard the AF Marina’s 30-32-hour voyage. Pricewise, no worse really than a weekend at a hotel.
Obviously, it would be really cheap for multiple travellers, or if you were feeling really, really adventurous, the ship has cheaper airline-type seats with tons of leg room but the snowflake within me got triggered by the words “airline seats” on the website.
There’s something about travelling by sea that flying can never match. As a child during the late 60s, we travelled over and back all the time to England to see the relatives. They were the boring component, endless home visits and afternoon teas. The 13 hours of buses, trains and the ferry was the real adventure.
Even the entertainment and buzz of cruise ships are a distraction in a way. The constant activity detracts from the solitude that can be found on an empty deck watching the sunrise. Better still, the mobile phone doesn’t work well though the ship sells a Wi-Fi package for those suffering from FOMO.
I reached the gate for the Italian-flagged AF Marina at Piraeus port before 9pm after dressing down a Greek taxi driver in really bad Cypriot Greek followed by begging and pleading.
I’d arrived from the islands at one gate but the terminal for Cyprus was 40 minutes’ walk away. You may plot your route on Google maps but real-life Piraeus does not comply. Every taxi driver waved me off. They could not be bothered to take me the 5-10 minutes to the correct gate.
“What time is your boat leaving?” the last guy asked. “9pm,” I lied. Scheduled departure was 1am.
“I can make more money going to the airport,” he whined.
“It’ll take you five minutes,” I told him. “Don’t you like easy money?”
That seemed to work. “Ok. I’ll take you there for 20 euros”.
Two hours later I was on the ship and surprised by the small number of foot passengers – 50 at most. There were maybe ten bikers and perhaps 60 or 70 cars boarding. There were no queues at the restaurant or the café at any stage. The ‘casino’ was a pokey room with five slot machines that no one bothered with but the ship and cabins were clean and comfortable.
The one drawback on the AF Marina was that it seems to be mainly designed to carry vehicles, with the drivers as an afterthought. The interior section is shoved to one end like a container ship and the bulk consisted of a huge empty vehicle deck that passengers could not access.
Confined to having your coffee standing up on a working deck stacked with safety and other equipment, there were only a couple of metal benches on either end that looked like they were there for crew to pass their breaktime. They were mostly occupied by the other six people who seemed to like being on deck.
The very top deck was filled with the same uncomfortable metal benches soldered to the floor indicating that perhaps the AF Marina was originally designed for reasonably short trips where passengers could enjoy the sea air for a couple of hours… and maybe ignore the black smoke coming out of the ship’s funnel in the middle of the deck.
In that sense, the AF Marina was a far cry from the Greek ferry to Ios, the Blue Star Delos whose back decks were filled with tables and chairs with a Flocafe at the centre of each.
It’s understandable that given its layout, this particular Cyprus-Greece ferry cannot fill its sparse deckspace with chairs and tables for safety reasons. But there was a feeling that possible revenue streams were being lost.
A person can only stand up for so long with a coffee before having to go back inside when with a different ship they might sit out on deck all day and have more than one coffee or a meal or two. Multiply that by dozens who might like to do the same rather than be holed up in an air-conditioned café or a claustrophobic cabin.
Perhaps since the ferry is heavily subsidised by the government, onboard profits are not all that important. Just sayin. It’s also understandable that a ferry is designed to get people from A to B and in that sense the AF Marina does its job, and passengers, if they wish, get to enjoy the sea air, smaller queues at the ports and best of all no exploding heads.
The real kicker: I got back to Cyprus, including a two-hour jaunt to Nicosia from Limassol port, three or four hours before my holiday companion got back to Ireland after suffering delays and missed connections at Athens and Geneva airports on what should have been at most, an eight-hour journey.
The ferry won that round. Now if only there was a company that ran a service to Ireland…
Some artistic projects are born from years of planning, research and preparation. Others begin with something much simpler: a single moment that stays with you long after it has passed.
For British composer Terry Overall, the story behind his new album VAROSHA began in 2008 on a beach in Cyprus, when he looked across the sea and saw a city he knew almost nothing about.
He was simply here on a family holiday. It was his in-laws who suggested a visit to Famagusta. Until then, Overall had little knowledge of Varosha or the events that had transformed the once-famous resort into one of the most recognisable abandoned places in Europe.
But the view in front of him was impossible to ignore.
“I was immediately struck by the sheer scale of what I was seeing,” he recalls. “It was difficult to comprehend that such a large part of a once thriving resort had remained closed and untouched for so many decades.”
That moment stayed with him.
When he returned home, curiosity turned into research. He began learning more about Varosha, its history and the wider story of Cyprus.
The more he discovered, the more he realised that behind the empty hotels and silent streets was something much deeper than a forgotten city.
“What surprised me most was how something so extraordinary had almost become part of the landscape to an outsider like me,” he says. “Behind those empty streets and abandoned buildings lay an immense human story.”
As he explored, he shifted his attention from the city’s remnants to the people who once filled those spaces. He envisioned everyday moments. The empty streets became reminders of a vibrant past.
