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 – Piling on the bad economic news for the New Democracy government a year ahead of elections, Greece’s annual consumer inflation soared to its highest level since 1994, inflation reaching 10.2 percent over rising costs for energy, housing, transportation and foods.
That was shown in the official data from the country’s statistics agency ELSTAT, said Reuters, reporting that price growth was 8.9 percent in March and that the annual European Union-harmonized inflation also rose sharply to 9.1% in April from 8.0 percent in March, reaching 10.2 percent overall.
% in March, further squeezing disposable incomes.
EU-harmonized inflation is an index of components used across the EU to measure inflation in a consistent way. Natural gas prices soared 122.6 percent on an annual basis, while electricity prices increased 88.8 percent, hitting customers where they live and leaving the government scrambling to contain the hikes and offer subsidies for households.
The cost of housing rose 35.2 percent year-on-year, transportation prices were up 15.4 percent with foods and non-alcoholic beverages 10.9 percent more expensive, the data showed but despite the news the government still hasn’t moved to cut the 24 percent Value Added Tax (VAT) on food.
Despite that, even during the lingering COVID-19 pandemic, the economy is expected to grow 2.9 percent this year and 3.5 percent in 2023 after being hammered during the lockdown years of 2020 and 2021.
Greece is being helped by increased disbursement of funds from the European Union’s Recovery and Resilience Facility, the EBRD projected, some 32 billion euros ($33.79 billion) in loans and grants unaccounted for.
The EBRD said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine not so much through direct links but indirectly via increased energy costs given its high dependence on energy imports, the news agency said.
Other headwinds include supply chain disruptions, rising costs of financing and possibly lower-than-expected tourist arrivals should a recession take hold in major western European countries, the EBRD said.
Greece’s economy started a comeback in 2021 on the back of more tourist arrivals and the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rose 8.3 percent, also aided by increased foreign investment and growing consumption.
The EBRD’s investments in Greece amounted to 838 million euros ($884.76 million) in 2021, making the country one of its top five funding recipients.
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.
LONDON, UK – Princess Theodora of Greece and Denmark is set to marry her lawyer fiancé this fall in Athens, according to media reports – “after the couple previously postponed their wedding date twice,” Tatler reported, noting that Theodora, “who was born in London, started dating Matthew Kumar in 2016, with the couple announcing their engagement in November 2018.
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.