UK collapses, but other Europe rising   A fairly warm start to the year in Cyprus was not enough to prevent the number of tourist arrivals falling for the seventh month in a row in February, primarily owing to a collapse in the UK market. Tourist arrivals in February fell by 4.6% compared with the

Nearly two billion euros are sitting in accounts held by the employee provident and pension funds with less than a tenth of that figure managed to yield anything more than the ultraconservative returns of cash in the bank and government bonds. As speakers at a recent seminar on provident and pension funds told a crowd

The Mozilla Foundation has issued a critical fix designed to address vulnerabilities in a recent security update for the Firefox browser and SeaMonkey application suite, CNET reports. The security flaws were discovered in Firefox 1.5.0.9 and 2.0.0.1, as well as in SeaMonkey 1.0.7. The initial fix, issued in mid-December, was designed to address vulnerabilities in

Mindware, a leading IT distributor in the Middle East and North Africa, announced that it recorded revenues of USD 190 mln in 2006 as a result of increased focus on reseller education and new vendor appointment. Putting a premium aim to understanding the complex needs of its clients and business partners, Mindware will leverage a

Ericsson is set to achieve data speeds of up to 1Mbps in current GSM networks, enabling mobile broadband services for the world’s 2 bln existing GSM subscribers. Following the recent 3GPP industry standardization of EDGE Evolution, Ericsson has restated its commitment to launch EDGE Evolution, as software upgrade of existing infrastructure, by 2009. EDGE Evolution

The European Commission has adopted measures supplementing the EU legal framework established by the Directive on transparency obligations of listed companies (2004/109/EC). This follows a positive vote of the European Securities Committee and a strong endorsement from the European Parliament on 24 October 2006. The Transparency Directive and its implementing measures will improve the quality

Cyprus Airways, the national airline which received a timely approval from the European Commission for government backed loans released its preliminary 2006 results, showing reduced losses. The loss for 2006 from continuing operations fell to CYP 14 mln or EUR 24.2 mln from a loss of CYP 17.25 mln or EUR 29.85 mln in 2005.

Vassiliko Cement Works (VCW)  and Cyprus Cement Company Pcl (CCC) announced that they have signed a preliminary agreement according to which VCW will acquire the cement related operations of CCC as well as CCC’s investments in Latouros Quarries, CCC Aggregates Ltd, Athinodorou Beton-Transport Ltd, Athinodorou Beton-Estates Ltd, Athinodorou Beton Ltd and ELMENI (Quarries) Ltd. The

Ermes Department Stores Pcl announced that the Cyprus Securities & Exchange Commission has granted it permission to publish its prospectus ahead of the listing of its shares on the Cyprus Stock Exchange. The prospectus refers to the listing of 175 mln shares of nominal value 20 cent and 35 mln warrants 2007/2011, which will be