'CLEAR BUT UNSPOKEN PREFERENCE' - AS AMERICA VOTES, THE WORLD IS WATCHING WITH BATED BREATH

 USA Today 2 November 2020 - by Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY

© Ahn Young-joon, AP A person in the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, watches a live broadcast of U.S. President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden during the final presidential debate.

LONDON – As Americans contemplate the possibility of a nail-biter of a U.S. presidential vote Tuesday, there's another cohort of people who are watching closely with nerves on edge as the race enters its final stretch: the rest of the world.

U.S. elections have long been the subject of intense international focus because of the outsize influence of America's economy, culture and military. But the stark choice between giving President Donald Trump a second term or allowing former Vice President Joe Biden a shot at the job has drawn additional scrutiny in 2020. 

On the ballot this time for American allies and foes alike is whether they will again be dealing with, in Trump, an administration that has upended traditional diplomatic protocols, overturned treaties and appeared to pursue a scorched-earth approach to alliances. In Biden, experts say, there is a potential return to a form of American foreign policy that expresses concern for human rights, global cooperation and aspects of the collective world order that the U.S. has championed for decades.

"A Biden victory could pave the way for a more constructive international collaboration on a broad range of topics between the U.S. and Europe," wrote analysts at Rabobank, a Dutch financial services firm, in a recent note for investors.

Rabobank singled out a less combative U.S. stance on trade, more constructive talks on shared defense spending and increased global teamwork on how to deal with an economically and militarily ascendant China as likely outcomes of a Biden presidency. 

In fact, a poll published in mid-October by YouGov, a British online market research company, found that European countries overwhelmingly want Biden to beat Trump and few national populations in the region believe the incumbent has distinguished himself as president, whether on his handling of the coronavirus outbreak, immigration, in terms of engendering trust or any number of other topics that have dogged Trump's presidency. In Denmark, 82% of those surveyed – a high – think Trump has been a "poor" or "terrible" American commander in chief. The lowest figure, in Italy, was 61%. 

Still, some countries are watching the vote more closely than others, even if for political reasons it can sometimes be difficult to admit it for fear of backing the wrong horse. 

"In the Baltics, there is a clear but unspoken preference for Biden," said Andris Banka, a Latvian-born professor of international politics at the University of Greifswald, in Germany. "A façade of normalcy has been maintained while he has been in office, but there is a clear notion that something fundamental has been broken in transatlantic relations," Banka added, referring to Trump's threats to pull the U.S. out of the NATO military alliance that countries such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania view as integral to their security in the face of military and territorial adventurism from Russia. 

North Korea's Kim Jong Un is also considering what the result could mean for his reclusive nation after he took part with Trump in a series of showy summits  aimed at persuading North Korea to give up its nuclear arsenal. While the summits have not yielded concrete results, North Korea's leader recently called Biden, who has vowed to hold North Korea accountable for its gross human rights abuses, a "rabid dog."

Analysts say North Korea is going to be a handful for whichever candidate wins the election, but in Trump, Pyongyang has a sparring partner who has shown he's open to the idea of more talks and experts at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank wrote in a recent analysis the "Trump administration’s foreign policy toward the (Korean) Peninsula ... could produce outcomes unimaginable just a few years ago." 

Kim Jong Un wished Trump a speedy recovery after he tested positive for coronavirus in early October. He has otherwise refrained from weighing in on the U.S. election. 

The stakes are also high for Israel's leader, whose close relationship with Trump has helped engineer a number of long cherished policy prizes for Benjamin Netanyahu that have undercut Washington's traditional bipartisan approach to Israel.

Among them: recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, devising a Middle East peace plan that heavily favors Israel over the Palestinians, starving the Iran nuclear accord of oxygen and the establishment of diplomatic ties between Israel and some Arab nations. 

"We will wait and see whether the election will mean a continuation or a disruption of U.S. policy toward Israel," said Danny Ayalon, a former Israeli Ambassador to U.S., in a recent Zoom call with reporters, noting he believes Israel is in a "much better place" as a result of Trump's policies, including the decision to exit the Iran deal. 

"This is the first U.S. administration that has broken away from the simplistic view that solving the Palestinian issue is the key to solving the region's other problems," added Yoram Ettinger, on the same Zoom call with Ayalon and reporters. Ettinger is a former diplomat and expert on U.S.-Israel relations and Middle Eastern affairs. 

