Italy have been crowned the champions of Europe after their nail-biting penalty shootout win over England at Wembley Stadium this morning.
It was a battle of the two football giants as England was looking to win their first major tournament since 1966, while Italy were keen to make amends for failing to qualify for the last World Cup.
England got off to a fantastic start with a corner goal from Luke Shaw just two minutes into the game.
England goal. Photo: Getty Images.
After that, it was touch and go for a while there with Italian fans in the crowd on tenterhooks until the 67′ minute when Italy headed for a corner.
A scramble from the corner saw Pickford make a blinding save from a Verratti header but it bounced off the post into the path of Bonucci, who made the goal from close range.
Italy makes a goal. Photo: AP.
At full time, the two teams were still deadlocked at 1-1 so the game went into extra time, with no team making a real impact.
Penalties were then called for with Italy coming out on top 3-2 to loud cheers from the crowd! ‘It’s coming to Rome!’ they screamed.
Scenes as Italy named champions. Photo: Twitter / UEFA EURO 2020.
A Greek police officer was arrested on Saturday for trafficking and holding captive a 19-year-old girl in the suburb of Ilioupoli, eastern Athens.
The case was revealed when the girl managed to escape from the police officer’s home and sought help in a cafe nearby.
According to a press release, the girl had run away from home after she was allegedly sexually abused by her father for several years. Her father was also arrested on Saturday.
The police officer was already under scrutiny by the Internal Affairs Department and according to the release, he was suspended since June for other crimes and would be dismissed from the Force.
⚠Από την Υπηρεσία Εσωτερικών Υποθέσεων Σωμάτων Ασφαλείας συνελήφθη αστυνομικός, που τελεί σε κατάσταση αργίας με απόλυση, για σωματική βλάβη και εμπορία ανθρώπων, απειλή και παραβάσεις των νομοθεσιών για τα όπλα και την ενδοοικογενειακή βία. ➡https://t.co/Q7EnHjb7Jgpic.twitter.com/pvklVpIX2g
— Ελληνική Αστυνομία (@hellenicpolice) July 11, 2021
He has been charged with bodily harm and human trafficking, as well as threat and violations of the laws on weapons and domestic violence.
The victim was held for several hours at Police Headquarters for a lengthy testimony and was later taken to a public hospital for examination.
“The incident that led to the two arrests highlights disgusting aspects of domestic violence, a long-standing problem that is a disgrace to societies,” Greek Minister of Civil Protection, Michalis Chrysochoidis, said after news of the arrests were made.
“EL.AS. has already set up and operated a Department for Combating Domestic Violence, however the issue is broader and requires awareness of all.”
There were 77 locally transmitted of Covid-19 in NSW during the latest reporting period with Premier Gladys Berejiklian again urging people to follow lockdown measures.
Sadly, a woman in her 90s from south west Sydney died yesterday at Liverpool Hospital. She was a close contact of a locally acquired case and was tested for COVID-19 on Friday, returning a positive result early yesterday morning.
“Tragically we’ve seen one older person die and I want to extend my deepest condolences to their families and loved ones and Dr Chant will provide further details,” she said.
“Regrettably, that person did acquire it within the household, within the home setting.
She added, that she expected to see case numbers soar into triple-digits.
“Given the number of people exposed in the community overnight, I’m anticipating the numbers in New South Wales will be greater than 100 tomorrow,” she said.
Premier Berejiklian again pleaded with the community to stay at home.
“To 8:00pm last night, we had over 48,000 people getting tested for COVID. We have to keep that number high. It’s so important, given we had 77 cases of community transmission,” she said
“Now, out of these 77 cases, there are two facts I want to highlight. Firstly, 33 of those have been exposed in the community whilst infectious.”
Of the 77 locally acquired cases, 55 are linked to a known case or cluster – 39 are household contacts and 16 are close contacts – and the source of infection for 22 cases remains under investigation.
Thirty-two cases were in isolation throughout their infectious period and nine cases were in isolation for part of their infectious period. Thirty-three cases were infectious in the community, and three cases remain under investigation.
