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A priceless gold wreath has been unearthed in an ancient city in northern Greece, buried with human bones in a large copper vase that workers initially took for a land mine.

<p>Police on the Greek island of Santorini have shot and injured a knifeman who decapitated his girlfriend and walked around the streets with her head.</p> <p>Terrified residents of the popular tourist island barricaded themselves into their homes and called the police.</p>

I keep getting slandered so I thought I'd post this. Who Burned Izmir? In 1920 Izmir was given up to the Greeks by the Ottomans as part of a Peace agreement proposed by Churchill. Although intended as an allied occupation under the armistice terms, it was in fact a Greek occupation which quickly became an excuse to extend the boundaries of Greece across the Aegean in accordance with the Greek dream of rejuvenating the Byzantine Empire. In a three week battle Ataturk threw the Greeks back into the sea, captured the Greek commanding general and re-entered Izmir triumphant. The retreating...

An ancient Greek trading ship that had lain on the seabed off the coast of Gela in southern Sicily for 2,500 years was brought to the surface for the first time on Monday. The ancient Greek vessel is 21 metres long and 6.5 metres wide, making it by far the biggest of its kind ever discovered. Four Greek vessels found off the coasts of Israel, Cyprus and France are at most 15 metres long. The one in Gela is also of particular value for scholars who will be able to delve into Greek naval construction techniques thanks to the amazing...

Three residents of the Greek island of Lesbos have lost an attempt to ban the use of the word "lesbian" to describe gay women. The residents argued that using the term in reference to gay women insulted their identity. But an Athens court ruled there was no justification for their contention that they felt slighted, saying the word did not define the islanders' identity. Greeks often refer to the island as Mytilene, after its capital. "This is a good decision for lesbians everywhere," Vassilis Chirdaris, lawyer for the Gay and Lesbian Union of Greece, told Reuters news agency. Court expenses...

ATHENS (Reuters) - Nine British women were facing prostitution charges after being arrested at the weekend for taking part in an oral sex competition in the Greek holiday island of Zakynthos, police said on Monday. Six British and six Greek men, including two bar owners, were also charged in the incident, which took place at Laganas beach in the south of the Ionian island, which lies off the west coast of mainland Greece, police said. The women, who came to the popular resort on holiday, had been paid to take part in the competition, which was video recorded and was...

Learn something new every day entry: this image and accompanying article (click the source link above) told me about Nea Kameni, which is in the Santorini lagoon and which had volcanic activity in 1950. I never knew the name of the island and that it was recently active until yesterday. Click for full-size. Here's a view taken from Santorini. And this image is just to put everything into proper perspective.

At first sight, the statistics are positively wine-dark. As part of school education, countries may maintain it in theory but rarely in practice. Portuguese pupils have it as an option in their final year; in Sweden fewer than 100 schoolchildren study it, in Belgium around 800. In Britain, of a mere 241 entrants for Greek A-level (typically taken at 18) in 2007, fully 226 were from independent (private) schools... Though some classics departments in the United States have had to close or merge, the number of students enrolled in Greek has been going up since the 1990s. In 2006 fully...

As LifeSiteNews.com reported earlier this month, three citizens of the Greek Island of Lesbos are pursuing a lawsuit against the Greek Gay and Lesbian Union (GGLU) for its use of the term "lesbian". The islanders hope to have the court ban the use of the word to describe homosexual women. "We are very upset that, worldwide, women who like women have appropriated the name of our island," said Dimitris Lambrou, a magazine publisher and one of the islanders making the complaint. "Until 1924, according to the Oxford English dictionary, a Lesbian was a native of our isle," he said. "Now,...

For centuries, the great city of Smyrna was a European foothold on the Anatolian coast. The British Levantine Company had had a factory there since 1667, trading in raisins and carpets, and even then the place was renowned for its lively social life. Francesco Lupazzoli, the priapic Venetian consul, lived on a diet of fruit, bread and water and a few slices of unseasoned meat, yet survived until the age of 114, and fathered 126 children on his five wives and innumerable Smyrniot mistresses. By the end of the 19th century, Smyrna had grown into one of the largest, richest...