Closer to home, Trump’s rise to power in 2016 triggered unease in Mexico as he badmouthed the country and threatened to upend its export-driven economy by ripping up the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).  

Four years later, Mexicans express fewer worries over a possible second Trump term, especially with the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) trade deal enacted.

And Mexico's populist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, commonly called AMLO, has developed an unlikely relationship with Trump – to the point he says the U.S. president now shows "respect" for Mexico. For his part, Trump calls López Obrador a "great guy" and has toned down his discourteous discourse – gestures interpreted by some AMLO supporters as the Mexican president having tamed Trump.

"It’s in our interest that Donald Trump wins," said Guadalupe Vargas González, 62, a junior high school teacher and AMLO supporter. "It's better to have someone we already know than the other candidate," he added, referring to Biden.  

Analysts meanwhile suspect a nationalist like AMLO would prefer a second Trump term rather than taking his chances on a Biden administration, which would be more likely to voice concerns over issues in Mexico such as security, human rights, press freedom, climate change and labour clauses in the USMCA deal.

"The U.S. has been keeping quiet about these topics – suspiciously quiet," said Brenda Estefan, a former security attaché at the Mexican Embassy in Washington.

North of the border, in Canada, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has said Justin Trudeau's administration will continue to "manage" the relationship with the White House regardless of whether Trump or Biden is elected.

But one side may be trickier for Trudeau to deal with than the other considering that Trump has called Trudeau "two-faced" and the U.S. president's economics and trade advisor Peter Navarro said of Canada's leader in 2018 that there was a "special place in hell" for him after Trudeau and Trump clashed at a Group of Seven economic summit that year over potential tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of cross-border trade.

In India, preparations are also underway for both outcomes, according to Vivek Mishra, a political scientist at the Indian Council of World Affairs, a think tank in New Delhi.

But Mishra noted that Trump is by far the favored candidate in a country that has overwhelmingly backed, in Narendra Modi, a controversial nationalist leader whose signature domestic policies include passing legislation that nakedly discriminates against India's Muslims and has led to major declines in civil and political liberties. 

Indians, Mishra said, have warmed to Trump because they see in him a U.S. leader who is prepared to stand up to China – India's regional rival. Trump has also overlooked India's human rights transgressions in Kashmir, a disputed territory.

Mishra said Biden's decision to select as running mate Kamala Harris, whose mother is from India, has not boosted nationwide enthusiasm for the Democratic challenger.   

"Trump's birthday is even celebrated by right-wing groups in India," added Mishra. "That's very unusual here, and certainly not something we've seen for Biden."

Half a world away, in Africa, an English-language monthly magazine and website that focuses on African politics and economics, noted "Africa has not figured in any of the presidential and vice-presidential debates, or in much of the campaigning."

Yet the editors of The Africa Report argued in a recent news and opinion roundup that the continent has "a serious stake in the outcome as shown by a clutch of Trump administration actions in the last few months." The publication cited a dispute between Ethiopia and Egypt over a huge hydropower dam that has drawn Trump's attention and his brokering of a peace deal between Sudan and Israel, among other issues. 

In conflict-plagued Afghanistan, Nishank Motwani, the deputy director of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit think tank in Kabul, said despite Trump's stewardship of a peace deal signed by the Taliban (but not the Afghan government), and his withdrawal of more U.S. forces, there is a sense of "despair, despondence and feeling abandoned" that has given Afghans little reason to want to see another Trump term. 

"Trump's deal has, if anything, constructed a bridge for the Taliban to push for total power and delegitimized the Afghan government," Motwani said.  

In Britain, Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London said there is, as is to be expected from one of the U.S.'s historically and culturally closest international partners, quite a lot of interest in who next wins America's highest office.

Yet Prime Minister Boris Johnson has barely acknowledged the vote. 

And Bale said he thought "few people in Britain actually know much about Trump's policies on the international stage other than that they are quite controversial," that he has stood up to China and supported Britain's exit from the European Union, and that he appears to have an amicable relationship with Russia's President Vladimir Putin – "Public Enemy No. 1 to most Brits," according to Bale, not least because of a raft of poisonings and assassinations of Russian nationals on British soil that successive British governments have linked to Kremlin operatives and Putin's inner circle.

