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.
LONDON (AP) — Tony Hall, who was director of BBC news and current affairs at the time of the public broadcaster's explosive 1995 interview with Princess Diana, resigned Saturday as board chairman of Britain's National Gallery.
Hall, who subsequently rose to the top job at the BBC, was heavily criticized in a report this week for a botched inquiry into how journalist Martin Bashir obtained the blockbuster interview.
In a statement, the 70-year-old said his continued presence at the gallery would be a "distraction to an institution I care deeply about.”
“As I said two days ago, I am very sorry for the events of 25 years ago and I believe leadership means taking responsibility,” said Hall, who served as the BBC’s director-general from 2013 until 2020.
John Kingman, the deputy chair of the National Gallery's board of trustees, will assume Hall's role for the time being. He said the gallery is “extremely sorry” to lose Hall but that "we entirely understand and respect his decision.”
The 126-page report by retired Judge John Dyson, published Thursday, found the internal BBC investigation had covered up “deceitful behavior” by Bashir, who was little-known as a journalist when he interviewed Diana.
The BBC also has faced questions about why Bashir was rehired in 2016 as the broadcaster's religious affairs correspondent.
Diana’s sons, Princes William and Harry, have excoriated the BBC since the report’s publication, saying there was a direct link between the 1995 interview and their mother’s death in a traffic accident two years later as she and a companion were being pursued by paparazzi.
The BBC commissioned the report after Diana's brother, Charles Spencer, complained that Bashir used false documents and other dishonest tactics to persuade Diana to grant the interview.
In the interview, Diana said her marriage to Prince Charles had failed because he was still in love with former lover Camilla Parker Bowles, whom Charles would go on to marry a decade later.
Diana, then 34, said she was devastated when she found out in 1986 — five years after her marriage — that Charles had renewed his relationship with Camilla. Diana said she was so depressed that she deliberately hurt herself in a desperate bid for help.
“There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded,″ Diana famously remarked.
The fallout from the report has raised serious doubts about the BBC’s integrity, while the British government has said it would review the rules governing the oversight of the editorially independent national broadcaster.
The BBC, which was founded in 1922, is funded by a license fee payable by everyone. The rules governing its operations are set out in a royal charter that requires the corporation to be impartial, act in the public interest and be open, transparent and accountable. A mid-term review of the BBC’s governance is scheduled to begin next year.
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By PAN PYLAS Associated Press
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.
NICOSIA - A meeting between the ministers of energy for Cyprus and Israel - George Papanastasiou and Eli Cohen - led to an agreement that the countries would make an underwater electric cable link a top priority, linking them to Europe.
LONDON (AP) — The British Museum on Thursday appointed National Portrait Gallery chief Nicholas Cullinan as its new director, as the 265-year-old institution grapples with the apparent theft of hundreds of artifacts and growing international scrutiny of its collection.
ATHENS - The European Union needs to get involved in the case of the two-year jail sentence given ethnic Greek Fredi Beleri who was elected Mayor of the seaside town of Himare and said the trial was a farce to get him and protect Prime Minister Edi Rama’s business friends.
Brace yourself for what could be another scorching summer in Greece as scientists are anxious that a warm winter - the warmest January recorded - and climate change will continue to bring weather anomalies.