This human perspective formed the basis of VAROSHA, an electronic concept album that delves into memory, loss, resilience and shared experiences.
The album does not aim to make political statements or provide historical context; rather, it reflects Overall’s personal artistic response to a place that deeply affected him.
It contemplates what remains when places change, memories endure and human stories persist long after people have departed.
Although Varosha is often described as a city frozen in time, Overall never wanted to simply recreate that silence. “The album itself is not particularly quiet,” he explains. “In many respects it is the opposite.”
For Overall, the most powerful thing about standing outside the abandoned city was not the quiet itself. It was thinking about everything that was missing.
“It made me think about everything that was no longer there,” he says. “The conversations, the laughter, the music, the traffic and the ordinary moments that once filled those streets.”
Those thoughts shaped the journey of the album.
The opening pieces reflect the Cyprus that existed before division, capturing a sense of beauty and possibility. As the story develops, the atmosphere becomes darker, reflecting conflict, change and the passage of time.
By the final tracks, the music becomes more contemplative.
The album’s visuals mirror its emotional tone. The cover image was inspired by a photo Overall took during his 2008 visit to Varosha, where a soldier asked him to stop photographing.
“I wanted the visuals to feel like fading memories,” he explains.
From the beginning, Overall understood that Varosha was not simply an abandoned location. It is a place connected to real experiences, memories and personal histories for thousands of Cypriots.
He was careful not to present himself as someone offering answers or a definitive version of history. He wanted to encourage reflection.
“If the album encourages people to pause for a moment and reflect on the human stories behind those events, then I will feel it has achieved what I hoped it would.”
The album can be found here
It was another successful afternoon for Team Cyprus’ judo athletes at the Commonwealth Games on Sunday as Yiannis Antoniou won the island’s first gold medal of the competition.
He won in the Men’s +100kg category, beating Kayhan Ozcicek-Takagi of Australia.
In the under 100kg men’s category Cyprus’ Georgos Kroussaniotakis’ beat fellow Cypriot Aristos Michael for the bronze.
In the women’s events, Zanet Michaelidou also scooped bronze in the under 78kg category, a position tied with Canada’s Coralie Godbout.
Their success comes on the back of that of Odysseas Georgakis who secured the bronze in the men’s under 81kg category on Saturday.
On Friday Sofia Asvesta won silver in the under 52kg category while Giorgi Balartashvili and Petros Christodoulides won silver and bronze respectively in the men’s under 66kg category.
The medals bring the island’s tally at the Games to 12.
Earlier in the week medals were won by gymnast Marios Georgiou who takes home two silvers in the parallel and horizontal bars, gymnast Neofytos Kyriacou who won bronze in the vault, hurdler Milan Trajkovic who wone bronze in the 110m event and hammer thrower Iosif Kesidis who also won a siver.
A yellow weather warning was issued on Sunday afternoon for high temperatures that are expected to hit inland areas of the island on Monday afternoon.
Highest temperatures of around 40C are forecast for inland areas, the Met Office said.
The warning will be in place from 2pm to 5pm.
In front of political and church leaders and representatives from all walks of life, a memorial was held on Sunday for the first president of the Republic, Archbishop Makarios III, who died 49 years ago.
He was born in in 1913 in Panayia of Paphos, following a path from the Holy Monastery of Kykkos to the Pancyprian Gymnasium, from Athens to Boston, to the Metropolis of Kition, to the Archdiocese and, finally, to the Presidential Palace.
“A course full of challenges, responsibilities and historic decisions. In 1950, elected by the people to the archdiocesan throne, he assumed a role that transcended the boundaries of the Church. As the last Ethnarch in the primary political-religious sense of the term, he was not only a spiritual shepherd, but also a political exponent of Cypriot Hellenism. He embodied a centuries-old tradition, which pre-existed the state structures and international balances that shaped the future of our country,” Limassol MayorYiannis Armeftis said in an address.
He began his speech with a phrase from the last speech of Archbishop Makarios: “The peoples who want to live and struggle to live are not lost”.
These words, he said, underlined Makarios’ belief that the people of Cyprus have the right to live free.
The service was held at Kykkos monastery, where Makarios was laid to rest. He chose Kykkos so that in death his gaze could take in the whole of Cyprus, Armeftis said.
It is impossible to discuss the history of Cyprus without including Makarios, he added.
“During his presidency, the Republic of Cyprus was consolidated, strengthened its international presence and gained a strong voice in the international community. He was the leader who elevated the Cyprus problem to an international political issue, securing the recognition of the Republic of Cyprus and broad international support for the struggle for independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.
“Intelligent and charismatic. Calm and moderate in speech, but immovable in his principles,” he added.
“The legacies of great leaders,” Armeftis said, “are not enough to be honored with words. They must be put into practice and function as a timeless compass for the future of our country.”
Armeftis also made special reference to the presence of Makarios at the General Assembly of the United Nations on July 19, 1974, just a few days after the coup.
