The European Union has earmarked 657 million euros ($736 million) for the construction of a 2,000-megawatt undersea electricity cable that will link the power grids of Israel, Cyprus and Greece.
The news was announced by Cypriot Energy Minister, Natasa Pilides, on Thursday.
Pilides told reporters the funding is Cyprus’ largest-ever investment as well as the lion’s share of the total sum that the EU’s Connecting Europe Facility, which bankrolls infrastructure projects, has allocated to a single project this year.
Cypriot Energy Minister, Natasa Pilides, talks to the media during a press conference at the Energy ministry in Nicosia, Cyprus, Thursday, January 27, 2022. Photo: AP Photo/Petros Karadjias.
According to AP News, Pilides said the money enables crews to start constructing the segment of the cable that will connect Cyprus with the Greek island of Crete, whose total cost is estimated at roughly 1.6 billion euros ($1.8 billion).
The President of Cyprus, Nicos Anastasiades, issued a statement on Twitter after the announcement and said that the grant approval was a “landmark decision” by the EU as the cable project will end Cyprus’ energy isolation and connect the Eastern Mediterranean with Europe.
Χάρις στην τριμερή συνεργασία 🇨🇾🇬🇷🇮🇱, το έργο EuroAsia #Interconnector γίνεται πραγματικότητα. Η έγκριση των 657 εκ. € από τον 🇪🇺 Μηχανισμό «Συνδέοντας την Ευρώπη», τερματίζει την ενεργειακή μας απομόνωση και συνδέει την Αν. Μεσόγειο με την Ευρώπη.#CEF@EuroAsia_HVDCpic.twitter.com/9McUQz0pJO
“A project that ensures the energy efficiency of our country and opens the way to the European market, while strengthening our goals for the transition to a green economy,” Anastasiades said.
Pilides and her Greek and Israeli counterparts signed an agreement last October to speed up technical work on the cable dubbed the “Eurasia Interconnector.”
The agreement aimed to expedite permits and approvals for feasibility studies and to help the three countries’ national electricity co-ordinators co-operate on how best to move forward.
The cable’s first phase is expected to be completed by 2025.
Citizens and officials across Greece marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Thursday.
Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, released a statement on social media to honour the day, stressing “we do not forget” those who lost their lives during the Holocaust.
“We do not forget our fellow Greeks and all other Jewish people who perished at Auschwitz and other camps of horror,” he said on Twitter.
Δεν ξεχνάμε τους συμπατριώτες μας και όλους τους Εβραίους που χάθηκαν στο Άουσβιτς & στα στρατόπεδα της φρίκης. Η Διεθνής Ημέρα Μνήμης για τα Θύματα του Ολοκαυτώματος ας γίνει ο φάρος που θα δείχνει τον δρόμο της καθημερινής μας δράσης απέναντι στον ρατσισμό & τον αντισημιτισμό. pic.twitter.com/X4huoSpLgC
“International Holocaust Remembrance Day is a guiding beacon for our daily action against racism and antisemitism.”
The Greek Foreign Ministry also touched on the need to fight anti-Semitism across the world.
“It is our duty to never forget what happened in Europe just eight decades ago. Let us ask ourselves, as did one of the first Holocaust survivors who wrote about his inhuman experience, Primo Levi, ‘If This Is a Man’,” the Ministry said in a statement.
Today, we honour, reflect upon & take action to preserve the memory of the victims of the Holocaust. It is our duty to put up a barrier against hate speech, racism & antisemitism
The ministry remarked that the memory of the Holocaust is disappearing, with one in twenty Europeans never having heard of it.
“At the same time, new threats are emerging. Hate speech, racism, discrimination, anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial. It is our duty to build a wall against these threats. To put more emphasis on education,” it added.
Elsewhere, the Greek President, Katerina Sakellaropoulou, attended an event at the Holocaust Memorial of Greek Jews in Thiseio.
Σήμερα, Διεθνή Ημέρα Μνήμης του Ολοκαυτώματος και επέτειο απελευθέρωσης του Άουσβιτς, τιμάμε τα εκατομμύρια θύματα της ναζιστικής φρίκης και ανανεώνουμε τη δέσμευσή μας να μην κυριαρχήσει ποτέ ξανά το σκοτάδι του αντισημιτισμού και του ρατσισμού. #NotOnMyWatch@EJAssociationpic.twitter.com/KHOSVklqXb
Sakellaropoulou laid a wreath at the memorial and stressed that the message “Never Again” was a call to actively remember and ponder the reasons that gave rise to Nazism, racism and anti-Semitism in order to prevent such crimes from ever happening again.
