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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama says the United States and Greece are bound by struggles and shared democratic ideals. The president and Vice President Joe Biden welcomed guests to the White House to celebrate Greek Independence Day. Obama says the United States' founders were students of Greek history and turned to ancient texts for allies. Archbishop Demetrios, who is primate of the Greek Orthodox Church in America, noted that the U.S. and Greece share ties of freedom and democracy. He says he prays for the first family. The White House also welcomed Greek-American chef Michael Psilakis as a guest...

Centuries-old shards of pottery mingle with spent ammunition rounds on a wind-swept mountainside in northern Afghanistan where French archeologists believe they have found a vast ancient city. For years, villagers have dug the baked earth on the heights of Cheshme-Shafa for pottery and coins to sell to antique smugglers.

Alexander the Great's awe-inspiring conquest of Asia is drawing archaeologists to a desert island off the shores of Iraq. Failaka ruins (pic: Greek Ministry of Culture) The Greek and Kuwaiti governments are co-operating at the site Greek government experts are going to Failaka - a Gulf outpost of Alexander's army, now governed by Kuwait. The island's bullet-holed buildings tell of a conflict still fresh in people's memories - Saddam Hussein's brief occupation of Kuwait in the early 1990s. Beneath the sun-baked sands of Failaka, archaeologists hope to unearth the secrets of an earlier conquest - a settlement established by Alexander's...

Hidden City Found Beneath Alexandria Charles Q. Choi Special to LiveScience LiveScience.com Tue Jul 24, 4:45 PM ET The legendary city of Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great as he swept through Egypt in his quest to conquer the known world. Now scientists have discovered hidden underwater traces of a city that existed at Alexandria at least seven centuries before Alexander the Great arrived, findings hinted at in Homer's Odyssey and that could shed light on the ancient world. Alexandria was founded in Egypt on the shores of the Mediterranean in 332 B.C. to immortalize Alexander the Great. The...

In the southwestern quadrant of the country we find Lake Ohrid, the deepest lake in Europe... Here we meet the foremost archaeologist in Macedonia, Pasko Kuzman. He has been excavating 3,000-year-old submerged sites in Lake Ohrid, and the first fortress of King Philip II, Alexander's father, on its shores... Pasko's signature tools include three weighty watches he wears on his left wrist, what he calls his "time machines." With one he says he travels to the Bronze and Neolithic ages. With another to the future. And with the third, his "archaeological watch" with its special sensors, he makes his finds......

Greek archaeologists said on Sunday they had discovered the largest underground tomb in Greek antiquity in the ancient city of Pella in northern Greece, birthplace of Alexander the Great. The eight-chamber tomb rich in painted sculpture dates to the Hellenistic period between the 3rd and 2nd century BC and offers scholars a rare glimpse into the life of nobles around the time of Alexander's death. "This is the largest, sculptured, multi-chambered tomb found in Greece, and is significant in that it is a new architectural style -- there are many chambers and a long entrance arcade," the chief archaeologist at...

Egnatia digs reveal Roman road secretsExcavations uncover ancient equivalent of interstate highway A man walks along the remains of a wayside inn along the route of the ancient Via Egnatia, near the northern town of Komotini. Culture Ministry officials have unearthed extensive traces of the second-century-BC highway, which was built with safety features to protect even the clumsiest charioteer. By Costas Kantouris - The Associated Press KOMOTINI - Archaeologists excavating along the route of the ancient Via Egnatia are revealing the secrets of the ancient Romans' equivalent of an interstate highway. Stretching 861 kilometers (535 miles) across modern-day Albania, the...

The armies of Alexander the Great were greatly feared in their day, but there was one problem that they had that almost defeated them. Alexander could not get his people to staff meetings on time. He always held the meetings at 6.00 p.m. each day after the day's battle was done, but frequently his generals either forgot or let the time slip up on them and missed the 6.00 p.m. staff meeting. This angered Alexander very much, to say the least! So he called in his research team and set up a project to develop a method of determining the...

Director Oliver Stone has cut the gay references from his 'Alexander' movie for the DVD version of the 2004 flop. Stone claimed that the Macedonian epic was unpopular with American audiences because of the subtle homosexual content.He said, 'They didn't even read the reviews in the South because the media was using the words-- Alex is Gay.''As a result you can bet that they thought, We're not going to see a film about a military leader that has got something wrong with him.'In the DVD version, Colin Ferell's Alexander the Great character's relationship with Hephaistion--played by Jared Leto--will be portrayed...

Schools will be encouraged to hold lessons exploring the achievements of gay men and women throughout history as part of the first gay history month. The project, to be held in February, will highlight the hidden history of household names who would probably today identity as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, such as William Shakespeare, who was rumoured to be bisexual, and Florence Nightingale, who few people know was a lesbian. Other events covered during the month will include talks on the early years of gays and lesbians in British television and discussions of the history of the British LGBT...