“From the podium of the UN, the President of the Republic of Cyprus denounced the constitutional deviation and the coup d’état in Cyprus, calling for the restoration of democratic order.”
Not everyone approved of his choice of words. “Some people today, persistently and with selected excerpts on social networks, are trying in an insidious way to bring back the theory that Makarios invited Turkey to Cyprus with his speech. The historical reality, however, is clear. After all, when Makarios was speaking in New York, in Cyprus, due to the time difference, July 20 was already dawning and the Turkish ships were already sailing for the invasion,” he added.
After the visit last week of United Nations Secretary-General Antonnio Guterres to te island, Armeftis said that “difficult times require leaders with vision, people with endurance and political forces that can serve the common good.”
Choosing the right fish at the fish market or a restaurant contributes to protecting marine life. How healthy the seafood we put on our plates is also reflects on the health of the sea from which is was fished.
Cyprus-based NGOs Enalia Physis Environmental Research Centre and SPOT Marine Life have launched the island’s first Sustainable Seafood Guide, to enable seafood lovers to make informed seafood choices that benefit the environment.
The free guide is available in three languages (Greek, Turkish and English). It is an easy-to-use online tool that brings together scientifically supported information on fish species found in the Cyprus market.
The first edition includes 22 species, which are classified into three simple categories: recommended, buy with caution, and those that are best avoided.
For each species, the site contains information on the fishing methods by which it is caught, minimum legal sizes, whether it bioaccumulates metals, as well as interesting facts about its biology and ecology.
The guide also highlights the important role of Cyprus’ small-scale coastal fisheries, which are an integral part of the island’s cultural heritage and contribute to the sustainable management of marine resources.
By choosing locally and responsibly caught seafood, consumers can support small-scale fishers and contribute to the conservation of marine ecosystems.
The creators of the guide said it is a dynamic initiative that will continue to expand with new species and updated scientific information. Their goal is for it to become a reference point for anyone wishing to consume seafood with greater knowledge and responsibility.
SeafoodGuideCy was developed as part of the bicommunal project SPOTLight on Sustainable Fisheries, funded by the European Union under the Aid Programme for Turkish Cypriots.
The project aims to strengthen the sustainability, transparency and resilience of the fisheries sector in Cyprus through scientific research, collaboration with fishers and relevant authorities, public awareness and the promotion of responsible seafood consumption.
SPOT Marine Life and Enalia Physis work actively on protecting the island’s seas through scientific research, environmental education, public awareness and advocacy.
However, they urge the public to play a role by making informed and conscious choices, starting with what we buy in the supermarket.
Find the Sustainable Seafood Guide at seafoodguidecy.com
Acting Paphos mayor Angelos Onisiforou on Sunday condemned vandalism in Kato Paphos after the end of a charity event, which the municipality had supported.
The images seen by the competent services cause disappointment and indignation, as public and private properties were filled with graffiti, causing damage and burdening citizens financially, he said.
Onisiforou said such behaviours cannot be accepted.
“This is neither fandom nor expression. It is a lack of respect for our city, for our fellow citizens and for all those who work every day to keep Paphos clean and beautiful,” he said.
He also emphasised that public property belongs to residents and it is them that will have to bear any expense for restoration of the damage.
“Paphos deserves the respect of all of us,” he said.
Archbishop Georgios appealed on Sunday for no further concessions on the Cyprus problem and for adherence to the principles defended by Archbishop Makarios III, saying that Turkey will not be satisfied with new compromises.
In statements after a memorial service for Cyprus’ first president, Archbishop Makarios, he said that “for Makarios the compromise was not unacceptable, the unconditional surrender was unacceptable”.
He added that, while today there are appeals, even from the United Nations, for further concessions, the Cypriot side should, as he said, follow Makarios’ stance, arguing that “the occupier cannot be satisfied with other concessions”.
“These principles were defended during Makarios’ lifetime. We have to listen to him in order to live,” he added.
Asked about the recent visit of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to Cyprus, the Archbishop expressed criticism of the UN’s stance, stating that the secretary-general, as well as his representatives, should serve the values of the organisation.
As he said, it does not appear that they serve these values, but are trying to find a “middle way”, leading, in his estimation, to solutions that will not be sustainable over time.
The Archbishop also argued that, in the era of human rights and the European Union, the Greek Cypriot side must insist on the implementation of the European acquis, so that the citizens of Cyprus enjoy the same rights as other European citizens, including the free movement, establishment and acquisition of property.
“We are not asking for anything more than what free people enjoy,” he concluded.
Forty third country nationals have been arrested after the police and the aliens and immigration service launched an operation on Sunday morning to round up illegal immigrants.
The operation was carried out in Limassol and discovered 40 people who were staying illegally in the Republic.
Six of them are expected to be deported later in the day, while for the rest efforts are being made, with the deputy migration ministry, to deport them to their countries of origin.
Police said their activities to stamp out illegal residence on the island continue on a daily basis.