Russia itself is also paying close attention, according to Arkady Dubnov, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center, a foreign affairs think tank based in Russia's capital. 

But perhaps not in the way some might expect. 

Dubnov said Russian political scientists close to the Kremlin have portrayed a Trump victory as useful for Russia's national security because of Trump's threats to withdraw from NATO. But he said few in Russia's political establishment believe this will happen and "most ordinary Russians are only interested in the election as a kind of entertaining show involving two elderly participants, neither of whom they have much sympathy for."

© Francisco Seco, AP NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, front left, speaks with President Donald Trump, after a group photo at a NATO leaders meeting at The Grove hotel and resort in Watford, Hertfordshire, England, on Dec. 4, 2019.

Among younger generations of Russians, said Dubnov, Trump is not well liked because he is viewed as a "defender of conservative values, a homophobe and a cynic."

As for Biden, he has been given short shrift.

Although not, it seems, in far away Australia, according to Salvatore Babones, an American-born political scientist at the University of Sydney. 

Babones said that while many people in Australia appear to like that Trump has been tough on China and are especially "happy to have U.S. Marines in Darwin" as a symbol of a steadfast American commitment to the defense of Australia, most "everyone is pulling for a Biden victory, though no one seems quite sure why."

Babones said that "strangely, their greatest hope is that a Biden administration presages no change in American foreign policy in the region. As a result, no matter which way the election goes, the majority of Australians are likely to be disappointed."

Not taking sides

Iran, too, has been reluctant to publicly pick a side, partly because it doesn't see a side. 

"It doesn't matter whether Trump or Biden or anyone else is the U.S. president," said Mohammad Farahani, editor-in-chief of a Tehran-based news agency linked to Iran's judiciary. "U.S. strategy toward Iran may change; the policy is always the same."

Farahani described Trump's decision to abandon a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers as a "cruel action" that has wrought harm on ordinary Iranians through successive waves of crippling economic sanctions, but he said former President Obama, who brokered the nuclear accord, was also guilty of "signing hard sanctions on Iran."

In a recent poll, about half of Iranians surveyed claimed to be impartial on who wins.

In Ukraine, Olexiy Haran, a political scientist at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, said Ukrainians, perennially fearful of an escalating conflict with Russia, were "grateful" for Trump's eventual decision to authorize the sale to Ukraine of a Javelin, shoulder-mounted anti-tank missile system. It was an allegation that Trump, during a phone call with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, explicitly linked this purchase to a demand that Ukraine investigate Biden and his son over unsubstantiated corruption claims that formed the basis of the impeachment inquiry into Trump. 

However, Haran said Ukrainians also recognized that Biden would be a more "predictable" leader for their government to deal with. "The important thing for Ukraine is, we can't take sides in who should be the next U.S. president," he said. 

Haran added that, whatever the outcome of the vote on Nov. 3, Ukrainians wanted to see an end to their country's name constantly being associated with corruption and foreign scandals that most Ukrainians view as originating with pro-Russian oligarchs. 

Also painstakingly, officially neutral: China. 

But Andy Mok, a fellow at the Center for China and Globalization, a public policy think tank based in Beijing, said the perception among the foreign policy establishment there is that while Trump may be worse for Beijing in the short-term because of the harsh line he has taken on it over, for example, coronavirus and trade, longer-term he's probably better for China because of the "Trump derangement syndrome he elicits in the media and other parts of the U.S. government this just keeps him constantly on the defensive."

Mok said a distracted Trump is viewed in China as ultimately limiting his effectiveness in other areas, and that a constant drumbeat of negative reaction to his words and actions plays into China's hands as it pursues its own "unstoppable economic rise."

He added there was "surprise and even puzzlement" in China that both U.S. presidential candidates are well into their advanced years. Mok said this has raised questions in China around what their ages could mean for the effectiveness of American leadership, as well as what it may say about the health of the political system that chose them. 

"It's not just Biden (77) and Trump (74), look at (House speaker) Nancy Pelosi (80), (Senate majority leader) Mitch McConnell (78)," Mok added, noting America's aging leadership. China's President Xi Jinping, by contrast, is a relatively youthful 67. 

