Footballers’ fear of penalty shootouts
When Arsenal football club lost 4-3 on penalties to Paris Saint Germain (PSG) in the European Champions final in Budapest two weeks ago the question no England fan dared ask ...
Articles
Only the murderer is to blame for the way Henry Nowak died
The arrest and handcuffing of murder victim Henry Nowak by police officers in Southampton in the UK last December and the political fallout after the conviction of the young British ...
Keeping the red flag flying
There are still a number of communist parties active in the world, among them those in China and Cyprus, which, in their different ways kept the red flag flying after ...
Vienna 2026: boycotts and chaos
It most definitely was not a good year for Eurovision
By Alper Ali Riza
What to say about Eurovision 2026 in Vienna other than that Dara won it for Bulgaria with ‘...
The most turbulent of weeks for Starmer
British prime minister Keir Starmer was busy last week writing the king’s speech for the state opening of Parliament in between fending off “the slings and arrows of outrageous” ...
Reform surge signals tectonic shift in British politics
There were municipal and regional elections in England, Scotland and Wales last week in which the Labour government and Prime Minister Keir Starmer were clobbered by Reform UK and Nigel ...
EU positions itself as a defence alliance as Nato wobbles
Ever mindful of defence contingencies, the EU has positioned itself to evolve into a defence alliance as well as an economic and political union by adopting a mutual assistance clause ...
A plea for a federal Cyprus on the Swiss model
There is very bad turbulence all around Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean that calls for wise leadership all round to steer Cyprus in a safe direction.
Switzerland managed to stay ...
Law clients’ right to legal professional privilege is sacrosanct
Early on Easter Saturday a team of police officers raided the home of the well-known lawyer Nikos Clerides in Nicosia, armed with a search warrant issued by a judge shortly ...
King Charles’ state visit to America would be in bad taste
What special relationship! David Dimbleby the veteran British broadcaster exclaimed rhetorically on being asked about the illusion of the special relationship between Britain and the USA.
There never was a ...
In search of a diplomatic off-ramp
A Trump apologist explained his tendency to threaten military action and then back off as a deal making tactic to frighten his enemy to accept his terms. If the threat ...
The UN Charter on self-defence has been conducive to maintaining relative peace
History repeated itself as farce at the White House last Thursday during the visit of Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi for talks with President Trump at the Oval Office.
As ...
US has a history of war against Iran and killing innocent civilians
In war truth is the first casualty except for the US war on Iran on February 28, when the first casualties were primary school girls killed in their classrooms in southern ...
How lawful is the Iran war?
No one believes that Iran was planning to attack the US and Israel imminently on Saturday a week ago, justifying the pre-emptive attack on Iran while negotiations were in progress ...
US-Israel attack on Iran was inevitable
As the US and Israel attack Iran and many of its people are conflicted about what should happen to their government, no patriotic Iranian welcomes the bombing of their country ...
Andrew’s very public arrest, but was it legal?
Technically he should have been asked to attend a police station as is normal police procedure in white-collar criminal cases
Prince Andrew was arrested on his 66th birthday last Thursday ...
UK’s Labour not in habit of dumping sitting prime ministers
The last time a Labour prime minister came under pressure to resign like Keir Starmer did last week, was when Harold Wilson faced a backbench revolt over trade union reform ...
Mandelson now faces the prospect of many years in prison
Peter Mandelson is likely to be charged with offences of misconduct in public office (MiPO) for leaking highly sensitive market information he received as a UK cabinet minister in the ...
Political equality in Cyprus is a more modest version of the EU’s
The purpose of political equality in any Cyprus talks is to strike a fair balance between two rival but unequal communities condemned by history and geography to share a small ...
Fight for Greenland papers over a very murky past
To understand the geopolitical conundrum over Greenland you need a globe of planet Earth and a summary of the judgement of the Permanent Court of International Justice in Denmark v ...
Iran’s long history of outside interference
Iran is in the news again. This time because the bazaar joined protests against the Islamic Republic of Iran and many protesters have been reported killed and seriously injured.
The ...
Did the US breach international law? Well, It’s complicated
A hierarchy of laws in the US can leave treaties up to interpretation
Does international law matter to the US? That is the question in the time of Trump’s ...
What is there in Nazism for teenagers to like?
Although the recent teenage glorification of Adolf Hitler and Nazi ideology at a school in Larnaca in Cyprus is nothing new among teenagers, or confined to Cyprus, the attraction of ...
2026 offers glimmer of hope for Cyprus, elsewhere not so much
A review of the year and predicting the shape of things to come in 2026 and beyond must begin with events at home. The Cyprus Mail is of course a Cypriot ...