Turkey must cooperate substantially to determine the fate of all missing persons, deputy migration minister Nicholas Ioannides said on Sunday.
“Ascertaining the fate of all missing persons was, is and will remain the highest moral and national obligation of the state,” he said.
“Turkey must cooperate substantially, provide access to the archives of the occupying army and provide all the information it has about burial sites and the movement of remains.”
The concealment of information and the movement of relics are an insult to the dead, he added accusing Turkey of consciously prolonging “the agony of the families and preventing the restoration of a basic human and historical justice”.
The international credibility that Cyprus has built over the last three years, he said, is “a powerful tool in our effort to get rid of the Turkish occupation”.
He was spaekng at the memorial for Christakis Minas who died during the 1974 Turkish invasion.
It’s so rare for a government scheme to be an unqualified Good Thing that it feels downright ungrateful to criticise it.
Then again, even Interior Minister Constantinos Ioannou, speaking last February, admitted that the Renovate-Rent housing scheme was underperforming relative to expectations.
The hope was for 1,000 housing units to be placed on the market in two years (920 property owners registered on the platform when the scheme was announced in 2024) but there have been only 84 applications so far, including those that were rejected. According to Ioannou, the total subsidy has been €1.2 million, a small fraction of the €25 million budget.
Yet Renovate-Rent is a great idea, for a number of reasons.
The scheme targets available housing that’s not on the market. These are houses or flats, typically inherited, that remain vacant while the new owner figures out what to do with them, usually unwilling to spend money on renovations.
Saddest of all are the grand old houses – not listed buildings, but still beautiful – that are allowed to rot and become decrepit as the years pile up, then, inevitably, sold to developers who knock them down to build much less beautiful blocks of flats.
That’s a big environmental reason why the scheme is welcome. But there are practical reasons too.
Even as owners constrict supply by neglecting their properties, demand has skyrocketed – and rents have become prohibitive, especially in Limassol.
The scheme is a solution to both these problems. Renovate-Rent subsidises property owners, giving them money to renovate vacant properties – and, in return, they commit to renting them out at a cheaper rent (discounted by 30 per cent) for a period of four years.
Everybody wins. Eligible tenants – those earning below a certain threshold – get housing at affordable rents. Owners get a newly refurbished property at zero (or much-reduced) cost. And the government gets the satisfaction of having made everyone happy, for once.
So why has the scheme not worked out so far?
Stung by the setback, Ioannou announced changes to the second iteration of the scheme (now accepting applications till the end of 2027) – but nearly all the changes involve keeping the original framework, just making everything more generous.
Thus, for instance, all subsidies have been increased by €5,000: owners now get €20,000 to renovate a one-bedroom unit, €30,000 for two bedrooms and €40,000 for three. The criterion for what constitutes a vacant property – defined by power usage – has been relaxed: it used to be under 200kW a year, now it’s under 500kW.
Income criteria for prospective tenants have also been made more generous. A single person earning €30,000 a year (or less, obviously) is now eligible to apply, up from €25,000 – the thresholds rising to €70,000 a year for a family or single-parent household of five or more people.
Then again, it doesn’t seem like the problem with the scheme was that its terms weren’t generous enough.
All indications – borne out by participants we spoke to – point instead to two major stumbling blocks, which are also the ones often associated with government projects: poor communication (as in not promoting it enough), and stifling bureaucracy.
The first of those was perhaps not so bad, after all 920 people knew enough to join at the beginning. Then again, Christos Zavallis – who renovated a one-bedroom flat that had been vacant for about 15 years through Renovate-Rent – recalls looking for tenants when the work was complete, having to advertise himself on Bazaraki (the online platform was useless) and being inundated with calls by people who obviously had no idea what the scheme was.
“I got a call from an estate agent,” he told the Cyprus Mail, “who thought it was some kind of scam, a one-bedroom flat in Lykavitos [in the centre of Nicosia] for €400. He goes to me, ‘OK, what’s the scam?’. So people didn’t know. Even the professionals didn’t know about this scheme.”
The only ones who did know were probably those like Haris Haralambous, one of the very first applicants, who has a company specialising in renovations – and heard about the scheme because “I keep an eye out,” as he says.
He’s one of the (very) few readers of the Official Gazette, where details were published – and indeed he treated it as an investment, buying a vacant flat specifically for the purpose and spending up to the limit of the subsidy (€15,000 at the time). Nothing wrong with that – but it’s clearly not the typical case for which R-R was intended, those cases having presumably never heard of it.
Then there was the paperwork. “It takes a lot of running around,” Haralambous told the Cyprus Mail. “You need a second person just for that, beyond the actual renovation”. The work itself took about six months. “The bureaucracy took about a year”.
The flat he was renovating dated from the 1980s, Renovate-Rent being for older housing units (15 years and over) – yet they asked for architectural plans, for instance, a quest that involved an application to the EOA and a physical search for the plans. He finally found them, archived “in some old cardboard boxes,” he recalls wryly.