Still, elsewhere, the U.S. election takes a back seat to more pressing concerns. 

In fact, not all leaders and populations appear to be shuddering at the thought of four more years of Trump or are wracked with consternation tied to his potential defeat.

"COVID-19, and Sweden’s high international profile regarding its approach to it, takes precedence," said David Crouch, the Sweden-based author of "Almost Perfect," a book that explains the Scandinavian nation's governance model that has long attracted many admirers and critics, including Trump, who over the last four years has several times bashed Sweden over its immigration policies and generous welfare benefits. 

"There is no sense that we are holding our collective breath ahead of Nov. 3," Crouch added. "The USA seems to have become a very foreign country to Swedes, who have strong historical, cultural and economic links with it. Neither of the two candidates are easy for Swedes to engage with. A quip on The Daily Show is more likely to be a conversation point than a development in the election campaign itself." 

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GUIDELINES FOR COVID-19 TESTS FOR AIRLINE PASSENGERS COULD SET GLOBAL BAR FOR RELIABILITY

 Cyprus Mail 1 November 2020 - by Reuters News Service

A global aviation manual now under review by a UN body suggests global guidelines calling for the use of highly reliable tests when screening passengers to detect the novel coronavirus ahead of flights, three sources familiar with the matter said.

Carriers and airports are pushing for uniform global testing guidelines to waive strict quarantine requirements that are decimating travel, with airline trade group IATA forecasting a 66% decline in 2020 air traffic because of the pandemic.

Travel restrictions and the use of testing now vary globally. Certain airlines require passengers to obtain a negative test, even as some countries allow visitors in without quarantine, while others bar all non-essential foreigners.

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Manual on Testing and Cross Border Risk Management Measures, expected in November, would offer voluntary technical guidance but not oblige countries to remove quarantines.

The manual is not expected to suggest specific tests, such as antigen or polymerase chain reaction (PCR), the sources said. Instead, it would recommend passengers be screened using a test with a sensitivity and specificity of 95% so there would be few false positives and negatives, the sources added.

Some rapid tests are less sensitive and therefore more likely to miss positive cases than PCR alternatives, although the accuracy gap has narrowed.

One of the sources said a range of tests, with reliability as low as around 80% to close to 100%, had initially been considered.

Another proposal is that passengers be tested up to 48 hours ahead of travel but not necessarily at the airport, the sources said. The sources declined to be identified as the discussions are confidential.

U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Deputy Administrator Dan Elwell told Reuters on Wednesday that the manual would not be “heavy handed” or provide a prescription for testing. He did not confirm specific details about the manual.

“It’s like ‘look, if you are going to do pre-departure testing or arrival testing or quarantine, here’s how we think you should do it,'” said Elwell, who heads an ICAO working group on issues like testing and quarantines.

ICAO said in an emailed statement the manual provides countries with a risk management framework for evaluating testing options and factors to consider, should a country elect to implement testing.

While the United States “would like to get to a point where quarantine is not necessary,” Elwell said, it would be difficult to create global guidelines for removing travel restrictions through testing since countries have individual concerns,” he said.

“There are a lot of mixed feelings about quarantines.”

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EXPLAINER - US ELECTION LINGO - FROM NAKED BALLOTS TO A RED MIRAGE

 Reuters 2 November 2020 

© Reuters/Tom Brenner FILE PHOTO: Protest against the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in Washington

By Tom Hals

WILMINGTON, Del. (Reuters) - Every U.S. presidential election has its own lingo, like the "hanging chads" on voting cards in Florida that led to a landmark court battle in 2000. Below is some of the jargon used in the days leading up to the Nov. 3 election pitting President Donald Trump against his Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

NAKED BALLOTS

Sixteen states, including Pennsylvania, require voters to return mail ballots in a special "secrecy" envelope. Ballots that don't arrive in the envelope will be considered "naked" and might be disqualified. Celebrities including Naomi Campbell, Chris Rock and Sarah Silverman disrobed in a video to promote proper voting procedures, "the least sexy thing a completely naked person can say," according to actor Josh Gad, who also stripped for the video by activist group Represent.Us. The group, which has promoted anti-corruption resolutions in U.S. cities, says it does not endorse either candidate.

