Cyprus

Israel expects a decision to go ahead with the construction of a 2,000 kilometer (1,243 mile) pipeline linking vast eastern Mediterranean gas resources to Europe to be made by early 2019, Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz told Reuters.

The United States recognizes the right of Cyprus to develop the resources in its Exclusive Economic Zone, and discourages any actions or statements that provoke a rise in tensions in the region, a State Department official has said.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım has reiterated Turkey’s stance that unilateral activities around Cyprus for hydrocarbons will not be tolerated.

We have to be extremely careful when we attempt to draw conclusions about who would stand by Greece or Cyprus at a crucial moment.

We tend to celebrate when we hear that the navy of an allied country will stand up to the Turks if it has to, only to sink into disappointment when the expectation fails to materialize.

The chief of the Hellenic National Defense General Staff (GEETHA), Admiral Evangelos Apostolakis, received US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt in his Athens office on Wednesday.

Their meeting focused on developments in the broader region, as well as on the continued detention of two Greek soldiers by Turkish authorities and Greek-American ties, according to an official announcement,

Cyprus is making steady progress in reducing the pay gap between men and women, data from the European statistical authority, Eurostat, showed on Wednesday.

According to figures for 2016, the unadjusted gender pay gap in Cyprus stood at 13.9 percent against an EU average of 16 percent, meaning that women earned 0.84 euros to every 1 euro made by a man.

Turkey's prime minister has renewed a threat against efforts to search for offshore gas around Cyprus.

Turkey opposes what it says are "unilateral" efforts to search for gas, saying they infringe the rights of Turkish Cypriots to the ethnically split island's resources.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim on Wednesday said that the "justice system will do what it must" in regards to the arrest last week of two Greek soldiers who accidentally strayed across Turkey's border and suggested that Greece must regard the incident as "a serious diplomatic issue in order to have conveyed it to the European Union."

Turkish Presidential Spokesman İbrahim Kalın has stated that the United States’ 6th fleet has not yet arrived off the island of Cyprus, after the Greek Cypriot administration claimed that the U.S. navy will be in the eastern Mediterranean for the protection of Exxon’s drilling vessel from a potential Turkish intervention.

The increased US naval presence in the Eastern Mediterranean until the end of the month is seen as an indication of the concern triggered by Turkey's recent hostility in the region, which last month led to the suspension of Italian energy company Eni's drilling operations in Block 3 of Cyprus's exclusive economic zone (EEZ).