Admittedly he’d have been more likely to have the plans if he’d inherited the place from his parents, which is the usual scenario – but the list of documents is still a bit daunting. Building permit, Energy Performance Certificate, owner’s social security and certificate of clean criminal record – then, if and when you find a tenant, a Land Registry declaration that they own no other property, a certificate of good standing from the tax authorities, and more.
It’s not just the hassle, it’s the principle of the thing. “There were many things which, as the government, they could’ve found out at the touch of a button,” sighs Zavallis.
“Clean criminal record, for instance. How hard is it, with my ID card number, for the police to tell them I have a clean record?” Why the time-consuming process of having to apply electronically, then head out in person to police headquarters to pick up a piece of paper? What’s the purpose of the ‘digital governance’ we hear so much about, if everything is still made so complicated?
It’s an interesting point – because even now, with Renovate-Rent underachieving, the ministry’s automatic response is to assume it’s a money issue.
Bureaucracy has become so ingrained, it’s not even viewed as a possible culprit – yet Zavallis recalls prospective tenants backing out when they saw the daunting list, even though the flat was such a bargain.
It’d be a shame if such an excellent initiative ended up foundering through not being more user-friendly – but Renovate-Rent will surely take off once more people know about it, though it does mean accepting a reduced rent for a few years. Some landlords will always prefer the short-term option of keeping a property rundown and renting to migrants.
Zavallis feels it worked out for him, though – and he did eventually find a tenant in Kyriakos, who admits he’d never heard of Renovate-Rent (he just went on Bazaraki looking for a flat) but is delighted with the result.
“This is the nicest place I’ve rented in the past four or five years,” he raves. “And it’s cheaper than almost any place I’ve stayed in!” Like we said, everybody wins.
Contemporary art, emerging and established artists from Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean and Cyprus will soon take the stage of the Nicosia Municipal Theatre as the latest edition of the Nicosia International Festival arrives.
More than 22 productions will soon enrich the capital city’s cultural agenda over the course of 50 days. From September 12 to November 1, productions spanning theatre, contemporary dance, music and interdisciplinary performance will take place, bringing together internationally acclaimed artists alongside some of Cyprus’ most exciting creative voices.
The Municipal Theatre of Nicosia remains the festival’s home, while continuing to evolve as a dynamic cultural hub. This year’s edition introduces two exciting new performance spaces. The Studio will be a new venue dedicated to intimate, experimental productions that encourage artistic risk and close interaction between artists and audiences.
On Stage will be a unique viewing experience that invites audiences onto the stage of the theatre’s Main Hall, offering an entirely new perspective on live performance. Beyond the theatre itself, the surrounding square, colonnades and gardens will also be activated through artistic interventions and public events.
The festival will extend far beyond the theatre walls this time, transforming Nicosia into a city-wide cultural destination. Performances and events will take place at landmark venues including the Municipal Gardens, THOC New Stage, To Erma Bookshop & Café and Theatre Square, while cafés, bars and restaurants across the city will become gathering places for artists, audiences and visitors throughout the festival.
This year’s programme brings together artists and productions from Cyprus, Greece, Lebanon, France, Ireland and Spain, alongside works that have been presented at some of Europe’s leading performing arts festivals.
Throughout the agenda are internationally acclaimed productions presented in Cyprus for the first time, new commissions and original Cypriot creations, seven productions selected through the festival’s open call for Cypriot artists, revivals of significant Cypriot works, and family-friendly and non-verbal performances designed to welcome audiences of all ages and backgrounds.
A defining feature of the 2026 festival is its continued investment in local artistic talent. The open call has once again demonstrated the strength of Cyprus’ creative community, with selected projects standing confidently alongside international productions.
The programme also reflects the growing influence of women artists in today’s performing arts landscape, whose work represents some of the festival’s most compelling productions. The full programme of events and productions is now live on the festival’s website, while tickets are available through more.com and at the Nicosia Municipal Theatre Box Office.
7th Nicosia International Festival
22 productions from Cyprus, Greece, Lebanon, France, Ireland and Spain. September 12-November 1. Nicosia Municipal Theatre, Nicosia. Tel: 22-797979. www.nif.cy
With the aim of preventing traffic accidents and enhancing road safety, police will carry out a road safety campaign in the coming days against speeding, it announced on Sunday.
Increased checks will be carried out from Monday, August 3 to Sunday, August 9.
“Speeding is a very important factor in determining the outcome of a road collision and is considered one of the main causes of serious and fatal road collisions,” police said.
The stepped up checks are part of the cooperation with the European Traffic Police Network Roadpol and are carried out simultaneously in all EU member states.
According to the statistics of the last four years, one in 10 fatal traffic accidents is caused by speeding.
The prison guard recently dismissed for dereliction of duty to carry out orders was on Sunday described as “excellent, a model of professionalism and ethics, but also a role model for all of us,” by the union he represents, Isotita.
The union said Giorgos Matezos has played a leading role in the struggles of the workers and to him many of the rights and achievements they enjoy today are owed.
“We speak of him in the present tense. We do not say goodbye to him,” the union said.