RED MIRAGE/BLUE SHIFT

Fearing crowded polling places amid the coronavirus pandemic, a record number of Americans, particularly Democrats, cast mail-in ballots this year, and counting them could take days. As a result, initial results on Election Day may show Republicans, indicated by red on election maps, holding large leads in battleground states such as Pennsylvania, which counts mail-in ballots received three days after Nov. 3. As ballots are tallied in the ensuing days, that "red mirage" could fade, giving way to a "blue shift." Experts see a possible "blue mirage" and "red shift" in Florida and North Carolina, which process mailed-in ballots before Election Day.

SPOILED BALLOTS

Ballots that are improperly marked can be rejected as spoiled. Trump said in an Oct. 27 Twitter post that the phrase "can I change my vote" was trending on Google and urged Americans to submit a new ballot for him. Some states allow voters to request a new absentee ballot but first they have to request their original ballot be marked as spoiled. Following Trump's tweet, Google data showed a spike in searches for "spoiled ballots."

DUELING ELECTORS

A candidate becomes president by securing the most "electoral" votes rather than a majority of the national popular vote. The Electoral College system allots electors to the 50 states largely based on their population, and the candidate who wins the popular vote in a state generally gets its electors. But legal experts say Trump could try to convince Republican lawmakers in closely contested states to approve the Republican slate of electors based on early vote tallies. As more ballots are counted, Biden might eventually be certified as the winner of the same state. The result: Dueling electors and an outcome that could be determined by Congress.

COURT PACKING

Republicans confirmed Amy Coney Barrett as a Supreme Court justice on Oct. 26 to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a hero to many for her advocacy for women's issues. Democrats had argued Ginsburg's seat should be filled after the election and in response to Barrett's confirmation some have suggested that a Biden Administration could expand the court beyond its traditional nine justices. The idea surfaced briefly in the late 1930s and was criticized as "court packing." Biden has said he will establish a bipartisan commission to consider changes to the court system, which he said is "getting out of whack."

POLL WATCHERS

The Republican National Committee is mobilizing thousands of supporters to monitor early voting sites and ballot drop boxes, looking for irregularities such as people dropping off multiple ballots in states where that generally is not allowed. This marks the first presidential election in nearly four decades in which the Republicans can engage in "ballot security" activities without prior review and approval from the Department of Justice. Some voting rights advocates worry that gun-toting groups might show up outside polling places and intimidate voters.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Daniel Wallis)

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T-CELL STUDY ADDS TO DEBATE OVER DURATION OF COVID-19 IMMUNITY

 Cyprus Mail 2 November 2020 - by Reuters News Service

Italian restaurant and bar workers gather in Piazza del Popolo to protest against the government's coronavirus rules

A small UK study has found that “cellular immunity” to the pandemic SARS-CoV-2 virus is present after six months in people who had mild or asymptomatic COVID-19 infections – suggesting they might have some level of protection for at least that time.

Scientists presenting the findings, from 100 non-hospitalised COVID-19 patients in Britain, said they were “reassuring” but did not mean people cannot in rare cases be infected twice with the disease.

“While our findings cause us to be cautiously optimistic about the strength and length of immunity generated after SARS-CoV-2 infection, this is just one piece of the puzzle,” said Paul Moss, a professor of haematology at Britain’s Birmingham University who co-led the study.

“There is still a lot for us learn before we have a full understanding of how immunity to COVID-19 works.”

The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed by other experts but was published online on bioRvix, analysed the blood of 100 patients six months after they had had either mild or asymptomatic COVID-19. It found that while some of the patients’ antibody levels had dropped, their T-cell response – another key part of the immune system – remained robust.

“(Our) early results show that T-cell responses may outlast the initial antibody response,” said Shamez Ladhani, a consultant epidemiologist at Public Health England who co-led the work.

The study also found the size of T-cell response differed, and was considerably higher in people who had had symptomatic COVID-19 than those who had no symptoms when infected.

The researchers said this could be interpreted in two ways: It is possible that higher cellular immunity might give better protection against re-infection in people who had symptoms, or equally, that asymptomatic patients are better able to fight off the virus without the need to generate a large immune response.

Experts not directly involved with the study said its findings were important and would add to a growing body of knowledge about potential protective immunity to COVID-19.

