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.
BRUSSELS — Human rights group Amnesty International said Wednesday that the practice of migrant pushbacks in Greece has become so bad that even people who have applied for asylum and been in the country for some time are being summarily picked up and deported.
Charity groups and media outlets routinely accuse Greek authorities and the EU's border agency Frontex of denying people their right to apply for asylum – which is illegal under EU law and refugee treaties – often in the Aegean Sea between Turkey and the Greek islands.
Greece and Frontex strenuously deny conducting such pushbacks.
But Amnesty said in a new report that pushbacks have become so "entrenched" that it has documented four cases "where people affected had a registered protection status in Greece or had been in the country days or weeks before, and were apprehended well inland."
One case concerned a Syrian man who registered as an asylum seeker in Greece in late 2019. He was arrested in the northwest port city of Igoumenitsa last July. He said police confiscated and destroyed his asylum card. He was put on a bus and taken to a detention center before being sent to Turkey.
Amnesty said a young Syrian couple traveling with two small children were also detained at a refugee facility near Drama in northern Greece. They were taken to a "detention center" or "police station" where their belongings were confiscated, and later sent back across Greece's land border with Turkey.
The rights group said that "these returns have an enormous impact on the individuals and the community: they are tearing people away from one another after they have found what they thought was safety."
It also heard testimony from some people forced to leave by crossing the Evros River on the Greece-Turkey border that Turkish authorities, in turn, tried to prevent them from crossing into Turkish territory.
Amnesty called on the European Commission to launch infringement proceedings against Greece "for its violation of EU asylum and fundamental rights law."
It appealed to the Turkish authorities to "halt all practices forcing or pressuring individuals to return to Greece, including through the use of threats or violence and conduct prompt, independent, impartial, and effective investigations into all such allegations."
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Three Russian missiles slammed into a downtown area of the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv on Wednesday, hitting an eight-floor apartment building and killing at least 13 people, authorities said.
ATHENS – Dynamic chef duo Jerome Serres and Yiannis Baxevanis unleash a season of culinary magic at Apanemi restaurant in Mykonos’ Theoxenia hotel, with their a la carte and Mediterranean degustation menus including, for the first time, a vegan haute cuisine option.
BRUSSELS - European Union leaders over a two-day summit of the special European Council will discuss economic and competitiveness issues in Ukraine, Türkiye, the Middle East and Lebanon, stated Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis upon his arrival in Brussels on Wednesday night.
NEW YORK – Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (LCPA) on April 17 announced the third annual Summer for the City, welcoming New Yorkers to hundreds of free events over three months.
ATHENS – Travel designers and experts, members of the media, creatives and senior executives of Louis Hotels were transported to the heart of Greek essence at a sophisticated corporate presentation of the Exclusive Collection by Louis Hotels at Fuga in Athens.