Earlier on Sunday, the justice ministry had defended its actions to dismiss Maltezos after being attacked by Akel. The ministry said that it respects union rights but was clear the dismissal had nothing to do with Maltezos’ role in the union.
Maltezos is vice president and press secretary of prison officer’s branch of the trade union Isotita.
“We express our indignation, anger and disappointment at his blatantly unfair and provocative dismissal,” Isotita said.
In a message to the justice ministry, it said “you may have removed a person from their workplace, but you will never silence our voice”.
The union said the conditions in the prisons make it hard for them to carry out their work.
“Clashes are now an almost daily phenomenon and we see our colleagues being crushed, physically and mentally, by the working conditions. The danger is constantly escalating and some demand that we remain silent, fatalistically waiting for the inevitable,” it said.
The union will hold a general meeting on Monday where strike measures will be discussed.
Akel has said it will table Maltezos’ dismissal for discussion at the House labour committee.
Provocations by authorities in the north during an anti-occupation event by Famagusta municipality event on Saturday evening are “condemnable” President Nikos Christodoulides said on Sunday.
Speaking to journalists after a memorial service for the island’s first resident, Archbishop Makarios, about drones from the north disrupting the demonstration, he said, “first and foremost I condemn such actions. I think it is the first time that this violation has occurred”.
But, he added, “there is another dimension. It wasn’t just drones”.
He said for the first time since he has been attending this annual event, previously as government spokesman and foreign minister was that Turkish marches and celebrations could be heard.
“It was a way to harass the event. But, as long as we see developments, as long as we see data in the direction of resolving the Cyprus problem, surely some who embrace the partition of Cyprus, some who are supporters of the continuation of this unacceptable state of affairs, and I am referring to the Turkish side, will seek to create problems, create new issues and difficulties.
“This is condemnable, what needs to be done will be done. At the same time, I would like to say that we are committed to our goal.”
Asked if the timing of events in the north was coincidental, Christodoulides replied firmly in the negative.
“The Turkish occupying army may have wanted to send some messages. I don’t know who is behind this action, what preceded it, who gave the instructions, why it happened, and so on. All this is reprehensible, there is no excuse”.
Regardless of such istractions, he said the Greek Cypriot side remains focussed on its goal.
“We are making a great effort to start an international effort, which is promising and this is not wishful thinking, it is on the basis of what we are discussing, what we have seen, how we are moving forward and we will do everything so that there is a positive result.”
He added that during private and joint meetings, with Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman, with UNSG Antonio Guterres last week, the latter made it clear “there is no doubt, in relation to the intended goal – any shadows in relation to the two states, any other forms of solution outside the box, have been erased”.
The dismissal of prison guard Giorgos Maltezos does not concern trade unionism, but was based exclusively on the findings of the disciplinary procedure and the evaluation of all the evidence put before the minister, the ministry of justice said on Sunday.
The ministry was reacting to a statement made the previous day by Akel, which had said the dismissal raised serious questions of “respect of trade union freedoms in our country”.
“The Ministry of Justice and the Prison Directorate must explain whether and in what way they have respected their obligations, in terms of trade union freedoms,” Akel said.
It said “vindictive dismissals” of trade unionists is common practice.
The party said it would table for discussion at the House labour committee respect for workers in the prison.
The ministry said it accepted the latter with “with particular interest and great willingness we expect to discuss this or other similar issues”.
It said it treats trade unionism with absolute respect, as required by the Constitution, Cyprus legislation and international conventions.
“We believe that we all agree on the fundamental principle that in a democracy where there are rights there are corresponding obligations and that no one is above the laws, regulations and official instructions,” it said.
Trade union action, it added, is an inalienable right. “It cannot, however, be confused with the refusal to comply with legislation, official obligations and decisions of the competent authority.”
This particular case, the ministry said, does not concern trade unionism. “It exclusively concerns compliance or non-compliance with the applicable legal and regulatory framework for the operation of the prison department.”
The decision to terminate the employment of this prison guard, it added, “was based exclusively on the findings of the disciplinary procedure and the evaluation of all the evidence put before the minister”.
Maltezos is vice president and press secretary of prison officer’s branch of the trade union Isotita.
Maltezos had recently raised allegations concerning conditions at the prisons department and criticised the department’s leadership and Justice Minister Costas Fitiris.
The ministry on Friday said investigators found “repeated noncompliance with official instructions and decisions of the Prisons Department”.
It said Maltezos had been “systematically absent from his duties on specific days of the week”.
There was further success for the Cyprus judo team at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow late on Saturday when Odysseas Georgakis secured the bronze in the men’s under 81kg category.
He overcame Fernand Nkero of Gabon to secure the medal.
Speaking afterwards, he said after failing to get through to the final, he held his head high and achieved his target, a medal.
It is the fourth medal for judokas in the current Games, which conclude on Sunday. So far it has been a faultless turnout for the Cyprus judo team, with all athletes who have taken part in the Games so far winning a medal.