“These results provide reassurance that, although the titre of antibody to SARS-CoV-2 can fall below detectable levels within a few months of infection, a degree of immunity to the virus may be maintained,” said Charles Bangham, chair of immunology at Imperial College London.

“However, the critical question remains: do these persistent T-cells provide efficient protection against re-infection?”

While more than 46 million people worldwide have been infected with COVID-19, confirmed cases of re-infection are so far very rare.

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NUMBER OF POSITIVE CASES ANNOUNCED AS POSITIVE IN POLIS 'MISLEADING'

 Cyprus Mail 2 November 2020 - by Bejay Browne

Only one of the 13 cases of Covid-19 that were recently announced in the area of Polis Chrysochous is a new case, according to the local mayor, who called the latest figures misleading.

Following an apparent surge in coronavirus cases, free Covid-19 testing for 300 residents of Polis Chrysochous got underway at the municipality.

Meanwhile 13 positive cases had already recently been identified from a total of 300 tests carried out by the state.

The figure is misleading as most had already tested positive before, Giotis Papachristofi told the Cyprus Mail.

“Six were already confirmed from the football team and another six were students under 17 years old. None of them were supposed to come to the municipality for testing, they should have all stayed at home as they had already tested positive before,” he informed the Cyprus Mail.

The tests were arranged by the health ministry in collaboration with medical laboratory NIPD Genetics.

The municipality Facebook page stated that, only one person from each household was eligible for the examination and those under restriction or quarantine were not eligible to participate in the programme.

Despite that, 12 of the positive cases announced had already tested positive, he said.

“In fact, only one new case was detected and that is not a great number is it?” he said.

This mean there is no need for further testing of residents and workers in the Polis area he said, as only one new case was found.

The mayor noted that measures taken by the municipality include spraying of public places, such as toilets and other places, and these will continue.

“Since we had a number of positive cases, residents are taking the protocols seriously. People are wearing masks and limiting contacts with others and those that are positive are self-isolating at home. They are doing the right thing,” he said.

 

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WIFE STABS HUSBAND WITH BROKEN BOTTLE

 Filenews 2 November 2020 - by  Dora Christodoulou

A British brawl broke out at midnight on The Tourist Street of St. Anthony in Kato Paphos.

According to police investigations, the British couple were in a bar in that area when in the circumstances being investigated they started arguing. At one point the wife took a piece of glass that had previously been broken and attacked her husband with it, injuring him.

The man was taken by ambulance, which had meanwhile been called to the scene, to Paphos Hospital, where he is being treated, in a serious condition but out of danger according to doctors. The woman was arrested and taken into custody.

From the investigations and testimonies obtained it appears that the British couple had consumed large quantities of alcohol prior to the incident.

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LEDRA MURDER - LENGTHY SENTENCES IMPOSED ON FIVE MEN

 Filenews 2 November 2020

The perpetrator of the murder committed on Ledra Street on the night of 21 June with a 21-year-old man from India was sentenced to life in prison after a fierce brawl between his fellow citizens. Four others involved were sentenced to years in prison.

It is noted that six persons involved in the case were brought before the court and the defendant who inflicted the fatal stab wounds on the 21-year-old accepted the sentence of life imprisonment. Three other defendants were given a 14-year prison sentence, while a fifth defendant in possession of a knife before the scuffle was given a 17-year prison sentence. The last four were charged, among other things, with attempted murder. One of the six was suspended at the request of the prosecution.

According to the facts of the case, the defendants, in their entirety, on the evening of 21 June went to the area around Ledra, with knives and offensive objects with them in order to use them to attack another group of their fellow citizens. A fierce scuffle ensued between the two groups, resulting in the 21-year-old being killed while the other defendants attempted to kill two other people.

After the deadly attack on the 21-year-old, the assailant fled along with the other defendants and another person still wanted by authorities.

For its part, the defense of the four defendants noted that they did not go to the scene after premeditation to kill, while they claimed that they were not in possession of knives and were at the scene when a fight broke out between the two groups.

