Cyprus Mail: News Articles in English, 00-12-03

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From: The Cyprus Mail at <http://www.cyprus-mail.com/>

Sunday, December 3, 2000

CONTENTS

[01] Top Cypriot gynaecologist found guilty of lying about sex claim

[02] Church lifts Chrysanthos ban

[03] Marathon man Ron, 62, eases off... over 10kms

[04] Mad? No, this is a ‘crazy’ Christmas cow

[05] Return soon of the ‘Elgin Marbles’?

[01] Top Cypriot gynaecologist found guilty of lying about sex claim

A LEADING Cypriot gynaecologist working in London has been found guilty of lying on oath about claims of sexual harassment filed against him.

Professor Kyprianos Nicolaides, who left Cyprus in 1970 aged 17, is a world expert in foetal medicine at King’s College Hospital, London. He recently made headlines when he treated British woman Mandy Allwood during her eight- baby pregnancy.

Nicolaides escaped being struck off after a disciplinary committee of the UK’s General Medical Council deemed it sufficient to admonish him for serious professional misconduct. He was found guilty of deliberately misleading a 1998 GMC inquiry into claims that he made rude and sexual comments to a female patient.

At that inquiry, Professor Nicolaides denied that he had ever previously faced allegations of sexual familiarity, or any other complaint of a sexual nature, during his professional life. But it was later discovered that a colleague at King’s College Hospital had made an allegation of sexual harassment against him just three months before the committee hearing.

Nicolaides told the new disciplinary committee meeting he thought the question referred only to patients. “It didn’t cross my mind that I could have answered inaccurately,” he said.

Chairman of the GMC’s disciplinary committee, Peter Richards, said Nicolaides’ lies warranted “complete condemnation”. “You have been guilty of a grave, inexcusable error of judgment. The public is entitled to expect that doctors are honest and trustworthy. Your conduct has fallen seriously short of the standard properly demanded of the medical profession,” he said.

Nicolaides will be allowed to continue to practice medicine. He is director of the Harris Birthright Centre and Professor of Foetal Medicine at Kings. He sees 10,000 patients a year and has written over 600 articles.

[02] Church lifts Chrysanthos ban

THE disgraced former Bishop of Limassol, Chrysanthos, was yesterday officially accepted back into the Church fold after serving a two-year suspension for alleged financial scams.

Chrysanthos – who is still on trial for fraud - got the ‘all-clear’ to resume performing Church services during a morning meeting with his successor, Athanassios.

When the ban expired last Friday, the Holy Synod stated that Chrysanthos could resume his priestly duties provided he secured approval from Athanassios. Chrysanthos yesterday thanked Athanassios for his “generosity of spirit” and described his meeting with his successor as having been “filled with sunshine”.

Athanassios said that 70-year-old Chrysanthos would be free to perform services in the Limassol district and anywhere else he is invited to do so. Bishop Chrysostomos of Paphos has already stated that Chrysanthos is welcome in his district.

The former bishop was suspended in November 1998 as fraud claims against him mushroomed. He is currently on trial on charges of swindling a British- based investor out of $3.7 million.

[03] Marathon man Ron, 62, eases off... over 10kms

RON HILL, the marathon runner who won gold for Britain in the 1970 Commonwealth Games, is taking part in today’s Kolossi road race at the grand old age – for an athlete at least - of 62.

Ron told the Sunday Mail yesterday that he was not going to do the Kolossi half-marathon, opting instead for the slightly less taxing 10 km road race. The first Briton to win the Boston Marathon (also in 1970) says he is beginning to “ease off a bit” now that he as passed 60.

His definition of “easing off” is, however, distinctly relative. “I am going to do the 10 km only because I ran three races in three days in Malta last week, and this would be four in eight days in Cyprus -- at my age you have to be a bit careful!” Ron said from his Limassol hotel.

In a lifetime of running, Ron reckons he has clocked up just over 139,000 miles, including 115 marathons. The Kolossi 10km race will be his 2,092nd competitive run.

And he has no plans to give up pounding the ground any time soon. He has set himself a fresh challenge -- to race in 100 countries by the time he reaches 70. So far, he has managed 64 countries, including Dubai, Iceland, Jordan and China this year. Cyprus is not part of this year’s haul, as he raced here for the first time in 1985.

“Next year I want to pile a few more in, beginning with Oman on January 2 and the Dead Sea half-marathon in February. After that I’m toying with the idea of a race in Nigeria.”

Ron represented his country in the 64, 68 and 72 Olympics. After a disappointing show in Tokyo in 1964, which he puts down to inexperience, he finished an impressive seventh in the 10,000 metres event in the thin air of Mexico in 1968. In 1969, he won the European Marathon in Athens and then, the following year, the Boston Marathon and the Commonwealth Games marathon – finishing in his best ever time of two hours, nine minutes and 28 seconds.

He was favourite to win the marathon in the 1972 Olympics but an ill- advised experiment with a new diet cost him dear and he failed to live up to his promise.

[04] Mad? No, this is a ‘crazy’ Christmas cow

POPULAR local dairy Charalambides has gone for a festive cow to illustrate its milk cartons for the Christmas season.

Pick up your litre of milk and you cannot help but notice the picture of a rather, well, confused looking cow, cross-eyed and with Christmas balls dangling from its ears, squatting atop a pile of presents.

Could the ‘confused cow’ be a ‘mad cow’? It seems a strange choice at a time when beef sales locally are reported to be over 30 per cent down due to BSE fears and the whole of Europe is concerned about the crisis.

The dairy yesterday saw the funny side of the Sunday Mail’s tongue-in- cheek question about the illustration. No, no way is this a mad cow... just a “crazy” cow.

“No, there is no connection with BSE,” laughed dairy manager Antonis Charalambides. “It is not a mad cow, it is a crazy cow?a crazy Christmas cow.”

[05] Return soon of the ‘Elgin Marbles’?

AS the controversy over the ‘Elgin Marbles’ rumbles on, a Cambridge academic is to give a lecture on Tuesday at the Forum Intercontinental Hotel in Nicosia entitled “The Sculptures of the Parthenon, questions of authenticity and stewardship”.

William St Clair is Senior Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge. He is author of Lord Elgin and the Marbles, widely available in Cyprus in English and Greek translation. First published in 1967, it was revised and updated in 1998 with four new chapters.

St Clair’s lecture will address the issues in the continuing debate over whether the so-called Elgin Marbles should be returned to Athens from the British Museum where they have been on display since 1816. Lord Elgin, the then British Ambassador in Constantinople, brought the Marbles to London, with ‘permission’ from the Ottoman authorities.

At the time, the Parthenon was facing destruction and many think Elgin saved the Marbles. But, as St Clair points out, the way in which the Marbles were brought to the UK stands in sharp contrast to current international efforts to stop monuments from being broken up, to halt illicit trade and guard against looting.

He has praised what he describes as the “modern and scientific archaeological service” in Greece. “The Greek government no longer makes the claim for return of the Marbles on nationalist grounds. The claim is based on the need to respect the integrity of the monument and of the Acropolis site as a whole,” he said in an interview ahead of his Cyprus lecture.

“Surveys of opinion in the British House of Commons and among the public suggest that a majority are now in favour of return, and I believe that the chances of a return before long are higher now than they have ever been.”

The lecture is at 7.30pm at the Forum, Nicosia, on Tuesday. The event has been organised by the Apocalypse Historical Research Society and is sponsored by Cyprus Development Bank.

Cyprus Mail 2000

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