Cyprus

Martis Marti was 11 when his family fled their home in Famagusta, Cyprus. Marti, now 24 and majoring in business administration at Glassboro State College, had to grab a week's worth of food and a few changes of clothing one day in August 1974 as Turkish troops approached his village from the north. His family was forced to relocate in the southern part of the Mediterranean island nation when the Turkish forces remained in the north. Like the 200,000 other Greek Cypriots who left their homes in northern Cyprus, Marti and his family tried to lead normal lives in their makeshift home towns in the south.

Former Villanova guard Reggie Redding has signed to play for Intercollege Etha Engomis, a team in Cyprus. The 6-5 Redding is scheduled to join his new team in about a month, and will be eligible to play in the FIBA Euro Challenge, giving him an opportunity to be seen by teams from various other countries. Redding averaged 7.3 points and 4.7 rebounds as a senior, appearing in 23 games after missing the first 10 because of a violation of the student code of conduct. He is the all-time scoring champion at St. Joseph's Prep, where he accumulated 1,568 points.

MARI, Cyprus - Dozens of containers of gunpowder seized years ago from an Iranian cargo ship exploded on Cyprus' main naval base Monday in a massive blast that killed 12 people, wounded 62, and wrecked a major power station, causing extensive blackouts. The head of the island nation's navy, Commodore Andreas Ioannides, was killed and its defense minister and military chief resigned. Ioannides' son contended that top officials had repeatedly ignored his father's warnings that the gunpowder was stored unsafely.

Kicking off a four-day visit to Greece and Turkey, President Bush yesterday challenged the two historic antagonists to resolve their bitter dispute over Cyprus by the end of the year. Bush, the first U.S. president to visit Greece since Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1959, is backing a U.N. attempt to arrange a peace conference on Cyprus, the Mediterranean island that has been partitioned between Greek and Turkish Cypriots since 1974. "None of us should accept the status quo in Cyprus," Bush said in an address to the Greek parliament.

The groom wears a gray polo shirt and sneakers, the bride a gray cotton dress. It's not much of a wedding gown, but, then again, it's not much of a wedding. The setting is a city hall conference room where, minutes before, clerks were counting change from parking meters. A councilman reads the Israeli couple their wedding vows along with a sales pitch about Larnaca's tourist attractions. In five minutes, it's over. A clerk hits the play button of a boom box and a worn cassette plays Mendelssohn's wedding march.

A separate peace has settled over this village in no-man's land, the only place on the long-divided island where Turkish and Greek Cypriots live together apart. In the middle of the United Nations-established buffer zone dividing the Turkish north from the Greek south, Pyla boasts two mayors for the 850 Greeks and 450 Turks, two city halls, two post offices and two schools with two soccer teams. There are two cemeteries. There is no intermarriage celebrated in the one Orthodox church or the one mosque.

Before he left Philadelphia and returned to Cyprus a few years ago, chef Konstantinos Pitsillides had the charming habit of leaving the occasional late-night tirade on my voice mail. The simple pleasures of traditional foods were forever being snubbed, he'd grumble, in favor of "trendy fusion" fakery. The slow-braised virtues of secondary cuts and nose-to-tail cookery - the joys of goat, game, and ancient grains - were being ignored in our filet mignon culture. I never took it personally.

IN THE HOLIDAY SPIRIT at Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children in Northeast Philadelphia is Christiana Alexander, 17, of Cyprus. She was cheered up by the elfin charm of Billy Bach, 70, of Lansdowne, at a Christmas party hosted by the Seventh Police District.

"Kabuki Othello," which uses the exaggerated gestures and elaborate costumes of Kabuki to convey the tragedy of Shakespeare's "Othello," arrives at the Annenberg Center this week after a run at the People's Light and Theater Company in Malvern. The play was conceived and is directed by Shozo Sato, who has has moved the action from Renaissance Venice and Cyprus to feudal Japan. "Kabuki Othello" opens at the Annenberg Center Wednesday and runs through Oct. 26.

You might call it the war of the propaganda posters. On the Greek Cypriot side of this divided island, lurid photographs of bludgeoned bodies are splayed on a billboard warning visitors of evils committed by Turks. Old women in black hold up pictures of missing menfolk. Past a tangle of barbed wire through a U.N. buffer zone to the Turkish side, visitors encounter a competing billboard. A sign directs tourists to visit the Barbarlik Muzesi, or Barbarism Museum, for a display of Greek atrocities.

