Jayscen Anthony Newby faced ACT Supreme Court yesterday for the murder of Frankie Victor Prineas, who he stabbed almost 40 times after finding him in bed with a woman he once dated.
According to the statement of facts tendered in court, The Daily Telegraph reports, Newby had been on a night out with friends in Civic before catching a taxi to the woman’s home in Charnwood just after 1:00am on January 11, 2020.
Newby grabbed a knife from the kitchen then barged in and attacked the unsuspecting Mr Prineas as the woman begged him to stop.
After leaving the house, Newby drove to his mother’s home where he confessed to her, saying he had found the woman “screwing some guy” and that he “got him with a knife”.
Frankie Prineas was murdered by Jayscen Newby. Picture: Facebook/Supplied.
Mr Prineas died just over an hour later at the Canberra Hospital and Newby handed himself into police the next day.
Mr Prineas’s family members told the court he was a caring son, brother and cousin who was taken in the prime of his life when he was stabbed to death at Charnwood in January last year.
Mr Prineas’s father, Victor Prineas, told the court Newby “deserves no mercy” for killing his son, and should be handed a long jail term.
Photo: ABC News/Isaac Nowroozi
Mr Prineas’s mother, Phillipena Prineas, said her son was popular, loving and had his whole life ahead of him.
“Every fibre in my body aches for my son,” she said.
The court heard hundreds of people showed up at Mr Prineas’s funeral, and more than a thousand at a memorial car cruise held in his honour.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Friday criticized the attitude of Greek Cypriots regarding the Cyprus issue, saying that “they have never been honest” in their stance.
The United Nations has been trying to negotiate a deal ending a decades-long dispute over the divided Mediterranean island, but the first talks since 2017 broke up in Geneva on Thursday without making progress.
“I don’t trust or believe Greek Cypriots. They have never acted honestly,” the Turkish leader said referring to the the Greek Cypriot administration of Southern Cyprus
“Now the talks have been pushed back two or three months and I again, don’t know that anything will be achieved, because they never spoke truthfully,” he added.
The informal 5+1 talks – including both sides on the island, plus the guarantor states of Turkey, Greece, and the UK plus the UN – were meant to break the stalemate on the island and pave the way for future talks.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday, the last day of the talks, that there is “no common ground yet” to resume formal negotiations on resolving the decades-old Cyprus problem.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres attends a news conference after a 5+1 Meeting on Cyprus at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland April 29, 2021. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
Guterres summarized the two sides’ positions: The Turkish Cypriots believe that decades of efforts to ensure a “bi-zonal, bicommunal federation” have been exhausted and they now deserve “equal international status” like that enjoyed by the Nicosia government run by Greek Cypriots in the south.
The Greek Cypriots held to their position for a federation “with political equality on the basis of relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions,” Guterres said.
The two sides have differing views on how to resolve the issue.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres attends a news conference after a 5+1 Meeting on Cyprus at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland April 29, 2021. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
“There is not one single chance of Turkey or the Turkish Cypriot side succeeding in this. This was something that was pointed out by the (United Nations) secretary-general,” Greek Cypriot leader Nicos Anastasiades told reporters in Geneva.
The informal 5+1 talks – including both sides on the island, plus the guarantor states of Turkey, Greece, and the UK plus the UN – were meant to break the stalemate on the island and pave the way for future talks.
Guterres said on Thursday, the last day of the talks, that there is “no common ground yet” to resume formal negotiations on resolving the decades-old Cyprus problem.
Following the three days of informal talks, Guterres added that he will convene another round of 5+1 talks to move the process forward.
In many countries, 1st of May is International Labour Day. In Greece, Labour day is also celebrated and is called Protomagia (which literally means the first day of May).
On this day, people usually spend time with their families, and go to the countryside for picnics, kite-flying and wildflower picking which they then use to make a wreath. The day is celebrated as a national holiday in Greece and all shops are closed.
May is a month of joy for Greeks. The most known custom is the May wreath which is hung to the main door of the house on the 1st of May. It is kept there until the 24th of June when the wreaths are burnt in bonfires known as St. John’s fires.