NSW Health administered 15,310 COVID-19 vaccines in the 24 hours to 8pm last night, including 7,073 at the vaccination centre at Sydney Olympic Park.
Australian tales of heroism and sacrifice by the ANZAC’s in Greece during the second World War unites continues to unite the two countries. To this day, new stories continue to emerge of the battle scars endured during one of Allies’ worst defeats in the war.
ABC News have published the story of John Robin Greaves; An Anzac trooper who beat the odds to survive a Prison of War camp in Greece.
Born in Shanghai in 1914, Greaves, known as ‘Jack’, was the eldest son of a mixed-race family which had made its home in the foreign-controlled Chinese treaty port two generations before.
Escaping Shanghai after defending in the Japanese incursion, Jack sailed to Sydney and enlisted at the recruitment office at Sydney’s Victoria Barracks.
After travelling to Palestine, then eventually Cairo, Jack spent a few days camped near Athens before being dispatched north to Veria Pass, high in the mountains of northern Greece. By early April, the German invasion was underway and the entire Allied expeditionary force was soon in full retreat.
Jack Greaves, centre, poses on a horse. Photo: ABC News
Pinios Gorge, also known more poetically as the Vale of Tempe, lies near Greece’s eastern coast. Defending the heartland from invasion, Greek, Australian and New Zealand troops attempted to prevent the Axis advance on April 17, 1941.
Private Greaves was there as part of what the diggers called the PBI — the Poor Bloody Infantry. His mortar platoon was among those ordered to help slow the German advance, which threatened to cut off the main Allied retreat.
The Anzacs proved to be no match for a combined tank and infantry assault supported by the Luftwaffe’s overwhelming air superiority. The battle extended into the following evening, and at dusk the German Panzers broke through, scattering the defenders.
“Orders were then given to us to retire, every man for himself. After spiking the mortars with grenades down the barrels … we made for battalion HQ,” Jack wrote in a report. “Close behind, a German tank seemed to be aiming its fire directly at me. Flaming onions [tracer rounds] flew past as I ran for my life.”
NZ POW’s transported to Germany in 1943. Photo: Leigh Hill ref 1/4069786-F
He hopped into a truck heading south. But in the twilight, the Germans had cut off their escape route. The truck had only travelled a kilometre when a single shot rang out.
“Then all of a sudden hell broke loose … The Jerries [Germans] were in a perfect ambush … Machine guns, mortars and Very lights [flares] turned night into day for a few brief moments,” Jack wrote in his account of that evening. “Before I realised what had happened, Jerry was searching us for arms.”
He was now a prisoner of the Reich. “I felt in a daze,” Jack recalled, “and I am sure my mates did too.” Nine days later, the Germans swept into Athens and following that, the rest of the Greek mainland was overrun.
Although the Germans were victorious, they were delayed just long enough to allow thousands more retreating Allied troops to avoid capture.
As enemy forces streamed south, Jack was marched north to Dulag 183, a notorious prisoner of war (POW) transit camp in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki, or Salonika as it was then known.
Enlisted photo of Tom’s escape partner. Photo: NAA
In a letter to his sister Beatrice, Jack described camp life as being a “hellish … nasty nightmare” where poor sanitation, meagre rations and backbreaking work became the norm. The POWs were attacked by what he described as “all species of body vermin ″ which covered their bodies and the rags that passed for bedding. “Life there was an unbelievable hell,” he wrote.
On June 25, he was among about 2,000 prisoners assembled on the camp parade ground and given rations meant to last the four-day rail journey to more permanent camps in Germany and Austria. As they marched to the station behind a German brass band playing Roll Out the Barrel, Jack knew that the train journey was his best and last chance to escape.
Jack paired up with Private Tom Walker, a fellow digger from his battalion, and they made their way to the back of a carriage near the ventilation hole. At 7:00pm, the train pulled out of the station.
The night wore on and the train crossed the border into German-occupied Yugoslavia. Jack made his move, squeezing through the tiny window and onto the buffers and waited until the train slowed down going uphill. “And luckily, we didn’t jump into anything because it was still dark,” Jack later recounted.