Cyprus explosion blamed on leader NICOSIA, Cyprus - Cyprus' president is mainly to blame for events that led to the explosion of seized Iranian munitions that killed 13 people and caused a political and economic crisis on the island, the head of an official inquiry said Monday. Polys Polyviou said President Dimitris Christofias was primarily responsible for the "inadequacy, negligence and carelessness" that led to the July 11 blast at a naval base. But Polyviou said two government ministers also share some responsibility for the disaster.

In the Region N.J. pension fund up 18.5% New Jersey's public employee pension system gained about 18.5 percent in value in the fiscal year ended June 30, its best performance in more than 12 years, Robert E. Grady, chairman of the state's Investment Council , said. The funds, with $74.7 billion in assets, underwent a "tactical shift" in their investing about nine months ago that included reducing fixed-income holdings and adding U.S. stocks, he said. - Bloomberg News Penn Virginia sells gas sites Penn Virginia Corp., Radnor, said it had agreed to sell properties in the Arkoma basin, a natural-gas-rich region straddling the Oklahoma and Arkansas border, along with other properties, to an undisclosed buyer for $30.5 million in cash.

MARI, Cyprus - Dozens of containers of gunpowder seized years ago from an Iranian cargo ship exploded on Cyprus' main naval base Monday in a massive blast that killed 12 people, wounded 62, and wrecked a major power station, causing extensive blackouts. The head of the island nation's navy, Commodore Andreas Ioannides, was killed and its defense minister and military chief resigned. Ioannides' son contended that top officials had repeatedly ignored his father's warnings that the gunpowder was stored unsafely.

Former Villanova guard Reggie Redding has signed to play for Intercollege Etha Engomis, a team in Cyprus. The 6-5 Redding is scheduled to join his new team in about a month, and will be eligible to play in the FIBA Euro Challenge, giving him an opportunity to be seen by teams from various other countries. Redding averaged 7.3 points and 4.7 rebounds as a senior, appearing in 23 games after missing the first 10 because of a violation of the student code of conduct. He is the all-time scoring champion at St. Joseph's Prep, where he accumulated 1,568 points.

A lawyer who maintains a home in Berwyn, Chester County, but who lived most recently in Cyprus pleaded not guilty yesterday to charges that he had a six-year sexual relationship with a teenage Russian ballet dancer. U.S. Magistrate Lynne Sitarski denied a defense request for bail and ordered Kenneth Schneider held for trial on sex-tourism charges. Schneider appealed the ruling, and a hearing will be held today before U.S. District Judge Thomas M. Golden. Schneider, 45, had been arrested in Cyprus on March 27 and was returned to Philadelphia on Friday in the custody of U.S. marshals.

Arts philanthropist Kenneth Schneider arrived in Philadelphia Friday after being extradited from Cyprus to face federal sex tourism charges, the Justice Department said. Founder and president of the Apogee Foundation, Schneider is accused of traveling in 1998 to Moscow, where he engaged in sex with a 12-year-old boy. Schneider, an international lawyer whose website said he represented Russian oil entrepreneurs, allegedly continued the relationship for eight years. During that time, he brought the boy, a ballet student, to Philadelphia to study at the Rock School.

Before he left Philadelphia and returned to Cyprus a few years ago, chef Konstantinos Pitsillides had the charming habit of leaving the occasional late-night tirade on my voice mail. The simple pleasures of traditional foods were forever being snubbed, he'd grumble, in favor of "trendy fusion" fakery. The slow-braised virtues of secondary cuts and nose-to-tail cookery - the joys of goat, game, and ancient grains - were being ignored in our filet mignon culture. I never took it personally.

In Hamlet, Shakespeare tells us that "the play's the thing," and he could be referencing Carmen Khan's peeled-back production of Othello, which opened the Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival's 10th season Friday night. The scenery is four large flat-topped trucks. A simple stage-rear entry is black. Everyone's dressed in a dull form of standard modern, more or less. So a sort of naked focus turns your attention almost entirely to the play. I saw a preview Thursday, and during the first half-hour or so, that focus was a liability; this Othello was stilted, with all the hoo-hah surrounding the Moor of Venice threatening to represent the bore of Venice.

As our British Airways flight from Cyprus to London banked over the Thames River heading for Heathrow Airport, I peered out the window, half listening to the flight attendant's familiar pre-landing litany about seatbacks being in their upright position, tray tables locked, and hand luggage stowed. The flight into London was our penultimate flight before returning to Philadelphia after a three-week trip that included visits to Barcelona, Prague, Cyprus, and a Greek island cruise.