[01]

These services, which include government hospitals, the police, fire brigade, the Electricity Authority, the Cyprus Telecommunications Authority, Water Supply Boards, the Cyprus Refinery, oil companies, Cyprus Airways, banks, cooperatives, have in addition drawn up emergency action plans to face any problems which may arise at the turn of the millennium, particularly in the first few days of 2000.

The Council of Ministers has been informed about the measures taken and has decided that its members should be on the alert during the crucial period so as to coordinate the services involved and deal with any problems which may arise.

[02]

An Antiquities Department statement says "the earliest human remains from Cyprus were uncovered in a deep well in Kissonerga-Mylouthkia, which is now regarded as one of the oldest wells in the world."

Laboratories in Arizona, Oxford and Scotland confirm that the remains of the child are over 1000 years earlier than the population of Neolithic Khirokitia and perhaps a little earlier than those at Parekklichia- Shillourokambos.

The well also contained seeds of domesticated crops and the bones of sheep, goat, pig and deer. Such evidence indicated that the child belonged to one of the first human groups of farmers to successfully colonise rather than temporarily utilize the island.

In another slightly later Mylouthkia well, detached human skulls were carefully deposited with whole carcases of animals. These special burial customs are typical of certain pre-ceramic Neolithic cultures of the Levantine mainland and South Anatolia and provide valuable evidence concerning the origin of the island's first colonisers.

From the Republic of Cyprus Press and Information Office (PIO) Server at http://www.pio.gov.cy/

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