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Ms Longhurst who taught at a school for children with special needs

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Ms Longhurst, who taught at a school for children with special needs, was returning to her seafront flat, which she shared with her long-term partner, Malcolm Sentance, when she vanished. She had just text-messaged a friend to say she was buying some paint to decorate her flat.Ms Longhurst's family and Mr Sentance, 34, an education welfare officer, paid her a moving tribute and renewed appeals to the public for information. Speaking of his heartbreak at the loss of his "best mate", in a statement read by Ms Longhurst's mother, he said: "I am missing Jane every hour of every day and night that passes. It is heartbreaking when your life turns a corner and new experiences occur and the one person you want to share them with is not there."Jane will always be a very special friend to me, she was loving, warm, beautiful, a fantastic musician and teacher, a great laugh, my best mate and I would have happily spent the rest of my life with her."She enjoyed the challenge of teaching children and would have loved to have had some of her own We were going to buy a house, travel ... we had so many plans for the future."Her sister, Sue Barnett, 39, from Reading, Berkshire, added: "If you have a loved one who you suspect might have done this, we understand how hard it must be to pick up the phone to the police – but a young woman has lost her life in the most horrific way, and we have lost someone who was very loved and so special."Ms Longhurst's mother Liz, 71, also from Reading, spoke of the family's living nightmare at losing such a special person."There were many times in the weeks that Jane was missing when we believed the worst, but there was always a shred of hope she would return home safe and well.

That hope has now been taken away from us and we know we will never see Jane again," she said.Officers believe Ms Longhurst was strangled shortly after her disappearance.. A woman who fled her home in northern Cyprus in 1974 as the Turkish army approached returned to her village for the first time yesterday. The Turkish Cypriot family living there had kept many of her possessions intact."It was as if they were waiting for this day,'' she said. They had kept her crockery, a grandfather clock, her cutlery and even a stack of wedding photographs "I wasn't expecting to be able to see any of these again. I wasn't even sure my house would be standing but it was almost all there."It was emotional for us and them. There was a lot of crying and hugging."The reunification of Cyprus may lack the scale of the fall of the Berlin Wall but, for Greek and Turkish Cypriots, the simple act of crossing the border is revolutionary.

Braving long queues and traffic jams, thousands of jubilant Cypriots have made the trip across the border since it opened four days ago for the first time since 1974.Escorted by their children and grandchildren, hundreds of frail elderly Cypriots have come to visit homes and haunts they thought they would never see again. "It was my one wish that I see my home before I die," said Mrs Mihaili, who lives in Limassol in the south.The surge of people crossing the border has taken officials on both sides by surprise. "We weren't ready for this," said one police officer at the checkpoint. At the barricades, where hundreds of people waited patiently to cross, the atmosphere was like that of a giant wedding celebration.Many Greek Cypriots spent the night in their cars, waiting for the 9am opening Turkish Cypriots are not yet allowed to cross by car. In the queues, there was much laughter and translation of basic vocabulary People in cars waved and honked their horns. Many clutched bouquets of flowers and bottles of brandy to offer the families now living in their former houses.The day was too emotional for some.

"My wife decided not to come with us," said Prokopis Pattakis, an architect from Nicosia who made the journey to show his daughter her mother's hometown. "She's just not psychologically ready yet."Rauf Denktash, the Turkish Cypriot leader, announced the opening of the border to day trips on Monday. His surprise gesture was dismissed by Greek Cypriot officials and the Turkish Cypriot opposition, who said it was a ploy to appease his populace. Mr Denktash has come under fire at home and abroad for refusing to reach an agreement on a UN-sponsored plan to reunite the island. Thousands of Turkish Cypriots have taken to the streets in recent weeks to protest against his intransigence and urge him to step down. His son, Serdar Denktash, was the man credited with the decision to open the border.Metin Munir, a Turkish Cypriot commentator, said: "What they have done .. is they have finally let the people have their way. There was a real fear among the Turkish Cypriot leadership that if they did not do something to ease the pressure, people would take matters into their own hands."Officials hope this move will be followed by an opening up of trade between the two communities.

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