Divided regions

The International Monetary Fund, deadlocked with Greece over further financial aid, approved a new loan installment for Cyprus on Friday, now the only other eurozone country receiving its bailout support.

An outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) forced South Korea to cut interest rates on June 11 in the hope of softening the blow to an economy already burdened by slack demand, as authorities reported 14 new cases.

The Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders agreed Thursday to open more crossing points and link the mobile phone and electricity networks to help restore trust between their estranged communities on divided Cyprus.

A pseudo mufti in the northeast province of Thrace wants a … referendum. And not just any referendum, but one to show people and other countries, as he maintained, “who and how many Turks there are in western Thrace.”

The statement belongs to one Ahmet Mete, who used the “referendum” idea to prove, as he claimed, that “150,000 Turks” live in the northeast Greek province.

By John O'Donnell & Michele Kambas

FRANKFURT/NICOSIA - Cyprus is ready to react to any spillover from the crisis in Greece, the governor of the island's central bank said on Tuesday, adding the two countries were decoupling in the eyes of international markets.

BELGRADE - Members of the Serbian defense ministry and armed forces engaged in the UN peacekeeping mission in Cyprus were granted the UN medals for their excellent service, the Serbian ministry of defense issued a release on Wednesday.

NICOSIA ? Arsonists torched two cars early on Tuesday outside the home of the head of Bank of Cyprus, who has overseen a major restructuring of the island?s largest lender, police said.

John Patrick Hourican ? a former Royal Bank of Scotland senior executive who joined BoC in October 2013 ? was out of the country on business at the time of the arson attack.

The Turkish seismic vessel Barbaros re-entered Cyprus?s Exclusive Economic Zone on Wednesday following its withdrawal from the area at the end of last month, prompting anger in Nicosia and Athens and a heightening of tensions in the region.

The Cypriot government on Tuesday shrugged off what it described as a Turkish attempt to create tension in relations between Athens and Nicosia, emphasizing that the two allies were perfectly in line on the issue of the island’s offshore hydrocarbon resources.

The governments of Egypt, Greece and Cyprus urged Turkey on Wednesday to stop trying to chart gas deposits in areas of the east Mediterranean claimed by Cyprus, saying the work was illegal.

Cyprus, a member of the European Union, is anxious to develop the gas reserves in its so-called exclusive economic zone -- an offshore region lying south of the island.