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’s Lamda Development expects some 58 percent of revenues to be derived from its 8-billion euro ($8.8 billion) project to turn the abandoned Hellenikon International Airport into a high-end mixed use will come from the sale of luxury residences.
The 620-hectare (1532-acres) area was supposed to be Europe’s largest park before Greece’s 9 ½-year economic crisis led successive governments to switch toward a more commercial use, that will include residences for the wealthy, a marina for their yachts, a casino, businesses and less green space.
Lamda said it wanted to buy out its partners, China’s Fosun and Abu Dhabi’s Eagle Hills to be the sole developer and that it has budgeted two million euros ($2.2 billion) for the first five years of the massive development that has been stalled since it closed in 2001.
Some 7 billion euros ($7.7 billion) is budgeted for construction and landscaping, with another 915 million euros ($1.006 billion) the cost for acquiring shares of Helleniko, the state’s holding company for the large tract of land in coastal southeast Athens, the location where the old Athens airport once operated, the business newspaper Naftermporiki said in a report.
Lamda Development CEO Odysseas Athanasiou, who spoke during a recent shareholders’ general assembly meeting, where a 650-million-euro ($714.64 million) share capital increase was finalized, said the investment is forecast to turn a profit by the fourth year of implementation.
“The project will be financially successful if some 10,000 residences are absorbed (sold), if not then it will not have the success that we have described in the business plan,” he said, although it’s expected to be a hot spot linking a 612 million-euro ($612.72 million) overhaul of the port of Piraeus by the Chinese company COSCO which operates it down the coast past the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center to Hellenikon.
The giant project was stymied during the 4 1/2-year rule of the anti-foreign business Radical Left SYRIZA was ousted in July 7 snap elections by New Democracy which is pushing for a year-end start to construction.
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.