Source: eyenews

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CORONAVIRUS -' 50' THE AVERAGE AGE OF THOSE HOSPITALISED

 Filenews 2 November 2020

The average age of those hospitalized with coronavirus at Famagusta Hospital, which functions as a Reference Hospital, decreases day by day. As the Medical Director of Famagusta Hospital, Amalia Hatzigiannis, stated in Alpha's midday broadcast, the average number of patients hospitalized with coronavirus has now fallen to 50 years, which shows that the coronavirus does not leave the younger generation unaffected.

It is worth noting that on 24 October, the day on which the last epidemiological bulletin of the Ministry of Health was issued, 33 people were hospitalized with Covid-19 with their median age being 58 years.

It is noted that 25 people are currently being treated at the Reference Hospital, four of whom are in the Increased Care Unit. Today, one person was discharged, and as Mrs. Hatzigiannis those who receive discharge continue to be self-contained at home, while some continue to take medication.

The average hospitalization at the Reference Hospital is ten days.

It should be stressed that as of today the Reference Hospital has been reinforced with additional medical and nursing staff, while as a Clinic Covid-19 will also operate the Pathological Department of Famagusta Hospital, which has 24 additional beds.

Source: eyenews

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APOEL APPOINT FORMER IRELAND BOSS McCARTHY AS COACH

 Cyprus Mail 2 November 2020 - by Reuters News Service

APOEL Nicosia on Monday unveiled former Ireland manager Mick McCarthy as their new coach on a 19-month contract to May 2022, the Cyprus club said.

McCarthy, a former Ireland international, twice coached Ireland as well as Sunderland, Wolverhampton Wanderers, and Ipswich in England.

McCarthy’s assistant Terry Connor is also brought in, the club said in a statement.

APOEL, the island’s most successful club, are currently in 10th place in the Cypriot First Division with two wins from eight matches after a poor start to the season.

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FIRST CYPRUS OPEN A BIG SUCCESS

 Cyprus Mail 2 November 2020 - Press Release

Tournament winner Callum Shinkwin and Cyprus Deputy Minister of Tourism, Savvas Perdios, pose with the trophy

England’s Callum Shinkwin hailed a “one in a million” moment after defeating Finland’s Kalle Samooja in a play-off to win his first European Tour title in the Aphrodite Hills Cyprus Open.

Shinkwin birdied the first extra hole to secure victory after the pair had finished tied on 20 under par.

The 27-year-old, who lost a play-off for the Scottish Open in 2017 after missing from four feet to win on the 72nd hole, had earlier produced a spectacular finish to set the clubhouse target following a closing 63.

Shinkwin was two shots behind with two holes play but birdied the 17th and then holed from 50 feet for an eagle on the 18th to complete a back nine of 29.

“I could see the scoreboard and Kalle was on 19 (under) and I was on 18,” Shinkwin said. “There was no chance really to hole that putt normally, it was one in a million you’re going to hole it from that distance and my aim was to try and two putt.”

Samooja needed to match Shinkwin’s eagle to win in regulation and saw his long-range attempt run five feet past the hole, but held his nerve to hole the birdie putt to force extra holes.

The 32-year-old then left himself with an almost identical birdie putt to extend the play-off, but pushed it agonisingly wide of the hole.

Whilst looking forward to this week’s Aphrodite Hills Cyprus Showdown (November 5–8), we just cannot resist looking at the number of the previous days:

• 27 different nationalities played in this Cyprus Open
• 105 players were competing for a total prize fund of one million euros
• Television reach of 735 million in 47 countries, including 19 hours of live coverage across the four days of the tournament.

It has been a hard year for tourism around the world. During these hard periods, our island had just enjoyed one of the greatest promotional opportunities.

People who have never been to Cyprus before, are using all contact channels to express their admiration towards the Aphrodite Hills Resort’s facilities, the nature and beauty of the island and the amazing sunny weather in the middle of autumn.

The European Tour and ISM are working hard to deliver the same quality at this week’s tournament.

The new 2030 National Strategy for Tourism is certainly to bring profound results in diversification and to keep the sector on its growth trajectory for the next decades.

Golf tourism is growing steadily thanks to the island’s year-round good weather and due to facilities like the ones at Aphrodite Hills Resort.

The Deputy Minister of Tourism, Savvas Perdios congratulated the organisers and the winner and expressed his satisfaction for the event happening in Cyprus for the first time and wished to be able to welcome the tournament again next year and in the years to come.

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