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.
NICOSIA, Cyprus — U.S. Vice President Joe Biden has underscored Cyprus’ potential to become a key provider of natural gas to Europe, saying that newly discovered offshore reserves of the fossil fuel represented a unique opportunity for the divided island nation.
“Cyprus is poised to become a key player … transforming the eastern Mediterranean into a new global hub for natural gas,” Biden said as he toasted his host, CyprusPresident Nicos Anastasiades, at lunch in the Presidential palace.
Anastasiades said the gas deposits, which also have been found in Israeli waters, can offer “an alternative energy corridor leading to increased energy security.”
The West wants to develop alternative suppliers of natural gas for Europe. Russia, the current top supplier, has threatened it could cut supplies or raise prices to European customers as part of diplomatic rifts over Ukraine.
Biden pledged U.S. government support for efforts to reunify the island. In 1974, Turkey invaded after a coup by supporters of union with Greece. For the past four decades the island has remained divided into a breakaway Turkish Cypriot north and an internationally recognized Greek Cypriot south.
Turkey, which doesn’t recognize Cyprus’ sovereignty, has voiced strong opposition to Greek Cypriot claims to the natural gas fields. It has repeatedly sent warship-escorted research vessels into Cypriot waters, where oil and gas companies are currently surveying, to underscore their own claim.
Only Turkey recognizes a 1983 Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence and maintains 35,000 troops in the north.
Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu, who met separately with Biden, said afterward that Turkish Cypriots are entitled to the potential mineral bounty and asserted that “the world accepts that.”
Anastasiades said he had “no doubt” that strong U.S. support would help secureCyprus’ rights to exploit its natural resources over Turkish objections.
Biden later dined together with Anastasiades and Eroglu at a restaurant inside the United Nations-controlled buffer zone dividing the capital, Nicosia. He said both leaders had agreed to speed up renewed peace negotiations.
Analysts say Israel, which already has developed natural gas fields in its waters, may want to utilize Cyprus as a terminus for future pipelines as its own industry expands in the eastern Mediterranean.
A reunified Cyprus would make it easier for Israeli and Cypriot gas exports to reach Europe through Turkey.
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza (AP) — An international team of doctors visiting a hospital in central Gaza was prepared for the worst.
ATHENS - The tragedy of the Tempi train collision is a much greater issue than an opportunity for parties to table a motion of censure against the government, but the opposition parties used it anyway "to turn society's pain into a tool to strike at the government and me personally," Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Thursday night in parliament.
ATHENS - PASOK-KINAL leader Nikos Androulakis, speaking at the Hellenic Parliament on Thursday, emphasized that there is "an established belief among the Greek people" that the government "operates as a well-oiled machine of corruption, cover-up, and propaganda.
ATHENS — Greece’s center-right government survived a motion of no-confidence late Thursday that was brought by opposition parties over its handling of the country’s deadliest rail disaster a year ago.
ASTORIA – Greek Minister of the Interior Niki Kerameus offered an informative presentation on postal voting in the upcoming European Union elections for Greek citizens in a well-attended event held at the St.