“Only then will ‘Never Again’ take on its true meaning,” she said.
The Greek President also encouraged people to remember the tens of thousands of Greek Jews that perished during the Holocaust, wiping out a significant part of Greece’s multicultural tradition and almost the entire Jewish communities of Thessaloniki, Ioannina and Corfu.
Greece’s main opposition leader, Alexis Tsipras, has filed a motion of no confidence in the government, saying its bungled response to a winter blizzard this week showed it was no longer fit for office.
Submitting the censure motion, Tsipras said the administration of Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, was “the worst the country has known” since the collapse of military rule in 1974.
“On behalf of SYRIZA – Progressive Alliance’s parliamentary group, I submit a motion of censure against the worst government the country has known since the fall of the dictatorship. There are no dead ends in a democracy,” Mitsotakis said.
Να φύγετε γιατί έχετε κοστίσει ακριβά στον ελληνικό λαό, όχι μόνο σε χρήμα, αλλά και σε ζωές, δικαιώματα, ελευθερίες, σε φόβο και ανασφάλεια. Να φύγετε γιατί δεν αξίζει σ’ αυτή τη χώρα τόση παρακμή. Καταθέτω #πρόταση_μομφής εναντίον της χειρότερης κυβέρνησης από τη Μεταπολίτευση.
“Because we have the obligation to turn rage and despair into a force of political change, my conviction is that this government has to go as soon as possible… It has to go before it is too late – too late for society, the country and democracy.”
Tsipras said the government failed in every emergency of the past few years, such as the wildfires that devastated parts of Attica and Evia last summer, the COVID-19 pandemic and the snowstorms – both this week’s and last winter’s.
An estimated 4,000 drivers were left stranded in cars for hours in sub-zero temperatures as the storm pounded Athens on Wednesday. The Greek army and municipal crews were called in to evacuate motorists trapped in their vehicles.
Photo: AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis.
Mitsotakis apologised for the state’s lack of preparedness, accepting “mistakes and shortcomings” in its handling of the snowstorm known as Elpis.
Tsipras’ move means there will be three days of parliamentary debate and this will end with a vote on Sunday night.
The government, which has been in office since July 2019, said the motion offered an opportunity for it to outline its achievements on multiple fronts.
Harry Vatiliotis is arguably Australia’s best regarded and most prolific luthier (someone who makes instruments with strings, a neck and sound box). He has singlehandedly made 800 violins, many of which are now played by leading musicians in Australia and internationally.
It should come as no surprise then that a new ‘observational documentary,’ titled The Last Violin, is currently in the works by Director, Carla Thackrah, and Producer / Composer, Romano Crivici.
The documentary will focus on Harry as he creates his 800th and final violin, and will feature his loving wife, Maria, as well as Mr Crivici, who has known Harry for years.
Speaking to The Greek Herald, Mr Crivici says he always wanted to capture the creative genius of Harry so his knowledge ‘would not be lost,’ but he just needed to convince Ms Thackrah to take the project on.
“I’ve made a few documentaries but I thought, ‘oh that story doesn’t sound very interesting. I don’t think we could make a good documentary about that…'” Ms Thackrah tells The Greek Herald with a laugh.
“So I reluctantly went along and it was when I heard the way the three of them related and saw the relationship between Harry and Maria that I realised ‘no this is actually a touching story that a lot of people would be able to relate to’.”
(L) Romano, Maria and Harry. Romano holds the completed last violin. All photos supplied.
Documenting Harry in his element:
From that moment onwards, the original plot for the documentary changed from simply focusing on Mr Crivici and Harry discussing the violin-making process, to showcasing the strong relationships between friends and spouses as old age takes over, as well as highlighting Harry’s amazing career.
“Part of the structure of the film is Harry actually making the violin. It’s like the parallel of making a body. A violin has a back, a belly, a neck, shoulders and each of those steps is like creating a life. So that’s one of the threads that we draw through the documentary,” Mr Crivici explains.
“Interspersed with that is Harry reflecting [on his life].”
Harry in his studio.
Of course, it must be noted here that despite this creative idea taking form in the background, the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown a spanner in the works for the documentary.
Mr Crivici says ‘hundreds of hours’ of work is still needed to complete the project, including colour grading and the filming of the final scene.
Harry fits the neck on the last violin.
Harry works on the belly of the last violin.
“The final scene of the film, which we’re imagining, is going to be a string quartet performing on a quartet of instruments that Harry has made for Maria. But we’re going to slip a few other instruments in there – Harry’s last violin, his last cello, his last viola and his very first violin [made in 1953]… so it’s like this strange closing of the circle,” Mr Crivici says.
“That performance will happen in Harry and Maria’s lounge room, they’ll be the only audience there so we expect it’ll be a fairly moving scene,” Ms Thackrah adds.
To complete this scene, however, extra funding is needed and that’s why Mr Crivici and Ms Thackrah are kindly asking for the support of the Greek community in Australia.
Harry and his wife, Maria.
“You have a genius in your midst who has really done amazing stuff. I mean there’s instruments of his in the Berlin Philharmonic, in the Julliard String Quartet. This is like real big time stuff,” Mr Crivici says.
“The worry is that his life story won’t be told and that his experience will be lost if this film isn’t completed.
“So if there’s anybody in the Greek community who would like to help us, that would be so appreciated.”
Nick Kyrgios and Thanasi Kokkinakis have booked a place in the Australian Open men’s doubles final with a 7-6 (7/4) 6-4 victory over third seeds Horacio Zeballos and Marcel Granollers.
The final will be an all-Australian affair after Max Purcell and Matthew Ebden advanced earlier.
The Aussie pair were up a break in the second set before drama ensued with Kyrgios serving at 4-2 up and he was broken as the set went back on serve.
But with Granollers serving at 4-5, the Aussies played a brilliant game to break for the match and finished it with a brilliant forehand lob winner off the racquet of Kokkinakis.
“You know I have played a lot of singles matches around the globe with amazing atmospheres, but this week with Thanasi playing in front of you, nothing beats this,” Kyrgios said after the match.
New research by scholars across the world has started to shine a spotlight on the Nazi role in the looting of antiquities from Greece during World War II.
Take for example a new book, The Past in Shackles, published by Vassilios Petrakos, a scholar who is curator of antiquities and general secretary of the Archaeological Society of Athens. The book is a five-volume study on the looting of antiquities in Greece during WWII.
Symposia and lectures on antiquities looting by the Nazis have also been held in several cities in the past few years, including one by the College Art Association.
Nazi soldiers in Rome. Photo: Museo di Capodimonte inv. Q 205.
“Research has intensified greatly in many countries, including the United States, Germany, Italy, France, Poland and Greece,” Irene Bald Romano, a professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona, told The New York Times.
But of course, the research does not come without its challenges.
According to the NY Times, the passage of time has made it difficult for scholars today to quantify the scope of the looting of antiquities that occurred during World War II.
“A complete account of what was stolen does not exist and is no longer possible,” Petrakos, referring to the situation in Greece, said.
Nazi invasion of Greece.
Petrakos said there were major digs in the Thessaly region of northern Greece. These were organised by Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi theorist, who headed the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, which plundered art, archives and libraries throughout Europe.
Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Gestapo and the SS, also started excavations in Greece under the auspices of his Ahnenerbe (Ancestral Heritage) organisation.
But experts say that these days Germany has been quite responsive to claims for repatriation of looted antiquities. It is not yet clear however, whether some may still reside in its museums because determining the full history of ancient artefacts can be so difficult.
In a space that constantly changes, all human activity is based on the evolution of innovative decisions and the exchange of new knowledge. The Greek Community of Melbourne, wanting to be one step ahead of the developments, started a pioneering -for the Greek community – mentoring program to guide the future Greek teachers.
This program aims to promote the learning of the Greek language, and to increase the number of young and high spirited people working in our schools; people who will bring fresh ideas to the classroom and will eventually create indestructible bonds between the Greek and the Australian education system.
Graduates students of the Greek Community Schools have been selected to attend the program, with only criteria their love for the Greek language.
Coordinator of the Program is the VCE teacher Mr. Christos Raspa, who underlined that:
“The Greek community of Melbourne, with a deep sense of responsibility, undertakes initiatives for the strengthening of Greek learning in our community. The program aims to educate young people in our community, in order to equip them with pedagogical tools to allow them to continue teaching the Greek language and culture to the next generations. ”
The Principal of the Greek Community Schools, Mrs. Maria Bakalidou, commented on the new Program saying:
“I am very excited about the Mentoring Program that our Schools have started. A program consisting of young men and women, distinguished by their love for the Greek language.
All these children will bring their fresh ideas and passion to our classrooms, while at the same time, they will function as role models for the students. This is a project that fills us with optimism for the future of the Greek language here in Melbourne”.
While the member of the Educational Committee, Dr. Nikos Dallas, noted: “I am absolutely delighted to have our former students participate in this mentoring program. It’s a win-win situation at all levels.
“We are also able to tackle an issue that would deeply impact the Greek Community otherwise, by addressing the shortage of Greek language teachers. The students themselves will improve their communication and presentation skills, and bolster their confidence in classroom settings. Also, it’s an opportunity for them to give something back to the community by ensuring that Greek language learning remains vibrant with future generations.”
Harvard University and the University of Athens held an online signing event on Wednesday, January 19 to officially launch their memorandum of co-operation for a new Refugee and Migration Studies Hub in Greece.
According to ANSA Med, Harvard graduate students will take part in an inter-disciplinary course on migration and refugee issues from July 11-31 in Athens, Nafplio and the island of Lesvos.
The course will be offered by Harvard’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, in collaboration with the University of Athens’ Refugee and Migration Studies Hub, and will include lectures, seminars, interactive class sessions and fieldwork.
The US Deputy Ambassador to Greece, David Burger, has welcomed the initiative.
“We will be looking forward to learning from our colleagues in Greece, the faculty, staff and students, who will join the projects and the initiatives of the Hub. And, importantly, we need to learn from the refugees and migrants themselves. Their voices must be part of this process,” Mr Burger said.
Greek Education Minister, Niki Kerameus, also lauded the initiative.
Thank you @USAmbPyatt for your most valuable support in striking new partnerships between Greek and US Universities. Investing in extroversion of our higher education means offering more opportunities to our youth and academic community. https://t.co/aUmpEziCvU
“Despite the pandemic, we are promoting the international collaborations of our universities with a firm commitment to consolidating their extroversion and claiming the position they deserve in the International Academic Charter,” Ms Kerameus said.
Greece has been on the frontline of Europe’s migration crisis since it erupted in 2015, when nearly a million people fleeing conflict in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan landed on its islands in the Aegean Sea, as well as its northern land borders with Turkey.
The Founder of Heartbeat of Football, Andrew Paschalidis, represented the Greek community on Wednesday as an Australia Day Ambassador for the Leeton Shire.
Mr Paschalidis has been an Australia Day Ambassador since 1996 and this year, his first duty was to meet with several members of the Leeton United Football Club. Leeton won the local Premier League competition in 2020 after a 27 year drought.
Feeling proud to be the @australiaday Ambassador for Leeton Shire. Catch-up with the local football club last night. Brekkie with the CWA in Murrami before the Citizenship ceremony where 20 locals celebrated their official Aussie status. Wonderful. #AusDayNSW#AusDayAmbassadorpic.twitter.com/KVL8vmYfMF
The next day, Mr Paschalidis attended a breakfast hosted by the Country Women’s Association at Murrami, before heading over to Mountford Park for the official citizenship ceremony.
The ceremony began with a Welcome to Country by a former footballer before 20 migrants were given their newfound citizenship status. A number of local citizens were also honoured under the theme, ‘Persevere to Volunteer.’
The citizenship ceremony was enjoyed by many. Photo: Leeton Shire / Facebook.
“Feeling proud to be the Australia Day Ambassador for Leeton Shire,” Mr Paschalidis wrote on Twitter after the event.
“The spirit of volunteerism never ceases to amaze me in the country areas of NSW.”
Mr Paschalidis was not the only Greek Australian to be an Ambassador this year, with prominent conductor and award-winning composer, George Ellis, also performing the role for the Cabonne Shire.
Westpac has won permission from an Australian court to launch legal action in Greece to enforce freezing orders over the international assets of alleged fraudster Bill Papas, The Sydney Morning Herald reports.
Westpac’s lawyers in Greece have already met with Mr Papas and Greek sporting authorities.
During the meeting, Mr Papas reportedly said he still owns Xanthi FC despite telling the Federal Court last year he sold his stake in the company that owns the club.
Bill Papas at a Xanthi FC game. Photo: The Australian.
This comes as Westpac also secured Federal Court orders to also freeze the assets of Mr Papas’ girlfriend Louise Agostino, after she agreed to sell her one-bedroom apartment in Rozelle, Sydney.
Mr Papas resides in Greece with Ms Agostino after he fled Australia in the days before Westpac and two other lenders, Société Générale and Sumitomo, filed Federal Court civil action accusing him and his company Forum Finance of orchestrating a $500 million fraud against the banks.
A record price is expected for Bill Papas’ waterfront holiday home.
Forum and associated entities were placed in liquidation last year. McGrathNicol recently sold Mr Papas’ luxury Sydney home for about $4.4 million. His two waterfront properties on the NSW Central Coast are on the block.
Federal Court judge Michael Lee last year issued an Australian arrest warrant for Mr Papas, given he had failed to engage with the court. That is expected to trigger an extradition order.