On Friday Sofia Asvesta won silver in the under 52kg category while Giorgi Balartashvili and Petros Christodoulides won silver and bronze respectively in the men’s under 66kg category.
The medal brings Cyprus’ tally at the Games to nine.
Four more Cyprus judokas will be in action on Sunday.
The preparatory work with the UN to create the conditions for a successful enlarged meeting began on Friday, President Nikos Christodoulides said on Saturday evening.
This work will carry on throughout August with the United Nations on a technocratic level, he added.
Asked what steps need to be taken to hold the informal five-party conference, Christodoulides said, “yesterday, I had an excellent meeting with [EU enovy for Cyprus Raffaelo] Fitto, with whom I spoke again in the evening regarding everything that had been discussed. Since yesterday, we started at a technical level with the UN, and I imagine they have also started with all parties the preparatory work”.
He said the UN has already hired an academic constitutional expert who was involved in the previous negotiation process.
Regarding the convergences, the president emphasised “it is very positive that the Secretary-General referred to the convergences for the first time.”
Christodoulides has convened a meeting of the National Council on Monday to brief party leaders.
Speaking about his meeting on Friday with Fitto, he said “the role of the EU does not concern the content of the solution; it can provide a safety valve on many issues where there are different opinions, and secondly, EU-Turkey relations, which we discussed with Mr Fitto very specifically, expressing readiness and conveying some very specific proposals and recommendations”.
He added, “we are doing everything we can to take advantage of the critical moment in the Cyprus issue”.
After visiting Cyprus this week, UNSG Antonio Guterres, whose term is nearing its end, announced he would convene another meeting in broader format is certain conditions were met but gave no timeline.
He secured to that end the consensus of both sides and of the guarantor powers.
A 17-year-old was seriously injured in a traffic accidents in the early hours of Sunday morning, in Limassol.
At around 1am, while the 17-year-old was driving a motorcycle on Spyros Araouzos Street in Limassol, under circumstances still being investigated, he collided with a car driven by a 37-year-old.
The teen was injured in the collision and was taken to a private hospital in Limassol, where he was kept in for treatment.
Doctors there said he suffered a severe craniocerebral injury, a bruised lung and nose bleed.
Police press officer Michael Michael said the teen has been operated on and remains intubated in the ICU in an extremely critical condition.
Limassol Traffic Police is investigating the causes of the collision.
Police described their crime fighting presence across the island over Saturday night as intense, with organised patrols in key points of urban areas to prevent serious criminal acts, ensure public order and increase the sense of security of the public.
As a result, ten people were arrestedfor various offences, such as illegal possession of drugs, illegal stay in the Republic, driving under the influence of alcohol.
As part of these operations, during the night 684 vehicles were stopped for inspection and870 people on board were checked. At the same time, 67inspections were carried out on premises, during which 13charges emerged.
During traffic checks, 389 charges were made concerning various traffic violations, while 12 cases of traffic violations needing further investigations also emerged.
Of the charges made, 98concerned exceeding the speed limit, while 14 vehicles were detained, 206 alcohol tests carried out, from which 31charges were made as well as 35preliminary drug tests with onepositive result.
Policing operations, for the prevention and suppression of crime, continue daily with an increased/enhanced police presence, targeted controls and immediate operational action, with the aim of increasing the sense of security of citizens and maintaining public order.
Hi everyone, I just wrote an article about how I structure my unit tests in Go, and I'd like to know how you do it or if you use any skill for this.
All feedback is welcome.
Thanks
https://medium.com/@gpaolettigeuna/table-driven-testing-in-go-d01e55aec47f
A few months ago I started to explore zero allocation in Go
It wasn't supposed to become a database. I wasn't trying to build a Valkey or Dragonfly competitor.
- removing allocations from parsing
- reusing buffers
- sharding data structures
- improving cache locality
At some point I realized I already had the core of an in-memory key-value store.
Today that experiment is called Tellstone!
I recently released v1.0.0 and ran benchmarks against Redis, Valkey and Dragonfly
Redis and Valkey because they are the well known in memory databases everyone heard of.
Dragonfly because they claim to be 25x faster than Redis.
Redis and Valkey are slower because they are single-threaded—they serve as a baseline, not a real point of comparison!
Throughput (ops/s) — Higher is Better ====================================== Tellstone: ██████████████████████████████ (12.7M) Dragonfly: █████████████████ (7.3M) Redis: ███ (1.1M) Valkey: ██ (1.0M) But the Tellstone project completely changed how I think about systems programming
The code is open source if anyone is curious: https://github.com/Saxy/Tellstone
I'd love feedback from people building databases, runtimes, networking libraries or other high-performance systems.
TL/DR: Please suggest me some stacks based on go for fullstack development
Guys, im new to go world, and previously i worked with mostly Cpp that also on a very surface level for doing my DSA problem in my college (im still in college 3rd year). But as doing only DSA won't earn me any money, i needed to learn some dev and so i choosed Go which tbh, i LOVED a lot to work with.
