By Marianna Pissa
AS TRADITION has it, all the daily newspapers, with the exception of Phileleftheros, had a special April fool’s story yesterday, mainly dealing with the two hottest issues of water and the Ledra Street opening.
Alithia titled their fictional story “Ledra Street: Tassos says ‘no’”. The paper claimed that former President Tassos Papadopoulos disagreed with the opening of Ledra Street and, having recently visited the area, he said: “My fears are turning into reality”. The daily even went the extra mile and added a doctored image of Papadopoulos at Ledra Street.
The right wing daily Machi focused on the water crisis: “We are thirsty because we give water to the North,” its headline claims. Machi says that for the past two years the Cyprus government has been providing tons of water to the north under a secret agreement between former Agriculture Minister Fotis Fotiou and Mehmet Ali Talat, with the blessing of Papadopoulos himself.
Haravghi also ‘fooled’ with the water problem issue. Their title was,
“Unexpected solution to the water problem”. They claimed that the water cuts would be suspended because, “according to reliable sources”, amateur divers in the Zygi area had discovered an underwater source, a water-carrying stream of artesian water, where, with the appropriate technology, huge quantities of water can be supplied to fill up the dams.
Simerini titled their prank, “All teachers will have to take exams”, claiming that the Education Minister and the Dean of the University of Cyprus decided last week that all teachers had to be further educated in order to avoid any talks on the creation of a second waiting list of candidates. The teachers are to start their training after Easter and will be educated in three different stages.
Politis, used the Ledra Street issue in their April Fool’s article and titled it “Treasure found in Ledra”. They claimed that on Monday, during the propping up of the buildings, a crew from Nicosia Municipality found treasure that consisted of hundreds of golden coins inside an old clay vase-like container.
And in case you didn’t notice, the Cyprus Mail’s front page April Fool’s story was titled, “EU plans sleep clampdown in bid to cut down on accidents”, claiming that after the clampdown on smoking and obesity, the EU is planning to make sure that its 500 million citizens have eight hours’ sleep a night in order to reduce road and work accidents. This will be implemented by the use of a ‘breathalyser-type’ device to scan the brain waves of motorists and workers.
Copyright © Cyprus Mail 2008
Did anybody print that the Greeks are planning another Coup and have mobilised to kill Christofias???
Does anybody else think a few of these are insensitive??
