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 — Hours before Tuesday’s handover of the Olympic flame for the 2022 Winter Olympics, human rights activists urged international governments, sponsors and athletes to boycott what they called China’s “genocide games.”
Activist groups, which also disrupted the flame lighting ceremony in southern Greece on Monday, accused the International Olympic Committee of granting legitimacy to rights abuses in China by allowing the Winter Games to go ahead in Beijing.
“We have yet again borne witness to the hypocrisy” of the IOC, Mandie McKeown, the executive director for the International Tibet Network, told a news conference in Athens.
“They’re handing over the Olympic torch to a host government that is so far removed from holding any of (the Olympic) ideals that it seems we’re living in a kind of warped reality,” McKeown said.
There has been international criticism of China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims in the northwest region of Xinjiang, as well as its crackdown on protesters in Hong Kong and its policies toward Tibet and Taiwan.
But the IOC — which also awarded the 2008 summer Olympics to Beijing — has shied away from the issue, saying it’s out of its remit.
In his speech in the ancient stadium of Olympia on Monday, IOC President Thomas Bach stressed that the modern Games must be “respected as politically neutral ground.”
Activists on Tuesday argued that human rights in the country have deteriorated since 2008, claiming that the Summer Games “emboldened” China.
The handover ceremony was to be held without spectators, because of pandemic safety measures, at the renovated ancient marble stadium in Athens where the first modern Olympics were hosted in 1896.
Three activists were detained Monday after sneaking into the strongly-guarded archaeological site of Ancient Olympia during the flame lighting, waving a banner that read “No genocide games” and a Tibetan flag. Another four were detained outside the site, while two more protesters were detained in Athens on Sunday after a protest on the Acropolis.
The latter seven have been released, but the first three remain in police custody in southern Greece.
The Beijing Winter Games will run from Feb. 4-20. Only spectators from mainland China will be allowed to attend.
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 (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.
Mykonos’ run has been going on for a long time, bringing hordes of tourists, but it’s being cut down by its reputation for being rowdy, expensive, overcrowded and gouging diners while businesses evade taxes.