The wreath is always made with colourful flowers, it is placed on the front door as per tradition, to welcome the beauty of nature and symbolises rebirth. In urban cities, you can buy beautiful knitted wreaths in flower shops. But Greek families tend to gather that day in the countryside to appreciate nature.
May Day has roots from ancient times
Maios (May in Greek), the last month of Spring, was named after the Goddes Maja, who was named after the ancient word Maia (the nurse, mother in other words, Goddess of Fertility). It was named after the Goddess of fertility because during spring all the plants that had died during winter were reborn.
According to Greek legend, the month of May has two meanings: the rebirth and death, but also the good and the bad. The good and the bad can be seen as the battle between Summer and Winter, and the struggles accociated with the harsh conditions of Winter versus how the summer times would overcome these struggles.
There is also a realtion to Dimitra, the goddess of agriculture, and her daughter Persephone, who was taken to the underworld by Hades. According to the myth Pesphone’s mother was so upset her daughter was gone that everything began to die, when her daughter did come back to earth, everything began to bloom again. The myth is strong symbol of the rebirth of nature and the begging of summer, just as the May Day celebrations.
The ancient May Day celebrations have been passed throughout the centuries kept alive by different rituals and practices.
The Αnthesteria was one of the oldest and earliest flower celebrations. The Anthesteria contained a number of rituals and ceremonies in which Greeks carried flowers to sanctuaries and temples. This ritual first began in Athens and then later was celebrated in other cities.
Even when the Romans invaded Greece, these rituals continued to exist, although with minor changes. Both Ancient Romans and Greeks believed that flowers represented power, glory, happiness and joy.
In many other regions of Greece May is personified with the “Magiopoulo” which means May child. In this tradition, a child is decorated with flowers and wanders around the village streets with other people around him singing and dancing songs about May.
In Nafpaktos, the “May child” is accompanied by elderly men who wear the traditional fustanela skirts, and hold with them willow tree blossoms. In Parga, children from the early morning visit neighbours houses and sing songs about May holding branches of an orange tree. Each region of Greece celebrates this day slightly differently, but the message of the rebirth of nature is consistent.
Protomagia began as a celebration of the transition from winter to summer, it was seen as a triumph for the people because they had survived the harshness of winter.
Today protomagia is a joyfull holiday that is it about the appreciation of nature and is enjoyed by Greeks across the country but also in the diaspora.
On Good Friday, the Epitaphio, which symbolises the Tomb of Christ, is adorned by young girls and women with fresh flowers in preparation for the body of Jesus.
13-year-old, Ilyana Paterakis, is one of these young girls. Every year, she helps to decorate the epitaphio at All Saints Greek Orthodox Church in Belmore and it was this which inspired her to create a mini Epitaphio for a recent school assignment.
“Ilyana studies Greek at her high school and the Greek teacher asked the class to make something Greek for an assignment. And because we’ve gone to church almost every year to help decorate the Epitaphio, Ilyana wanted to create her own in the lead up to Easter,” Ilyana’s mum, Thea Horozakis, tells The Greek Herald.
From there, Ilyana and her mum went shopping to choose paper flowers which they thought would really make the Epitaphio stand out.
“We chose those specific flowers because they are similar to what we have been using in real life to decorate the Epitaphio at church. She wanted to make the Epitaphio as real as possible,” Thea says.
It’s no surprise then that, despite the miniature size, the final Epitaphio model actually does look real, with its perfectly shaped cross and pillars all covered by pink, white and yellow flowers.
“We as parents are both very, very blessed and proud of her creativity,” Thea says with a smile.
George Mikhail ran the successful Miranda cafe Georgie Porgies for nine years before its closure in early March.
Now, Mikhail has joined the team at the new cafe-bar Waters Edge, located next to Cronulla Park.
Speaking to The Leader, Mikhail said it was “a very difficult decision to close Georgie Porgies, but it just wasn’t worth being there any more”.
“We weren’t getting enough people in,” he said.
“I decided to get out before I lost everything.”
Mikhail has become a ‘Shire icon’ after achieving great success at his Miranda cafe, also being a strong advocate of the ‘World’s Greatest Shave’. In 2018, Mikhail raised a whopping $5000 for the Leukaemia Foundation.
Mikhail revealed that Zac Sweeney, owner of Waters Edge, offered him to join the new Cronulla cafe-bar, and the former cafe owner said he’s been enjoying the change.
“It’s always more fun to have your own place to run, but there are also a lot of headaches,” he said.
“Zac is a good person, and I am very happy.”
The business is operating as a cafe at this stage while an application for a liquor licence is processed.
Mr Sweeney said the cafe offered “a simple menu with reasonable prices and great service”.
“I think a lot of places over complicate it,” he said.
Eating magiritsa is a high point of Easter for many Greeks, traditionally eaten in the early hours of Easter Sunday following the midnight service celebrating the Resurrection.
Magiritsa is the rich soup with which the faithful break their Lent fast.
It is typically made with lamb liver and other organs such as the lungs, heart and spleen as well as lamb intestines, plentiful dill and a roughly chopped head of lettuce. Another hallmark of the soup is the egg-lemon liaison added at the end.
Below you’ll find a traditional recipe to make your magiritsa perfect.
Kalo Pascha!
Ingredients (Serves 6):
1.5 kg lamb liver and other organs* cut into cubes (about 2-3cm)
1 small intestine (about 300gr), well cleaned** and cut into 3-4cm pieces
1 bunch dill finely chopped (remove any thick stems)
1 bunch parsley finely chopped (remove any thick stems)
1 large head of lettuce, washed and coarsely chopped
5 spring onions finely chopped
150ml white, dry wine
150ml olive oil
100g glutinous rice
2 eggs, yolks and whites separated
1 tbsp vinegar
The juice of 1 lemon (or to taste)
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Cleaning the Intestine:
The night before place the intestines in a bowl and cover them with water, squeeze the juice of a lemon into the water (to whiten them) and place it in the fridge.
The next day take one end of the intestine, stretch the opening with your fingers and place the opening under the running tap. Allow plenty of water to flow in and then, squeezing the intestine, (it will swell like a balloon) push the water down towards the other end. Repeat the procedure a number of times until the water that comes out of the other end is clean.
Method:
1. In large stock pot heat plenty of salted water to a rolling boil and add the lamb liver and organs (not the intestine) and cook for about 2-3 minutes until they changes color and soften. Strain the meat and discard the water.
2. In the same, now empty pan, heat the oil on a medium head and sauté the onions with the lettuce and a little salt for about 2 minutes until they are soft and shrink in size.
3. Add the lamb liver and organs, the small intestine, the dill and the parsley and continue to sauté for 3-4 minutes, stirring the ingredients with a wooden spoon until they are covered in oil. Add salt and pepper and pour in the wine. Let the mixture cook for 2-3 minutes until the alcohol has evaporated.
4. Add 1 liter of water and cook for 1 hour until the ingredients have softened.
5. Add the rice and continue cooking for 20 minutes until the rice is cooked.
6. In a bowl whisk the egg whites with the vinegar and a little salt until it forms a stiff meringue. In another bowl, beat the yolks with the lemon juice until light in color and frothy. Add the meringue, mix and gradually add broth from the soup with a spoon to the egg, mixing continuously so that the mixture gradually warms up.
7. Empty the egg-lemon into the mageiritsa, and shake the pan so it mixes in. Let it rest for 5 minutes for the flavors to combine and serve.
On this day in 2011, the late WWII resistance veteran and hero, Apostolos Santas, dies.
Apostolos Philippos ‘Lakis’ Santas was born on the 22nd of February 1922 in Patras, Greece, to Lefkadan parents.
He was 12 years old when he moved to Athens with his family in 1934.
Santas began studying law at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in 1940. Here, he would share classes and become close friends with the late-great Manolis Glezos, and graduate after Greek liberation in 1944.
Manolis Glezos (L) and Apostolos Santas (R).
Meanwhile, Santas prescribed to join the fledgling National Liberation Front (EAM) and the Communist Party’s guerrilla force ELAS in 1942 to help battle rapid escalations from the Nazi/Axis Armies throughout central Greece.
Santas and Glezos were a pair of teenage law students when they decided to kick-off a defining gesture of opposition against Nazi occupation in Greece.
“Hitler had said in a speech that, ‘Europe is free’. We wanted to show him that the fight was just beginning,” Glezos reflected to the Agence France-Presse in 2011.
Glezos (L) and Santas (R) [Courtesy of ONEMAN at oneman.gr (1 April 2020)].
An act of defiance
April 27, 1941. WWII began a year-and-a-half before German tanks rolled into Greece to claim siege.
The Nazis hoisted a swastika flag atop a 50-foot-high flagpole at the Acropolis in Athens to mark the beginning of a 3-and-a-half-year occupation.
A month later on the night of May 30, 1941, Santas and Glezos would take a gallant stand against this gesture’s “[offence] to all human ideals.”
The pair discovered a cave route to sneak passed the sentry and climb the steep Acropolis Hill. A torch, a pocket knife, and the Battle of Thermopylae in mind was all the pair had when they crept through the undergrowth and up the caves of the Acropolis.
The 3-hour operation saw the pair scale the pole, cut the banner down, tear off trophy pieces of the flag and hide the rest before making their escape. They were greeted at the base of the Acropolis by a Greek police officer who let them go.
Nazis hoist the Swastika flag on Acropolis Hill, March 1941 [Dimitris Bousounis on Pinterest].
The Athenian populace awoke the next morning to find a Greek flag flying in its place and front-page editorials led by the tightly censored Athenian press spreading mystique around the town like wildfire.
The Gestapo would launch a manhunt and sentence the pair to death in absentia.
It was seen as the first, symbolic act of resistance against the month-old occupation and inspired and symbolised Greek and wider European resistance to Nazism.
Meanwhile, with their identities unbeknownst, the boys’ mothers were turning all evidence, including diaries and the flag pieces, to ash. Santas would narrowly dodge his death sentence even after being arrested in March 1942.
Later life
The liberation of Greece in mid-1945 allowed for a brief sigh of relief before the onslaught of a new Civil War (1946 – 1949) between the capitalist Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) and the Communist Party of Greece (KKE). Santas began fighting for the KKE as a communist partisan in 1943.
The fallout of the KKE’s unsuccessful attempt to claim power led Santas on-the-run across eastern Greece and saw him exiled to Ikaria, Psyttaleia, and interred in the concentration camps of Makronisos between 1946-1948. Santas was imprisoned in Makronisos in 1948 until managing to use Italy as a gateway to receive political asylum in Canada. Canada is where Santas would live for almost 20 years before returning to Greece in 1963 where he would continue his struggle against the Monarchy and later the Junta from 1967-1974.
Death and legacy
Apostolos Santas died aged 89 on the 30th of April 2011 in the Sotiria Hospital of Athens, Greece. Santas died of respiratory failure.
Santas’ wife, Cleopatra, predeceased him. He is survived by their two daughters.
Λάκη Σάντα Road near Palaio Faliro, Athens, Greece [Courtesy of Vima Online)
Santas received numerous awards from various institutions in Greece and other Allied countries for his role in the resistance. Parnassos Street, in Athens’s Palaio Faliro, was renamed “Λάκη Σάντα Street” on February 21, 2019.
“It was the first gasp of resistance… Two 18-year-olds toyed with history. They saw a symbol and decided to become symbols themselves,” a Greek Parliament resolution proclaimed in 2008, during a plenum session honouring the pair.
A Greek Sydney boy has been topping international charts, performing live on Jimmy Fallon and becoming an overnight sensation. But who is he?
Harry Michael, who is known professional as ‘Masked Wolf’, was born and raised in suburban Sydney.
Michael entered rap music at young age as a form of escapism from when his parents split. Triggering ongoing bouts of anxiety and depression, he moved in with his Greek Orthodox grandparents as a teenager.
Michael later become stuck in an artist management deal he couldn’t afford to get out of.
“I couldn’t release any music for about five years,” Michael said to GQ.
“I think that was a crucial part of me finding myself.”
“I could’ve given up on music and stuck with my day job. But I chose to work hard and articulate my sound. I look back on that time and I think to myself: I used it wisely.”
Michael found himself a new manager and released his first single, ‘Speed Racer’ in 2018, but it failed to take off on the charts.
It wasn’t until late 2020 that Astronaut in the Ocean – which had been on the Internet for almost 18 months by that point – began to appear on playlists everywhere.
“I call it the Scar Face song. It had this period of almost two years where it was out, just doing little numbers. No one said it was crap but it just wasn’t getting the push. I knew it was good, it just needed to be heard by more people.”
“It was put on a few playlists. But I think the most powerful thing about Astro is people were telling other people about it. I kept getting messages from kids like, ‘Yo, I vibe this track and I’m telling my friends and they’re vibing it’. It was the biggest chain reaction.”
The song is currently no.13 on the US’s Hot 100 Billboard chart, peaked at no.4 on the ARIA singles chart, and is the most Shazamed track in the world.
It was also the number three song on Spotify globally, a no.1 Spotify hit in countries including Saudi Arabia, Israel, Hungary and Ukraine, and its video has clocked around 86 million views on YouTube.
Masked Wolf was recently announced as the headline act for the Lost City music festival, just days after his TV debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where he performed Astronaut In The Ocean.
A Syrian refugee has been sentenced to 52 years in prison for crossing into Greece from Turkey last year, the Independent reported on Thursday.
A Mytiline court on the Greek island of Lesbos announced the decision last Friday on KS, the refugee identified only by his initials, ruling that his crossing was “illegal.”
According to campaigners, KS had crossed from Turkey to the Greek island of Chios by boat with his family, including three young children, and dozens of others in early March 2020.
The family had originally sought refuge in Turkey after fleeing the civil war in Syria. However, KS claims that he had refused to participate in the Turkish military operation in Libya and was briefly imprisoned as a result.
Immigrants wait at a detention center in the village of Fylakio near the the Greek-Turkish border. Credit: AFP/Getty Images
Following his release, he and his family sought to escape to Greece, traveling to Chios, the closest island by boat, only to be denied the right to asylum upon arrival due to a controversial policy introduced earlier that month.
Caught up in the chaos at the Greek-Turkish border, KS was one of many to be hit with “illegal entry” charges.
However, he was also accused of “facilitating illegal entry” and causing a “shipwreck “after Greek authorities accused him of having been at the helm of the boat that his brought his family and as many as 40 others to Greek shores.
“They want to show people to stay away from Greece and to criminalise people who are fleeing,” Johannes Körner, spokesperson for You Can’t Evict Solidarity, a campaign supporting asylum seekers in Greece, told The Independent.
As a result, he said, KS “will be sitting in prison for nothing… for just fleeing Turkey and fleeing Syria”.
“It’s insane,” Körner said. “It’s crazy that he’s been given such a long sentence”.
The Turkish Cypriot delegation to U.N.-sponsored talks proposed a two-state solution for Cyprus on Wednesday to end the conflict with Greek Cypriots and put the island’s two communities on an equal footing, but it was swiftly rejected by the Greek Cypriot side.
Greek Cypriot leader Nicos Anastasiades, who serves as president of the island’s internationally-recognised government, said that the proposal was a “great disappointment”.
“Of course I have told the Secretary-General that our attempt was to create a positive climate, without provocations, without any references to whatever unacceptable (things) we heard. I have also told the Secretary-General that we will submit, in writing, our own positions,” he said in a statement.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres attends a news conference after a 5+1 Meeting on Cyprus at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland April 29, 2021. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
The proposal was presented at informal talks with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in Geneva, who had urged both sides to “be creative” after a four-year stalemate in peace negotiations.
Guterres said a new round of informal talks are planned, possibly in the next two to three months.
“The truth is that in the end of our efforts, we have not yet found enough common ground to allow for the resumption of formal negotiations in relation to the settlement of the Cyprus problem,” Guterres said. “But I do not give up.”
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres attends a news conference after a 5+1 Meeting on Cyprus at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland April 29, 2021. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
He summarized the two sides’ positions: The Turkish Cypriots believe that decades of efforts to ensure a “bi-zonal, bicommunal federation” have been exhausted and they now deserve “equal international status” like that enjoyed by the Nicosia government run by Greek Cypriots in the south.
The Greek Cypriots held to their position for a federation “with political equality on the basis of relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions,” Guterres said.
“As you can imagine, this was not an easy meeting,” he said. “To square the circle is an impossibility in geometry, but it is very common in politics.”