Hollywood News]: New York, Jan 8 : Oliver Stone is deeply disappointed with the lukewarm response given to his epic film, 'Alexander The Great', courtsey the new fundamentalist morality in the United States. Oliver will, therefore, change the offending homosexual scenes before the movie is released on DVD. "There's a raging fundamentalism in morality in the U.S.," The New York Post quoted Oliver as saying. "The bond between men can be suggested in different ways. From day one, audiences didn't show up. They didn't even read the reviews in the South because the media was using the words, 'Alex the...

Oliver Stone laments 'Alexander the gay' Director admits: 'There was clear resistance to his homosexuality' © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com Hollywood director Oliver Stone is lamenting the poor box-office performance of his latest film "Alexander," citing the homosexuality of the lead character as one of the detrimental factors. Colin Farrell, right, stars as Alexander the Great, with Angelina Jolie and Val Kilmer as his parents. (Courtesy Warner Bros.) "I still think it's a beautiful movie, but Alexander deserves better than I gave him," Stone said, according to the London Telegraph. "There was clear resistance to his homosexuality. It became the headline to...

Alexander the Not So GreatBy Hugh Davies (Filed: 31/12/2004) The Hollywood film director Oliver Stone said yesterday that the flop in America of his £83 million production about Alexander the Great was 'dismaying', confessing that more people watched it on the opening weekend in Croatia 'than in the entire' Deep South. Mr Stone said: "I still think it's a beautiful movie, but Alexander deserves better than I gave him. There was clear resistance to his homosexuality. It became the headline to the movie. Oliver Stone talks to lead actor Colin Farrell on set "They called him Alexander the gay. That's...

Item: Entertainment Weekly’s lavish cover story for November 19 claims that Oliver Stone’s new movie, Alexander, about Alexander the Great, is “an honest, fairly explicit treatment of Alexander’s famous bisexuality.” “It wasn’t like Stone had taken historical liberties,” the article continues. “His rendering of Alexander’s life is … more or less in the mainstream of scholarly research. By most accounts Alexander did like men, women, and eunuchs — his best friend Hephaistion was his longtime lover.” Item: A New York Times article for November 20 entitled, “Breaking Ground With a Gay Movie Hero,” says of Stone’s film: “Historians of antiquity...

Alexander the Great, so we are told, held sway over most of the known world by the time he was 30. Which is more than can be said of Oliver Stone's movie version. Far from winning hearts and conquering minds, the reaction in Greece when the picture was first released was one of spume-flecked fury. The hissing noise, emanating from the country where they have long laid claim to the old Macedonian imperialist, was that of steam emerging from starched collars. Before they had even seen the picture, 25 of Athens's top lawyers became exercised about rumours that the greatest...

“Few modern historians accept Alexander’s greatness upon his military abilities alone, and none, certainly, upon the pomp which he acquired as Lord of Lords of the Persians and as Pharaoh, the god-king of Egypt. More noteworthy to them—as it was to may of his contemporaries—is Alexander’s surprising cosmopolitanism. By his colonization, Alexander spread the Greek language, Greek social institutions, and Greek culture from Athens to India. He seems to have envisioned a new culture rooted in Hellenism but united with the ancient civilizations of the Near east and any other area which might be added to the empire of the...

Aristotle’s dictum still stands: “He who asserts must also prove.”  When you make a claim, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that claim.  Let’s ask some clear, practical questions in light of Oliver Stone’s Alexander:  Did Alexander ever kiss a man on the mouth?  No evidence.  Did he ever play a passive or active role in same sex sexual unions?  No evidence.  Did he have sex of any kind with the eunuch Bagoas?  No evidence. Did he ever play footsie with men or boys at a sports bar? No evidence.  Did he have sex with Hephaestion or...

Not content to direct a merely mediocre historical epic, filmmaker Oliver Stone marshals all of his talent as a provocateur to direct a colossally bad one in "Alexander," starring Irishman Colin Farrell as the legendary Macedonian warlord. It's a shame, too, because mediocrity is so tantalizingly within the director's reach. Beginning with Alexander's childhood around 350 B.C., Stone drafts a standard character arc involving Alexander's accomplished but ineffectual father, King Philip (Val Kilmer); his domineering, snake-charming mother, Olympias (Angelina Jolie, butchering vowels like Natasha from "Rocky and Bullwinkle"); and his precocious success as a field commander after rising to power...

LOS ANGELES -- Although he lived 2,300 years ago, Alexander the Great may have something to say about current American politics. If Bush manages to transform Iraq and Afghanistan into secure...... Stone says the U.S. president may earn the legacy of the ancient hero of "Alexander." "It's a grand scheme," Stone said. "If he pulled it off ... in 20 years, maybe he would be considered `Bush the Great.'"

Article published: Nov 21, 2004 Oliver Stone's world-weary philosophy BY ROGER EBERT / Nov 21, 2004 Oliver Stone seems at the end of his rope, but then he always seems at the end of his rope. Here is a man who needs sleep. He has flown in from Paris, he's jet-lagged, he's talking in that rapid-fire way we use when we're so tired we don't have the strength to talk slowly. He is talking about "Alexander" (opening Wednesday), his 173-minute epic about "the most amazing life in history," and he describes him: "Already, at 26, he had the political leadership...