Theo Panayides

It takes a moment to even realise it’s her, this slim young woman in a light-pink T-shirt, dwarfed by the gaudy tower of Ayia Napa marina. She looks like ...

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 ...

Yiorgos Georghiou puts it bluntly, in the prologue to his book I Was My Own Enemy: “I am not a psychologist. I am not a clinician or a researcher. I ...

Romani Youssef sits in a detention centre, waiting to be deported back to Egypt after being arrested as a ‘prohibited immigrant’ two months ago. Meanwhile, his Cypriot fiancée Anthi ...

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 ...

Here’s a question (translated from the Greek) from the most recent citizenship exam for third-country nationals, on July 4: ‘Which of the following information about Cyprus is inaccurate: 1. National service ...

What, you may wonder, has become of ‘the little hacker’? Joshua Polloso Epiphaniou is one of the handful of local criminals who are so notorious that they’re known by ...

Sitting in the spokesperson’s office at the Filoxenia Conference Center, the desk stacked with piles of leftover CY2026 stickers and notepads, we’re suddenly distracted by the sound of ...

A friend found it in their mailbox. A small brown envelope, unaddressed, seemingly promotional but sporting a handwritten message, the writing calligraphic in its symmetry and the obvious care taken: ‘...

A protest outside the presidential palace in Nicosia, sparked by news that the Gaza ‘Board of Peace’ was holding a meeting in Cyprus. Full story here.

The first World Cup that Giovanni remembers vividly was South Africa in 2010. He was 15 at the time, on summer holiday, and went a little football-mad, watching every game. Life got ...

Stronger and softer, says Yianoula Kyprianides when I ask how her experience – actually more the experience of her husband Kyriacos – has changed them both. ‘Stronger’ is obvious enough. “‘Stronger’ as ...

A march in Larnaca last Saturday by the Congolese community in memory of Christian Ndjondo, who died on May 27 after falling from a third-floor balcony during a police immigration raid.

With Cyprus Pride 2026 coming up, we asked a selection of people on the streets of Nicosia.

A total of 378,150 people voted in last Sunday’s parliamentary elections – but what about the foreign nationals? That number represents 66.4 per cent of those who were eligible to vote, but ...

It’s a game, of course. We the People vote for MPs every five years – then, once results are in, those politicians can relax. Voters have very little power to ...

The upgrade of Liopetri fishing shelter (Potamos Liopetriou) isn’t the most extreme example of a scenic spot being altered – some would say destroyed – in Cyprus. It’s not even ...

Dolphins – cute, clever dolphins, the tourist’s friend – are actually a menace, according to fishermen. “This is an SOS,” says Antonis Zampas, a fisherman in the Famagusta district, describing how ...

The facts are there, hidden behind a curtain in Arianna Economou’s rehearsal space in old Kaimakli: shelves upon shelves of boxes, the earliest dated ‘1983’. This is her personal archive, ...

A few days before the Eurovision song contest, we asked people on the streets of Nicosia how they feel about the contest in general, and Cyprus entry ‘Jalla’ in particular.

Let’s take, for instance, the ‘poiitarides’ – or ‘itinerant poets’, as Nicoletta Demetriou calls them. ‘Poiitarika’ (the category name for their works) were “long narrative songs,” she explains, “the closest ...

Does Yes have a Cyprus connection? In a word, yes. There are actually two obvious links. The more obvious is that Yes – though made by an Israeli filmmaker, and set ...

When does social-media rage turn into hate speech? Is Eoka a terrorist organisation? Should it be legal to blame Nato expansion for the war in Ukraine? And who gets to ...

As the Cyprus government prepares a bill banning social media for the under-15s, we asked a selection of 13- and 14-year-olds at the American International School in Cyprus for ...