This week in history
THIS week last year, a globally-renowned Turkish Cypriot scientist said that cancer survivors would only need to take two pills a day to stop the disease from recurring or worsening, if trials of a new treatment proved successful. Mustafa Djamgöz, Professor of Cancer Biology at Imperial College, London, said that he hoped to begin clinical trials of a non-toxic drug called Ranexa on “triplenegative” breast cancer patients following promising research results.
Also this week last year, a leading women’s rights campaigner called for tougher restrictions on hunting guns after a woman was shot dead by her ex-boyfriend, who then turned the gun on himself. Police said Halime Çetin, 45, was shot three times in her bedroom by 43 year-old Hayrettin Özcömert, who had gone to her house in the Maraş district of Gazimağusa armed with a newly-acquired shotgun and cartridges.
This week in 2013, a leading British trade union was to launch an appeal to help the families of strikers at Mehmetçik Municipality nar İskele. In the first campaign of its kind, the charity arm of the Communication Workers’ Union launched a Hardship Appeal for Families of Mehmetçik. The union, which then had some 204,000 members in Britain’s telecommunications and postal industries, kicked off the fund with a £500 donation and was setting up a web page on the BT “My Donate” site.
This week in 2009, the TRNC legal system held out an olive branch to expat homebuyers fighting to have contracts honoured so they could obtain what they paid for. The TRNC Bar Council pledged to draft proposals that would rip up the unworkable “specific performance law”. The existing law’s aim was to make sure all parts of a contract were honoured. But constraints such as time limits within which complaints must be registered, as well as red tape of the legal system, meant it was practically impossible to enforce.
This week in 1998, an entire village was in mourning for British neighbours after a car crash killed three people and injured four. Witnesses at the scene claimed there were lengthy delays in getting help from emergency workers after the smash involving five Britons, who were travelling in one vehicle near the Vazaro Hotel on the Gazimağusa-Salamis road.
On this very day, October 6, 1985, a police officer was stabbed to death during riots at the Broadwater Farm housing estate in Tottenham, North London. The police officer who was killed was named the following day as Sunderland-born PC Keith Blakelock, aged 40 and a father of three.
On October 10, 1970, Quebec’s former Labour and Immigration Minister, Pierre Laporte, was kidnapped. He was seized from his home in Montreal by two men armed with machine-guns. The “October Crisis” as it became known, prompted the federal government to introduce temporary martial law to arrest and detain terror suspects without a warrant.