Red star and crescent Turkish flags still fly over Kyrenia’s picture-postcard harbour, as well as two neighbouring Christian shrines, Bellapais Abbey and St Hillarion Castle.Those Greeks who fled south from Kyrenia are not among the 120,000 refugees who would be offered the option of returning home under the compromise drafted by Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general. In his Nicosia exile, the bishop is their spokesman.The Orthodox hierarchy has lost much of its political influence since the late Archbishop Makarios headed both the church and the state. Its authority has been eroded by scandals and by a drift away from religion among the middle class.But Bishop Pavlos of Kyrenia’s hellfire sermon reflects the rancorous debate among the 640,000-strong Greek majority in advance of Saturday’s separate communal referendums. Rival activists are branding each other “liars and traitors” Television talk shows degenerate into slanging matches.

Viewers protest that they switch off more confused than ever about the convoluted, book-length Annan plan.The Cyprus Mail suggested last week that supporters were reluctant to display yes car stickers for fear of having their windscreens smashed by no campaigners. “Consequently,” he warned, “those who say yes will be party to an injustice. They will lose their homeland and the kingdom of heaven.”The Turkish army occupied the outspoken cleric’s north-coast diocese in 1974 and repopulated it with Turkish Cypriot refugees and mainland settlers. Barely a week before Greek and Turkish Cypriots vote for or against reunification of this divided island, a leading Orthodox bishop has threatened Greek voters with damnation if they support the United Nations plan. The widow of Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the country’s first democratically elected president, staged a lively protest outside his official residence yesterday, along with various non-governmental organisations.. “In the 10 years of his rule, the Shevardnadze family became the richest in Georgia,” Mr Saakashvili said recently. “The sources of this wealth need to be painstakingly checked and if they turn out to be illegal then all the guilty parties need to be arrested, including the ex-president.”One of Mr Shevardnadze’s family has already been arrested on corruption charges.Mr Shevardnadze’s UN job has already caused an outcry in Georgia.

The man who made his name internationally as Mikhail Gorbachev’s foreign minister says he will be on UN work in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital where he has been given an official government residence and pension.But there was widespread speculation yesterday that Mr Shevardnadze, known as “the white fox” because of his shock of white hair and political cunning, might move to the UN’s headquarters in New York to avoid the fallout from embarrassing sleaze investigations, ongoing or about to be launched.Although Mikhail Saakashvili, the US-educated lawyer who succeeded him as Georgian President, has promised Mr Shevardnadze full immunity his security seems far from assured. The same year, he produced a chilling performance as a serial killer in the thriller Seven. Spacey has played almost every type of character in the crime genre. A role as the cocky detective Jack Vincennes in LA Confidential in 1997 was followed by a part as a murder suspect in Midnight in the Garden of Good Evil.But his best known part has probably been that of Lester Burnham, a middle-aged man on the verge of a mid-life crisis in the dark, suburban satire American Beauty.

Within four days of the film opening, Spacey was honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.. The Government will today announce its intention to levy financial sanctions against Sinn Fein because of the continuation of IRA violence in Northern Ireland. Speculation centres on a clampdown on the allowances, which, in Sinn Fein’s, case amount to over €100,000 a year.Losing this money will not be a financial disaster for Sinn Fein, which is viewed as well-funded. But republicans will be dismayed by the formal confirmation that the British and Irish governments regard it as linked to organised law-breaking.The Irish government is expected to announce its approval of the financial penalty imposed on Sinn Fein. This endorsement will not come as a surprise, since Dublin ministers have for months been launching increasingly caustic attacks on the party.The Independent Monitoring Commission, which was set up last year, consists of four figures, including Richard Kerr, a former deputy director of the CIA, and John Grieve, the one-time commander of Scotland Yard’s Anti-Terrorist Squad.The report, the commission’s first, is also critical of loyalist paramilitary groups, holding them responsible for most of the killings in Northern Ireland since the beginning of 2003. It accuses the extreme Protestant groups of involvement in the drugs trade, robberies, extortion and other illegality.But most of the interest will centre on its examination of the IRA, and of its assertion that Sinn Fein should be held directly responsible for its activities.The report comes after an incident in Belfast in February, when police made arrests related to the attempted abduction of dissident republican Bobby Tohill from a city bar.Although the IRA has maintained that it did not authorise any action against Mr Tohill, the report is believed to conclude that the organisation planned and carried out the attack.The report stops short of indicting the IRA for the disappearance of a County Armagh man, Gareth O’Connor, last year, though it does not rule out IRA responsibility. Sanctions are completely unacceptable.”This report will be based entirely upon briefings given to this body by the Special Branch and the other securocrat agencies, the very same people who stand indicted for organising and carrying out a campaign of state sponsored murder.”.