The train stopped briefly and the guards fired a few parting shots into the bushes before resuming the journey without the two escapees. “Kaput! Kaput!” he heard them shout, as if to indicate that the bullets had hit their mark.
Jack and Tom spent the next six weeks navigating their way south from Yugoslavia back into Greece, following the path of the Vardar River valley before heading east towards the coast.
To read the rest of Jack’s story, click the link to ABC News’ profile: https://ab.co/36qTL0X
Ange Postecoglou looks to be on the road to riches in Scotland after claiming two victories in his first two games in charge of Celtic FC.
In his first game in charge against Sheffield Wednesday, Postecoglou fought back from a goal down to beat his opponents 3-1.
“We grew into the game, and to their credit for the better part of the first half and then the second we played some decent stuff and scored a couple of good goals and finished strong,” Postecoglou told Celtic TV following the match, which was played in Wales.
Ange Postecoglou’s first game as #CelticFC boss ends in a win! 👏
“There’s nothing wrong with winning, particularly in the manner in which we did because we didn’t start well, we didn’t play well.”
Postecoglou followed up his victory with a 2-1 win on Saturday night over Charlton at Newport, Wales.
First half goals from Karamoko Dembele and Albian Ajeti put Celtic in command at Dragon Park before former Hearts striker Conor Washington pulled a goal back late on.
“The first half was quite good, we controlled the game pretty well,” Postecoglou told Celtic TV.
“In the second half it got a little bit stretched and chaotic but to be fair, for a lot of these guys it’s their first game for quite a while but they worked hard and that’s the main thing.
🗣️ "First-half was good, we controlled the game. For a lot of these guys it's their first game for quite a while but they worked hard and that's the main thing." 👍🍀
Everything came so easily for Ash Barty at the start of the Wimbledon final. Hard to believe one player would grab the first 14 points of a major championship match.
Surely, it couldn’t stay that one-sided, right? Of course not.
Still, Barty used that perfect start and a strong-enough finish to get the job done, holding off Karolina Pliskova’s comeback bid to win 6-3, 6-7 (4), 6-3 at the All England Club on Saturday for her second Grand Slam title.
“It took me a long time to verbalize the fact that I wanted to dare to dream it and say I wanted to win this incredible tournament. … I didn’t sleep a lot last night. I was thinking of all the ‘What-ifs,’” the No. 1-ranked Barty said. “But I think when I was coming out on this court, I felt at home, in a way.”
Australia’s Ashleigh Barty reacts to the crowd after defeating the Czech Republic’s Karolina Pliskova in the women’s singles final on day twelve of the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 10, 2021. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
She adds this trophy to the one she won at the French Open in 2019.
Barty is the first Australian woman to win Wimbledon since Evonne Goolagong Cawley in 1980. Barty was a teenager when they first met and she considers Goolagong Cawley an inspiration and a mentor.
“Evonne is a very special person in my life,” said Barty, whose outfit was a tribute to the dress Goolagong Cawley wore when she won the tournament for the first time, 50 years ago. “I think she has been iconic in paving a way for young indigenous youth to believe in their dreams and to chase their dreams. She’s done exactly that for me as well.”
Australia’s Ashleigh Barty, left, holds the winners trophy, alongside runner-up the Czech Republic’s Karolina Pliskova as they pose for the media after the women’s singles final, on day twelve of the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 10, 2021. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
In the first Wimbledon women’s final to go three sets since 2012, Barty went up 3-0 in the decider and never relented. It also was the first since 1977 between two participants who never had been that far at the All England Club.
“Being able to reset at the start of the third was really important, just for me to continue to turn up each and every point,” said Barty, who climbed into the stands to hug her coach, Craig Tyzzer, and others. “That’s all I was really focusing on, just trying to do the best I could every given point, regardless of what the scoreline was.”
Greece’s Civil Protection on Saturday afternoon warned locals to evacuate the wider area around the village of Nimborio in southern Evia due to a raging wildfire burning forestland in the area.
Authorities send an emergency message though the European Emergency Number 112 to inform all residents to move further south, towards the towns of Marmari and Karystos.
A force of 64 firefighters with 3 groups on foot and 23 vehicles were deployed along with five helicopters and five aircraft, of which 4 are Canadair and one is a BERIEV-200.
“The situation is nightmarish despite the fight we are giving from the air and on the ground. The front [of the fire] is big,” Karystos Lefteris Raviolos told the state-run news agency ANA-MPA.
He said winds in the area measured 6 to 7 on the Beaufort scale.
In an emergency press briefing on Saturday afternoon, Deputy Minister for Civil Protection Nikos Hardalias said a total of 51 fires broke out since daybreak, with the most serious being the one in Evia. He added, however, that there was currently no risk to homes and infrastructure.
A total of 56 fire fighters, two teams on foot, the motorised fire brigade team METPE, a helicopter, two airplanes and municipality water trucks have been deployed in Aspropyrgos and police have suspended traffic on Zoodochos Pigis Avenue in Aspropyrgos from NATO Avenue to the Papastratos factory and the Elefsina-Dervenochoria road from the Kanaki factory.
Fire-fighters are battling at least five seperate wildfires in Greece on Saturday, some of which started on Friday.
Nothing changes if nothing changes goes the saying and a group of Greek Australian women with the name ‘Golden Angels’ are committed to making a difference in the lives of children in palliative care and their parents.
“Petroula Gekas and I heard that the government stopped supporting kids in palliative care and we wanted to do something about this,” Founder of Golden Angels, Vicki Antoniou, told The Greek Herald.
And so, they did.
The two ladies organised the first High Tea in 2014 and the event was supported by nearly 380 members of South Australia’s Greek and wider community.
“After the first year Petroula left due to work and family commitments and it was my husband’s idea to put a committee together,” says Vicki.
“We are now 13 women who work voluntarily and give up our time to support those children but I always say we are 14, because we have Panayia (Virgin Mary) looking over us.”
“The Golden Angels Committee consists of Jo Chapley, Angela Gondzioulis, Sylvia Hristo, Vas Koumoulas, Betty Livaditis, Zoi Papafilopoulos, Sia Patsouris, Tina Psaromatis, Patty Sardelis, Mary Skandalis, Stella Tsagouris, Peggy Veloudos and myself,” Vicki says, expressing her gratitude for the ladies who she now calls family.
Due to the group’s collective efforts the latest High Tea held in November 2019 was attended by more than 1000 people and raised over $186,000.
“We work in collaboration with the Women’s and Children’s Hospital Foundation to support children who are being cared for by the palliative care service and their parents in all aspects of their life including funeral costs, equipment for home use to enable the child to remain at home longer, and transportation assistance so that a parent can travel with the sick child,” says Vicki.
Our wonderful friends the Golden Angels raised an outstanding $186,314.61 at their High Tea event held in November last year!
The funds will establish the Golden Angels Palliative Care Support Fund.
With the funds raised during the years the Golden Angels have funded and contributed to essential programs to shine some light in the lives of children and families who need it the most.
“We are in awe of the Golden Angels ability to rally the Greek community in support of some of our community’s sickest children and their families. The funds raised by the group’s fundraising efforts have made a significant impact on families whose lives are devastated by illness,” said Jane Scotcher, Chief Executive of Women’s and Children’s Hospital Foundation (WCHF).
Jane Scotcher, Chief Executive of Women’s and Children’s Hospital Foundation (WCHF)
“They have funded key projects such as equipment enabling children to be cared for in their homes, funded an art therapist, supported funeral expenses and were major contributors in the development of the Laklinyeri Beach House Program at Victor Harbor, a specially designed holiday home for families to have a much-needed holiday – sometimes their last as a family.”
The construction of the @WCHFoundation Beach House is complete!
Earlier this week the wonderful team at Bella Build and Design officially handed over the Beach House keys to the WCH Foundation.
Although the pandemic has paused big gatherings and events, the Golden Angels continue to work tirelessly and selflessly behind the scenes towards their next project.
“Our vision is to build a hospice facility for palliative care children in South Australia as the state doesn’t have one but at the moment, we focus on creating a more spacious and comfortable space for these kids and their families at Adelaide’s new Women’s and Children’s Hospital,” Vicki says.
“We know we are working for a reason. We are helping palliative care children and their families and this is really a great thing. Something exceptional,” she says proudly.
“I often say, ‘we cannot change the journey for these families, but we can certainly make it easier’ and the Golden Angels help to make that possible,” Jane Scotcher concludes.
Questions fought with problems. On one hand trying to trace your DNA can be viewed as a nationalistic pursuit. On the other it could be a way to find lost family members.
I share my DNA map here and I must say I was shocked when I got this as both sides of my family, as far as I know, come from Asia Minor, Constantinople (now Istanbul) and Nicomedia (now IZMIT) with some heritage from Argyroupoli in Pontos (now Gumushane) so I was surprised to see so much Peloponnesian DNA when we have no relatives there at all.
One explanation is that the ancient Ionians travelled form there to Asia Minor to set up colonies of which my family on both mother’s and father’s side come from.
I had expected some Turkish but all the results I got were Greek and some Caucasian. I suspect they do not have enough markers needed to give a more accurate result. However, it seems I have more Greek DNA than many of my friends who originate from mainland Greece but whose DNA’s include Albanian, Bulgarian, Italian with a minority of Greek DNA. Does that mean I am more Greek than many in mainland Greece and the islands? How is that possible?
There has been much racism towards the people from the north who may have Slavic roots (knowlingly or unknowingly). Many were under pressure by Greek government policies to assimilate with the Greek nation and speak only Greek. With the influx of the Greeks from Asia Minor during the population exchange many of them were treated abominably and called “Turkish seeds” even by academics such as Giorgios Vlachos in a book about Eleftherios Venizelos. Well, well, with a name like Vlachos, he should have kept quiet. Our names often give away our roots.
Though DNS tests can be confusing indeed. Next week I continue on this idea we have of what makes you Greek.
Join the discussion – add your DNA details and comments on our FB page.
On Saturday night, all Australians will be cheering on World No. 1 Ash Barty as she takes on Karolína Plíšková to claim her second career Grand Slam.
After her semi-final victory, she became the first Australian woman to reach the final since her idol and mentor Evonne Goolagong Cawley won her second Wimbledon title in 1980.
Speaking to ABC News, Ipswich Mayor Theresa Harding said having the Wimbledon final falling in NAIDOC week and following on from Goolagong Cawley gave the achievement extra significance.
“Ash is a very proud Indigenous woman and she’s been very open that Evonne Goolagong Cawley is her role model and an icon for her,” she said.
Ash Barty says she hopes to win the Wimbledon women’s final in honour of her grandpa.(Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)
“I can absolutely assure you we’ll be laying everything out for Ash when she gets [home].”
She is wearing a specially designed dress in tribute to the iconic scallop outfit Cawley wore that day.
“It’s a really special anniversary for Evonne,” said Barty.
“I couldn’t be more proud to be in a position to wear an outfit inspired by her. Now to kind of give myself a chance to create some history almost in a way that’s a tribute to her is really exciting.”
Win or lose Barty will extend her gap ahead of Naomi Osaka atop the women’s rankings — a win that would see her move a whopping 2,299 points clear.
Barty was welcomed home a champion after her 2019 French Open title and became world number one soon after.(AAP: Darren England)
Also win or lose, she will claim a place in the heart of all Australians, as the humble tennis player looks to turn into one of the nations greatest national treasures.
“Being able to play on the final Saturday here at Wimbledon is gonna be just the best experience ever!” Barty said.
“I’m incredibly proud of myself and my team and now we get a chance on Saturday to live out a childhood dream.”
“I’m excited I could repay them the favour in a way, of giving us an opportunity as a collective, as a whole, to do something pretty special this week.”
The match will be broadcast on Channel 9 and streamed on Stan Sport at 11:00pm Saturday in the eastern states of Australia, 10:30pm in the central time zone and 9:00pm in the west.
