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.
BRUSSELS — The European Union on Tuesday urged its member countries to deport more people who enter Europe without authorization and who are not eligible to stay, saying that only around one in five would-be migrants who should be sent home actually is.
“Last year, we had a return rate of only 21% of those who are not eligible to stay,” EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson told reporters at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. “When we fail to return people, this hampers our system and erodes trust.”
Johansson said that 340,000 decisions were handed down in EU member nations last year to deport people, but that only in 60% of cases did European authorities try to contact the migrants’ home countries to get them accepted back in.
“To protect the right to apply for asylum we have to show that we are appropriately dealing with those who do not qualify for international protection,” she said. “We need migration, but it has to be in a legal and orderly way.”
The arrival of well over one million migrants in 2015 — mostly people fleeing war in Syria or Iraq — sparked one of the EU’s biggest political crises. Member countries bickered over who should take responsibility for the migrants who enter, and whether other members should be obliged to help.
The row continues today. Repeated attempts to reform the asylum system have been made, but there’s been little progress. Unable to resolve the core dispute, the EU has turned to paying the countries that people leave or transit to prevent them setting out in the first place.
Johansson said the EU’s border and coastguard agency “is well equipped” to organize deportation flights, and urged the bloc’s 27 member countries to take advantage of them.
“We have a good political agreement with Bangladesh,” the EU’s top migration official noted. She said a Frontex flight would depart for Bangladesh on Wednesday with 68 “returnees” aboard. “This is the way we should work together,” Johansson said.
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A Filipino villager has been nailed to a wooden cross for the 35th time to reenact Jesus Christ’s suffering in a brutal Good Friday tradition he said he would devote to pray for peace in Ukraine, Gaza and the disputed South China Sea.
WASHINGTON, DC – U.S.
LOS ANGELES – The UCLA Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture presents a captivating evening with acclaimed singer-songwriter Alkinoos Ioannidis, who will perform at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall on Saturday, April 27, 7:30 PM, in a solo concert.
ATHENS - The "OLYMPOS - Global Spiritual Center" Association presents on Saturday, April 6, at 6:00 pm, at the "Antonis Tritsis" Amphitheatre of the Cultural Center of the Municipality of Athens, 50, Acadimias Street, the truly ingenious funding proposal for the construction of Heptapolis in the wider area of Delphi, entitled "World Green Taxation Fund".
ATHENS - Disregarding the recommendation of a prosecutor who said there wasn’t enough evidence, an Athens Mixed Jury Court found a 55-year-old man guilty of raping a 12-year-old girl but found her mother innocent of pornography.