General News
Meropi Kyriacou Honored as TNH Educator of the Year
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
As Greece gradually eases a lockdown aimed at preventing the spread of the COVID-19 Coronavirus, some shopowners who are reopening ironically said they're also worried that if it's too early and the pandemic returns they will never recover.
"No one would stand this situation again. If this happens again, every shop would close permanently – that's 99.9% certain. Everything would close," Paris Kouklogiannis, owner of a gift shop in Athens told Euronews.
"At this point, we are just steps away from going into life support. We had to pay our rents without having an income. We didn’t know how to cover these expenses. It wasn’t because we didn’t have quality products, but because we were shut down," he said.
That underscored the gravity of the dilemma they are facing: desperately wanting to reopen as they were bleeding cash, and fearful that if they did too soon and COVID-19 came back that it would be the end of them.
The New Democracy government has poured 17.5 billion euros ($18.93 billion) into providing relief for workers temporarily laid-off and for businesses that were shut down when the lockdown was imposed March 23.
Shopping malls and department stores will remain shut across Greece until June 1, but all other retail businesses, including clothing, hardware and beauty product stores, were allowed to reopen May 11 under social distancing rules and limits on customers.
“We want to be and should be optimistic. We hope that people will go out and return to their daily habits,” clothing shop owner Giannis Xenidis, told the news site, but as he quickly added, “We have missed at least half of the season."
Earlier, Greek restaurant owners staged "empty chairs" protests in central Athens and Thessaloniki, saying new social distancing rules will force them to operate so far under capacity – only outside seating for now – that they can't recoup their losses.
While Greece won plaudits for its scientific approach to a lockdown that held down the number of cases and deaths, the tourism sector – the country's biggest revenue engine – is set to take a big hit, as are restaurants and taverns, with bars remaining shut.
The economy that had been beginning to recover faster from a near-decade long crisis that required 326 billion euros ($352.66 billion) in three international bailouts to stave off ruin is likely to shrink as much as 10 percent or more.
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
BERLIN (AP) — At least five people were killed Wednesday when a bus headed from Berlin to Switzerland came off a highway in eastern Germany and ended up on its side, authorities said.
ΒΟSTON - The newly-elected Metropolitan Iakovos of Mexico, who was enthroned on Saturday, March 16th at the Cathedral of Aghia Sophia in Mexico City, gave his first interview as Metropolitan to The National Herald, which he described as a "historic newspaper," one he has known since childhood, as have his close relatives.
BALTIMORE - Authorities have released the identities of the two people recovered from the water Wednesday morning at the site of the Baltimore bridge collapse.
ATHENS — Police in Greece clashed late Wednesday with Communist-backed demonstrators who tried to prevent a concert by U.
ATHENS – Greece recorded a huge improvement in the business environment rankings of The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) among 82 countries worldwide.