Archaeologists have dug up the skeletons of 16 horses and a two-wheeled chariot in a grave dating back to the Roman Empire in north-east Greece, the culture ministry announced today. Half of the horses were buried in pairs, whilst two human skeletons were also discovered in a dig near Lithohori, in the Kavala region. Near to the remains of six of the horses archaeologists found a shield, weapons and various other accessories... diggers found a grave and four tombs covered with a ceramic lid, which contained four bronze coins dating back to the fourth century AD. The chariot, dating from...

Sarkozy secures arms deal During their meeting on Friday, Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and French President Nicolas Sarkozy signed a joint declaration on defense and security which will likely result in Athens purchasing military equipment from France, Sunday’s Kathimerini has learned. Sources said that Sarkozy put on the table the idea of Greece renewing its air force fleet by buying a number of Rafale fighter jets from France. His proposal is said to have met with a positive response from Karamanlis. The planes have been developed and are manufactured by Dassault Aviation. The Rafale is a “fourth-generation fighter” with...

Every nation could be described as a manifestation of a unique trait of character and most countries furthermore nurture, give emphasize to and celebrate this national identity of theirs. Some examples of such key national characters (please DO comment if you feel inclined to); USA: Liberty Italy: Creativity France: Refinement India: Spirituality Germany: Self-discipline Finland: "Sisu" (a Finnish term meaning "To have guts") Britain: Elevatedness Denmark: "Hygge" (a Danish word meaning "Good-naturedness", of mind as well as of deed) Spain: Passion China: Cultivation Russia: Chaos - just joking, I would actually say "Heart" (in the sense of having a big...

DNA reveals sister power in Ancient Greece 02 Jun 2008 University of Manchester researchers have revealed how women, as well as men, held positions of power in ancient Greece by right of birth. Women were thought to have had little power in ancient Greece, unless they married a powerful man and were able to influence him. But a team of researchers testing ancient DNA from a high status, male-dominated cemetery at Mycenae in Greece believe they have identified a brother and sister buried together in a richly endowed grave, suggesting that she had as much power as him. The team,...

An error made too frequently is the misuse of the name, "Macedonia." Rather than referring to The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) by its formal name, too many journalists consistently report on events in FYROM as though "Macedonia" were its official name. I, myself, have been guilty of this by not clarifying to whose "Macedonia" I was referring when I wrote about wayward "smart" bombs hitting the wrong targets in my "Open Letter to Lieutenant General Michael Short," where I stated, "Besides hitting the Chinese Embassy, your not-so-smart bombs damaged the embassies of Italy, Switzerland, Pakistan, India, Libya, and...

Thursday May 8, 2008 Police said yesterday they had smashed a gang of 16 robbers believed to be responsible for nearly 50 burglaries with a total haul worth hundreds of thousands of euros. The gang is suspected of having broken into 15 homes, 19 cars and 14 company offices recently, according to a police source. “It is one of the largest Albanian gangs that have been operating in the country,” the source added. Authorities have arrested five of the total number of suspects, all aged between 15 and 30, and are searching for the remaining gang members. No information was...

ATHENS, Greece (AP) - A Greek court has been asked to draw the line between the natives of the Aegean Sea island of Lesbos and the world's gay women. Three islanders from Lesbos—home of the ancient poet Sappho, who praised love between women—have taken a gay rights group to court for using the word lesbian in its name. One of the plaintiffs said Wednesday that the name of the association, Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece, "insults the identity" of the people of Lesbos, who are also known as Lesbians. "My sister can't say she is a Lesbian," said Dimitris...

Lesbians of Lesvos fed up of being called lesbians Mytilene, the capital of the Greek island of Lesbos Dimitris Lambrou is tired of being called a lesbian. As a magazine publisher on the Greek island of Lesvos — Lesbos according to the classical spelling — he is suing Greece’s biggest gay and lesbian association to get the term (with a small l) expunged from public usage. He claims it is insulting to what he calls the proper Lesbians — the people of Lesvos. “We are suffering psychological and moral rape,” said Mr Lambrou. Mr Lambrou’s magazine, called Davlos (Torch), has...

