Cyprus

Six RAF Typhoon jets have been deployed to Cyprus to protect British sovereign bases, the Ministry of Defence said.

Read: Government source labels Miliband 'copper-bottomed s--t'

A British tourist has been jailed for the manslaughter of a British soldier in Cyprus. 19-year-old David Lee Collins from Manchester was stabbed to death during a fight in Ayia Napa last year November.

Mohammed Abdulkadir Osman admitted manslaughter and has been sent to prison for eight years. Collins served with 2nd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Fusiliers and was killed the day before he was due to fly out to Afghanistan.

Cypriot Finance Minister Michalis Sarris has resigned

Around 15,000 savers in the UK arm of stricken Cypriot bank Laiki will see their deposits protected under British rules and will escape the Cyprus banking levy.

The Bank of England's new City watchdog, the Prudential Regulation Authority says around £270 million in deposits from Laiki Bank UK had been transferred to Bank of Cyprus UK. It will come under the UK compensation scheme, guaranteeing up to £85,000 per saver.

Customers, including those with current accounts in credit, will not be hit by any Cypriot levy on their accounts - potentially as high as 60% for large depositors - after the transfer and will be able to access their accounts as normal.

Bank of Cyprus savers with over 100,000 euros could take losses of up to 60 percent, an official from the bank told the Associated Press.

The Central Bank of Cyprus has eased some of the restrictions imposed on customers.

The bank will now allow debit and credit cards to be used normally for domestic payments, although curbs on card purchases abroad are still in place.

The central bank said it would review the limits on a daily basis.

It appears that some internet banking systems in Cyprus have been restored. This screen shot posted online of one account with Laiki bank shows that over €700,000 of the total account balance has been 'blocked'.

Savers with the Bank of Cyprus could be given shares in the bank, a source close to the negotiations has told the news agency Reuters.

Under the current proposals depositors with more than €100,000 in the bank would:

• Be given shares in the bank worth 37.5% of their original deposit, the bank would use this money to improve its financial position.
• Approximately 22.5% of the remainder of their saving would earn no interest.

• The remaining 40% would continue to earn interest but it would only be paid if the bank started performing well.
• Therefore if the bank continued to perform badly, 62.5% of the savers original deposits would not be earning any interest.

Reuters reports that depositors would have no guarantee that any of money over the 37.5% of shares offered, would actually be paid back to savers if the bank collapsed.

Cyprus has no intention of leaving the European single currency, the island's president said today, assuring Cypriots that the situation was "contained" in the wake of a tough bailout deal with the European Union. He told a conference in Nicosia: