Greek Alternative Foreign Affairs Minister Miltiadis Varvitsiotis met with Russia’s Transport Minister Vitaly Saveliev as part of a two-day visit to Moscow on Tuesday.
The pair signed a bilateral cooperation protocol agreement on tourism, energy, transport, science and technology, cultural matters, and interregional cooperation.
“The cooperation protocol is a successful agreement that paves the way for a new, deeper collaboration between Greece and Russia…” Varvitsiotis wrote on Twitter.
“We hope that thanks to the protocol on cooperation within the framework of the joint intergovernmental commission, which will be inked in Moscow, as well as the upcoming visit of the prime minister, a new charter will be opened in Greek-Russian relations,” the minister is quoted in Russia’s state-owned news agency Tass.
He met with business figures at the Greek embassy a day before.
Greece said on Tuesday it would make COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for people aged 60.
Authorities said those who failed to comply from January 16 would face a recurring monthly fine of €100 (AU$159.07).
The announcement marks an EU-wide first in targeting a specific age group.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said he struggled with the decision but it was necessary to protect more than half a million elderly Greeks who had failed to get the jab.
“It’s the price to pay for health,” he said.
About 63% of Greece’s 11 million population is fully vaccinated.
While vaccine appointments have picked up in recent weeks, health ministry data shows there are 520,000 people over the age of 60 who have failed to get a jab.
“We are focusing our efforts on protection of our fellow citizens and for this reason, their vaccination will be mandatory from now on,” Mitsotakis told a cabinet meeting.
Syriza, Greece’s main opposition party, faulted the measures as being punitive and financially excessive.
“This hasn’t happened anywhere,” it said.
Mitsotakis did not say how authorities would enforce the rule.
A €100 fine is a hefty chunk of the average monthly 730 euro pension.
“(The decision) tortured me, but I feel a heavy responsibility in standing next to those most vulnerable, even if it might fleetingly displease them,” he said.
Greece this month barred unvaccinated people from indoor spaces including restaurants, cinemas, museums, and gyms as daily COVID-19 cases hit record highs.
It has recorded 931,183 infections and 18,067 deaths since the start of the pandemic last year.
Victoria’s Greek National Day Organising Committee has today announced that from December 12, 2021, the solo photo exhibition of Dimitra Hatziadam will be on display at function centre, The Coburg in Victoria.
The exhibition, titled “EVZONES/Guardians of the Unseen,” is under the auspices of the Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou and will be transferred for the first time from Greece to Australia with the support of the General Secretariat of Hellenes Abroad and Public Diplomacy.
Dimitra Hatziadam with the Evzones.
Attendees will be able to view the Evzones as never before, with a unique display of 11 banners, three meters high, depicting the traditional costumes and actions of the Presidential Guard.
The photo exhibition is part of the national program celebrating the 200th anniversary of the beginning of the Greek Revolution, “Greece 2021,” and the official program of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia.
For more information on the exhibition, please contact the Secretary of the Committee, Ms Natasha Spanou at greeknationalday@gmail.com.
On the early morning of November 25, 1962, four-year-old Sophia Nicolis Tsouvalas took her first steps on Australian soil. She had just immigrated with her parents and sister to Sydney from Mesohoria, a village on the Greek island of Evia, aboard the ‘Patris’ in search for a better life.
Nearly six decades later, Sophia, a first-generation migrant, decides to chronicle her family’s life story and embarks on a quest to find her own identity through the memoir ‘A Divided Heart’.
“I have great respect and gratitude for Australia because it opened its doors to my parents who were escaping poverty after World War II and the Civil War in Greece and gave my sister and me opportunities,” she tells The Greek Herald.
“But even after 59 years on this land, Mesohoria is the place where I feel a complete sense of belonging and where my heart sings.”
With her book, set in a small village of Evia and Sydney of the 1960s the author hopes to document verbal stories conveyed to her by her parents -Maria and Manoli- and to keep them alive for future generations as part of the shared social history of Australia and Greece.
Manoli and Maria Nikolis. Photo: Supplied
“This book is a tribute to my parents. To my late father who was living here but always had a longing for his homeland and to my mother who is happy to have left Mesohoria due to her strict upbringing and the pressure she felt growing up in a strict patriarchal society.”
“I felt like I needed to give my mother a voice,” Sophia tells of her 90-year-old mother Maria who has been living in Sydney since the family arrived in Australia.
“Within the pages of my book, I honour not only my parents but all our parents and grandparents who took a huge leap of faith to pave the way for a better life and future for their children.
Photo L: The Nikolis family and R one of the two trunks the family sent to Australia with all of their belongings. Photo: Supplied
“Most importantly, I feel that this chronicle of life, allows each of us to examine our heritage, our identity and where we feel we belong.”
Asked about her memories growing up in a Greek family thousands of miles away from home, Sophia reflects on the hardships of starting school without a word of English but also on the sense of community, the philoxenia and the strong will to keep the language alive.
“I could feel I was floating between cultures. We didn’t have much but we would visit our neighbours and put whatever was available on the table to share,” she says.
Photo L: The only photo from Sophia’s final days in Greece
The book, has been read by a broad audience of different age groups from around the globe and has received great reviews.
“Before I started writing the book, I asked my mother what she would like young people to keep from her story. She said that they need to know about their roots, the origin of their parents and grandparents and their historical legacy.”
*The book ‘A Divided Heart’ is now available to pre order by emailing the author on sophtsou@gmail.com (cost $25 + postage)
Greek Australian mum, Toni Lontis, has won in the ‘Disabled Business Excellence’ category of the AusMumpreneur Awards for 2021.
Ms Lontis also placed second in the ‘Overcoming the Odds’ category for her business Tony Lontis Enterprises.
Through Tony Lontis Enterprises, Ms Lontis aims to help heal others by sharing her own personal struggle with depression, anxiety and trauma. She’s also passionate about promoting self-awareness and self-improvement.
Tony Lontis.
Ms Lontis was among eight other Greek mothers across Australia who were finalists in the awards as well.
Aphrodite Bouari from Sweet But Psycho came in third place in the categories ‘Creative Entrepreneur’ and ‘Regional Business,’ while Cathy Dimarchos also placed third in the ‘Women Will Change The World’ category for Solutions2you.
Eight Greek mothers across Australia who were finalists in the awards.
Meanwhile, Mary Maksenos from Maksemos Group placed third in the ‘Creative Entrepreneur’ section, and Cassandra Kalpaxis came second in the ‘Rising Star’ category for her work with Kalpaxis Legal.
The Awards, presented by The Women’s Business School, celebrate and recognise Australian mums in business achieving outstanding success in areas such as business excellence, product development, customer service and digital innovation.
Congratulations to all the winners, place-getters and finalists!
Vogue Australia has released its list of 21 inspirational Australian women for 2021 and among those named are Vanessa Pappas and Chanel Contos.
Who are they? How have they defined the conversations around Australia this year? The Greek Herald finds out.
Vanessa Pappas, Global COO of TikTok:
Vanessa Pappas.
Vanessa Pappas is a Queensland-educated executive who lives in Los Angeles with her wife and two young children.
This year, Pappas was named the Global Chief Operating Officer of TikTok, a short-video platform which hit one billion active monthly users in September.
Prior to this, she was interim CEO at the company and took on former US President Donald Trump, who was threatening to ban the app in the US. She initiated a lawsuit against the government with the response: “we’re not planning on going anywhere.”
TikTok’s office in Culver City, California. Photo: Rozette Rago for The New York Times.
But with Trump toppled from the White House, this crisis was averted. Now, Pappas is focused on expanding the platform’s reach globally and continuing to build a strong community.
“Day in and day out, I have been inspired by the TikTok community who have started cultural movements, kept their small businesses afloat, and kept us entertained,” she told Vogue Australia.
Chanel Contos, Consent advocate:
Chanel Contos. Photo: Timeout.com.
23-year-old Chanel Contos’ petition for young women to share their sexual assault experiences earlier this year yielded thousands of testimonies and spurred a parliamentary reckoning.
The former student from Sydney’s Kambala Girls’ School also pushed for a more “holistic” approach to sexual education, suggesting it address topics such as consent, rape culture, slut shaming, toxic masculinity and queer sex education.
She told Vogue Australia she hopes 2022 will be the year to address issues around sexual education and to think about “how are we moving forward?”
Chanel’s petition garnered thousands of responses.
“I hope in 2022, gender equality is at the forefront of political issues, a driving force in the election, and causes people to really step up,” she said.
A coronial inquest into a COVID-19 outbreak at St Basil’s Home for the Aged in Fawkner, Melbourne has today heard that some residents were left ’emaciated’ from neglect.
According to news.com.au, clinical care responder, Jacinta MacCormack, told the inquest residents were in desperate need of care from the moment she arrived at the aged care facility on July 22.
“They were unwell, they just didn’t have enough food in them… There was a couple that actually looked quite emaciated, their hips were sticking out,” Ms MacCormack said.
When questioned about the handover process, Ms MacCormack said the transition was “not comfortable at all” and management at the aged care home were “quite hostile” and “not forthcoming” with information.
A coronial inquest into St Basil’s Home for the Aged in Fawkner has heard that some residents were left ’emaciated’ from neglect.
This news comes as Milena Avramovic, the former deputy director of nursing at St Basil’s Fawkner, also told the Victorian coroner on Monday the transition period was ‘like a warzone’ and ‘chaos.’
Five residents at the centre died of neglect while 45 died of COVID-19 in July and August last year, in one of the country’s deadliest outbreaks at an aged-care home.
The five-week coronial inquest into the deaths of residents at St Basil‘s Fawkner will hear from about 65 witnesses, including nurses, centre managers and family members of the loved ones who died.
The Greek Community of Melbourne (GCM) would like to announce that after a long campaign to realise its preferred community centre proposal at its Greenaway Street Bulleen property, the land has been compulsorily acquired as part of the North East Link Project.
The GCM had invested a significant amount of effort and money to realise its ambitious community facility but the State’s major project agenda has ended any chance the GCM had of realising its proposal.
Whilst the land has now been acquired, the GCM continues to negotiate with the Authority with regard to the final settlement. It has currently been offered and received $11,480,000.
Another view of the proposed design for the property.
GCM President, Bill Papastergiadis OAM, said: “Whilst it is without a doubt disappointing to not be able to realise the Billy Kavelaris designed Community Centre we presented to our members, the funds received and still being sought by the GCM and its legal team to date will serve the Community well into the future. These are exiting times for the Community with a number of exiting projects to be announced in due course.”
In further developments, the GCM would also like to announce that it has continued to build on its asset base and at the same time taken the next important step in the realisation of its Greek Centre Hub (working title) project with the acquisition of 272 Russell Street in Melbourne.
President of the GCM, Bill Papastergiadis.
The Hub was announced prior to the pandemic and is funded in part with grants secured by the GCM from both the Federal and State governments, each contributing $2,500,000 towards the project.
On this important milestone, the Treasurer of the GCM Assoc Professor Marinis Pirpiris said: “The Greek Centre Hub was a project that we have long committed to and had secured support for before Covid hit. We thank both the Andrews Victorian government and the Morrison Federal government for investing in the Greek Community’s programs.”
“As Treasurer of the organisation, it is pleasing to see that this project is coming to fruition. Coupled with the Bulleen compulsory acquisition, I am confident that the Greek Community heads into the future on solid financial ground,” Assoc Professor Pirpiris concluded.
Aerial firefighter, Craig Patton, from Liverpool Plains in New South Wales has told ABC News the fires in Greece this year were “as bad as I have ever seen.”
“We’re actually fighting these fires right in the middle of suburbia,” he told the national broadcaster.
“Unfortunately for us that meant flying around in 47-degree temperatures in maybe 30-40 knots of winds, which in aviation terms is a pretty tough environment to operate in.”
In August, thousands of people were evacuated from their homes as wildfires raged through Greece, which was sweltering through its worst heatwave in more than 30 years.
Mr Patton, who has been flying planes for 32 years, was contracted by a Upper Hunter company to take a fleet of amphibious single-engine aircraft to Greece. The US-designed planes were being trialled for the first time by the Greek government.
These single engine amphibious craft were flown from Australia to demonstrate their firefighting capacity during the 2021 fires in Greece. Photo: ABC News / Craig Patton.
Mr Patton said the aircrafts were ideal for firefighting in densely populated urban areas, especially because 60 percent of the time the planes were the first line of attack.
He added that ground crews had limited resources but were highly skilled.
In response, the Greek government has announced the creation of a new Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Ministry which will look at firefighting resources, disaster relief and policies to deal with future natural disasters.
George Kambosos Jr’s stunning win over Teófimo López to claim the IBF, WBA and WBO lightweight titles would make anyone want to celebrate.
But the enormity of being crowned world unified lightweight champion hasn’t sunk in yet for the proud Greek Australian.
In the hours immediately after etching himself into Australian sporting folklore at New York’s Madison Square Garden, Kambosos told The Sydney Morning Herald he received treatment at hospital before returning to his hotel for a “nice burger” and “to get some sleep.”
“I knew I was going to do this and there really hasn’t been much celebration,” he said.
Kambosos the morning after his fight.
The ‘Michael Jordan’ of Australian boxing:
Of course, this contrasted greatly to the fanfare back in Australia where sporting greats and the Greek community were overjoyed at his victory.
Among the first to send his praise was former WBA world super middleweight titleholder, Anthony Mundine, who declared Kambosos “the greatest boxer Australia has produced.”
“From the greatest sportsman’s Australia has produced to the greatest boxer Australia has produced, congratulations my man enjoy the moment no one can take it away from you. Proud of you!!!!!,” Mundine wrote on Facebook.
Harry Garside, who won Australia’s first Olympic boxing medal in 33 years with his bronze in Tokyo, also said Kambosos was an inspiration to young Australian boxers.
“He turned up to fight and I reckon it’s one of the best boxing outcomes Australia has ever received,” Garside told ABC News.
“He’s the top echelon, he’s the Michael Jordan and he’s come from the same places as us, he’s fought on the same cards and it makes you even more motivated.”
Legendary boxing trainer, Johnny Lewis, agreed and declared Kambosos could be the next Jeff Fenech.
Kambosos (right) could become the next Jeff Fenech. Photo: Getty Images.
“What Jeff Fenech did was marvellous. Jeff was very determined and disciplined, and he could have beaten any featherweight in any era,” Lewis told The Daily Telegraph.
“Now George has to continue on, but he’s every chance and he can emulate Jeff and become an all-time great.”
Greek community in Australia rejoices:
This sentiment was also echoed by Federal Member for Adelaide, Steve Georganas MP, who congratulated Kambosos on his victory in Parliament on Monday.
“[George] goes down in the history books with Lionel Rose, Jeff Fenech, Kostya Tszyu and all the others. I think we’re all proud of his achievements. He worked so hard,” Mr Georganas said in his address.
“He was a sportsman with true dedication, true boxing spirit. I know boxing isn’t as popular as it used to be many years ago but the dedication and the hard work that this person has put in, he was a fantastic person from a Greek migrant background who has done us proud.”
Others from the Greek community also shared their pride in the Greek Australian boxer by posting photos on social media and comments under The Greek Herald‘s article such as: “we are all so proud of you” and “absolute warrior.”
Many were also calling on Kambosos to return to Australia to defend his titles.
Kambosos celebrates his split decision win against Teofimo Lopez in New York. Photo: Getty Images.
Kambosos said he hopes to fight in Sydney or Melbourne at a packed Stadium Australia or Melbourne Cricket Ground, with a list of stars lining up to take their shot at the 28-year-old.
Among them is the undefeated Devin Haney, who holds the only other recognised belt in the division, the WBC title.
“I’m the one being hunted now. I’m not the hunter any more. I’ve got a lot of motivation, a lot of inspiration. I’m very stubborn, if they think they’re going to take these belts off me, they’ve got another thing coming,” Kambosos said.
