New cabinet to combat crisis

A week after the resignation of the government at a time when the country is under fire from ratings agencies concerned about the scale of its public debt, President Dimitris Christofias has presented his new team. "Ministers already nominated immediately set to work," headlines the daily Politis, which notes that some ministerial posts had yet to be attributed on the morning of 5 August.

Supported by the communist party (AKEL), which has also provided the new Finance Minister, Kyriacos Kazamias, (a former member of the European Court of Auditors) and mainly composed of technical experts, the new government will take office amid a "difficult political climate" and at a bad moment for the country. On 11 July, the explosion of a cargo of munitions next to a power plant killed 13 people and interrupted electricity supplies. At the same time, the streets of the country have been invaded by thousands of demonstrators protesting against austerity measures. Next year Cyprus is scheduled to take over the rotating presidency of the EU in July 2012, however "the question of the division of the island, which has existed since 1974, has not yet been resolved," concludes the newspaper.