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.
LAUSANNE, Switzerland — A Brazilian soccer official indicted by federal prosecutors in the United States in the FIFA bribery case has had his life ban from the sport cut to 20 years.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport confirmed FIFA's case against Marco Polo del Nero “as to the findings on the merits” but ordered a reduced ban for taking bribes.
Del Nero will turn 97 before the ban expires in 2038, though the former president of the Brazilian soccer confederation reportedly still has influence on his former organization.
Del Nero was on the FIFA executive committee when he fled Switzerland in May 2015 in the fallout of soccer officials being arrested at luxury hotels in Zurich in early morning raids. He was formally indicted six months later, resigned his $300,000-a-year FIFA position and has since stayed in Brazil, where he has avoided being extradited to the United States.
American prosecutors have accused him of taking millions of dollars in kickbacks from commercial deals signed for South American soccer competitions, including the Copa America and Copa Libertadores.
FIFA found him guilty in 2018 on charges of bribery and corruption, accepting gifts and conflict of interest. He was also fined 1 million Swiss francs ($1.1 million), a decision upheld by CAS.
Del Nero is among several Brazilian soccer leaders indicted in the American investigation and later banned by FIFA. Jose Maria Marin was convicted on financial conspiracy charges in December 2017 and sentenced to four years.
During the trial, prosecution witness Jose Hawilla, an influential Brazilian sports marketing executive, testified that Del Nero and Marin were among top South American soccer officials who had to be bribed to secure media contracts.
Marin, now 89, was released from prison in April 2020 on compassionate grounds soon after the coronavirus pandemic was declared.
Ricardo Teixeira, who joined FIFA in the 1990s and was the son-in-law of then-president Joao Havelange, has also avoided being extradited from Brazil since being indicted in 2015. Teixeira has also challenged his FIFA life ban at CAS.
Teixeira resigned from the FIFA executive committee in 2012 in fallout from a World Cup kickbacks scandal that also removed Havelange as honorary president.
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.