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.
ATHENS — Greece raised 2.5 billion euros ($2.96 billion) in a bond auction Wednesday, taking advantage of low borrowing rates to boost state cash reserves needed for pandemic relief and emergency defense spending amid a tense dispute with neighboring Turkey.
Finance Minister Christos Staikouras said the money was raised by reopening a June 10-year issue.
"The country has borrowed at the lowest cost ever achieved in a Greek government bond issue: through the issuance of a 10-year bond, raising 2.5 billion euros, with a yield of about 1.2%," the minister said in a statement.
At the June auction, Greece had raised 3 billion euros ($3.55 billion) with a yield of 1.50%.
The latest auction was held as Athens seeks to raise money for additional support to pandemic-hit businesses, as well as to increase military spending amid the crisis with Turkey over eastern Mediterranean drilling rights.
Greece and Turkey remain locked in a tense dispute over maritime boundary limits and commercial exploitation rights in the eastern Mediterranean. Both countries are carrying out military exercises and increased naval deployments in the region after Turkey expanded oil-and-gas survey missions in an area between the Greek island of Crete, Cyprus and Turkey's southern coast.
Government officials in Athens say they are planning to boost spending for all three branches of the armed forces in an expansion that is expected to start before the end of the year.
Officials have not commented on Greek media reports that the purchases may include French-made Rafale fighter jets and at least one French frigate.
France has sided with Greece in the dispute with Turkey. The European Union says it will impose sanctions on Turkey unless it takes steps to de-escalate the crisis. Defense Ministers Nikos Panagiotopoulos of Greece and France's Florence Parly discussed the eastern Mediterranean crisis in a call Wednesday, as well as armament programs and ways to forge closer military cooperation, the Greek Defense Ministry said.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is expected to announce details of the defense spending increases at an annual speech on the state of the economy later this month. ___
By DEREK GATOPOULOS Associated Press
Follow Gatopoulos at https://www.twitter.com/dgatopoulos
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — More than 100 long-finned pilot whales that beached on the western Australian coast Thursday have returned to sea, while 29 died on the shore, officials said.
CALIFORNIA - The University of Southern California canceled its main graduation ceremony and dozens more college students were arrested at other campuses nationwide Thursday as protests against the Israel-Hamas war continued to spread.
NEW YORK — The third day of witness testimony in Donald Trump's hush money trial concluded Thursday after Trump's lawyers got their first chance to question a witness on the stand.
ATLANTA — As Donald Trump seeks a return to the White House, criminal charges are piling up for the people who tried to help him stay there in 2020 by promoting false theories of voter fraud.
ATHENS - Voters should see the whole picture when they go to cast their ballot in the European Parliament elections on June 9, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in an interview on Thursday.