I am mostly done with backend basics, and want to make some full stack projects for my resume.
So if anyone here develops full stack applications with go, pls recommend me some good stacks i can use (actually i've done my homework, and afaik, HTMX is a good option for frontend, but still)
Today we’re releasing Wails v3 Beta.
Wails lets Go developers build native desktop applications with the frontend tools they already know. Wails v3 is a substantial new foundation, built around an explicit application model that scales more naturally to real desktop software.
What’s new:
wails3 setup wizard and project creation flowDevelopers testing v3 during alpha particularly valued the clearer ownership model for applications, windows, and services. We would now like broader feedback from people building real applications and integrations.
The feedback from developers who used v3 during alpha has been overwhelmingly positive, especially around the clearer ownership model for applications, windows, and services.
This is a beta, not the final v3.0 release. The desktop API is stable, but we want people to test real projects, integrations, and workflows before GA. Wails v2 remains the stable release and will continue to receive fixes.
If you are coming from v2, we have a migration guide and are actively validating that experience ahead of RC1. Reproducible problems belong in bug reports; proposals for new public capabilities should start as a WEP (Wails Enhancement Proposal) PR.
If you'd like to test it out:
go install github.com/wailsapp/wails/v3/cmd/wails3@latest wails3 setup Read the announcement and get started: https://v3.wails.io/blog/wails-v3-beta/
| really like grpcurl! but got a bit annoyed of running list and describe repeatedly decided to create a minimal TUI for doing this. any feedback is very welcome! [link] [comments] |
Hey there, does go or any libs support it? if so would you use this language for low level connections or should I move to somehting else?
Hi all,
I'm happy to announce that Xberg v1 is out.
Xberg is the successor to Kreuzberg, equivalent to what would have been Kreuzberg v5. It's a content intelligence framework that handles a very wide range of inputs: documents (currently 101 formats), code and data formats (currently 367 types), audio/video transcription, and URLs (both static and JS-rendered content). It extracts and prepares that content for downstream processing.
It's an extremely efficient, high-performance engine (see our PDF benchmarks below). For PDFs and images specifically, we handle native PDFs with very high performance and accuracy, and we ship multiple OCR engines that match the quality of the best Python libraries (e.g. docling, PaddleOCR, RapidOCR) at substantially better performance and stability.
The changes between Kreuzberg v4 and Xberg v1 are substantial, and I invite you to read the full changelog for the complete picture. The highlights below give a sense of what's new:
pdf_oxide) replaces pdfium, with no native pdfium dependency.medium / small / tiny tiers) alongside Tesseract.extract_structured / split_and_extract) with rasterization, chunking, citations, caching, and configurable call/merge/VLM-fallback policies..mp3, .wav, .m4a, .mp4, .webm).map_url) and batched multi-URL crawling..wpd/.wp/.wp5), HEIC/HEIF/AVIF, OpenDocument Presentation (.odp), Quarto / R Markdown, and configurable Jupyter cell rendering.The API surface was also simplified and reworked, making it more consistent.
There's a migration guide in our docs explaining how to move from Kreuzberg to Xberg. Kreuzberg itself is in LTS mode until the end of this year and will continue to receive bug fixes and security updates.
You're invited to check out the repo and join our discord server.
The benchmarks below are for PDFs and images only. There are extensive benchmarks on our website with per-format breakdowns, which you can see here. These numbers are measured in CI via our reproducible benchmark harness, and are specifically taken from the run for harness 1.0.8, source cf7fa0533d. The data is publicly available in GitHub releases, and you can run the benchmark harness yourself.
Composite quality (markdown pipeline, higher is better):
| Framework | Native PDF | Scanned PDF (OCR) |
|---|---|---|
| Xberg (layout) | 0.958 | 0.836 |
| Xberg (baseline) | 0.955 | 0.687 |
| docling | 0.779 | 0.762 |
| mineru | 0.408 | 0.792 |
| liteparse | 0.837 | 0.665 |
| markitdown | 0.689 | n/a |
| pymupdf4llm | 0.448 | n/a |
Structure and layout fidelity (SF1: tables and reading order, higher is better):
| Framework | Native PDF | Scanned PDF |
|---|---|---|
| Xberg | 0.949 | 0.531 |
| docling | 0.612 | 0.366 |
| liteparse | 0.515 | 0.142 |
| mineru | 0.077 | 0.429 |
On native PDFs Xberg leads on quality (0.958 vs 0.837 for the next-best framework) and on table and reading-order fidelity by a wide margin (SF1 0.949 vs 0.612 for docling). On scanned PDFs it is #1 on both quality and raw text fidelity.
Where we don't win yet: on pure image OCR we are currently #2 on the composite score, behind mineru (though still #1 on raw text accuracy). We are improving image OCR right now, and v1.1 should have us winning across the board.
Hello everyone, im a begginer in Go language(3 months), learning web development with the Gin framework, and i wonder about one theme: Concurrency.
Why do you need this? For what? Where developers use concurrency??
(sorry if i sound stupid, i really don't understand)