RESIDENTS of the Greek island of Lesbos have launched a legal case against a gay group, insisting they are the real Lesbians. Two inhabitants of the island of Lesbos along with a member of a nationalist pagan association today launched a legal case to ban the Greek Gay and Lesbian Union (OLKE) from bearing the name "lesbian". Lesbos was the home of the poet Sappho, who expressed her love of other women in lyric verses written in the early sixth century BC. Lesbos residents now suffer "psychological and moral rape" from the "seizure" of their island's name by gays, said...

Europeans have been hyperventilating over their self-perceived “victories” vis-à-vis the United States at the recent NATO Summit in Romania from April 2-4. “France and Germany Thwart Bush’s Plans,” ran a triumphant headline in the Hamburg-based Der Spiegel. “Europe Waits Out the Bush Administration,” read another. “Only One Lame Duck Here” said the London-based Guardian in commentary that waxes giddy about Russia’s growing stranglehold over Europe. “NATO Should Disappear” said the Madrid-based El Pais. But behind the spin, the 26-member NATO Summit (arguably the most important such gathering since the end of the Cold War) exposed a security-dependent Europe that is...

The only true ethnic Macedonians are Greeks. Slavs who speak a Bulgarian dialect where told by the Communists that they were the ethnic kin of ancient Macednionans in the Cold War attempt to steal Greek land and create a warm water port for Stalin. I don't how the USA can justify once being against the creation of these fake Slavs called 'Macedonians' and now the USA supports them. That is why America is hated - she is not hated for her freedoms but for her tendency to be a 'two-faced' nation in diplomacy. To say one thing and do another....

What's in a Name? A challenge for regonal stability *Why is the Maredonian question so delicate and complex? The term "Macedonia" is not exclusively related to a state Rather, it has always been used to delineate a wider geographical area, approxmdy 51% of which is part of Greece, 37% is in the Former Yugoslav Republic of what's Macedonia, 11% in Bulgana and 1% in Albania. The choice of one state alone to monopolize the name "Macedonia" - the largest part of which lies outside its borders - neither depicts geographical and political reality, nor contributes to stability in the Balkans....

Unbefitting Behavior page 1 of 2 by TOL 4 April 2008 If NATO cannot pressure Greece to lift its childish blockade of Macedonia’s membership bid, the EU should. Amid the fanfare of an agreement over US missile defense plans and the rejected membership aspirations of Georgia and Ukraine, news on NATO’s Bucharest summit largely overlooked the fate of Macedonia – or the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), as the country has been ingloriously called since it joined the United Nations in 1993. While Albania and Croatia both received invitations to join the alliance, Macedonia was left waiting outside after...

Greece Blocks Macedonia's NATO Bid Greece successfully blocked Macedonia's NATO bid03 April 2008 Bucharest _ Macedonia will only receive an invitation to join NATO once the ‘name’ row with Greece is resolved. "We regret that we were not able to reach consensus to invite Macedonia to join alliance," United States President George Bush said. " The name issue needs to be resolved quickly so Macedonia can be invited to NATO as soon as possible. NATO looks forward to the day that Macedonia takes its place among members of alliance," he added. “We encourage negotiations to resume without delay and expect...

NICOSIA (Reuters) - Greek and Turkish Cypriots pulled down barricades on Thursday separating them for half a century, reopening a street which became a symbol of Cyprus's ethnic partition. The reopening of Ledra Street was meant to be a step towards ending the island's division, an obstacle to Turkey's membership of the European Union and a source of tension between NATO partners Athens and Ankara. Hundreds of Greek and Turkish Cypriots crossed Ledra after the 80-metre (262 ft) stretch of road in the main commercial district of Nicosia was opened to pedestrians in a ceremony attended by UN envoys and...

Greek fury over swastika poster Greece has warned Macedonia that its hopes of joining Nato could be damaged by a poster which has appeared in the Macedonian capital Skopje. The poster, advertising a private art exhibition, features the Greek flag with the cross replaced by a swastika. Greece has already threatened to veto Macedonia's Nato bid if a dispute about the name "Macedonia" is not resolved. The Macedonian government expressed regret over the poster, after Greece made an official diplomatic complaint. The Greek ambassador to Washington, Alexandros Mallias, complained about the poster in a letter to President George Bush, Secretary...

The imbroglio between Macedonia and Greece has been resolved by default – by the coming to light of an ancient manuscript ceding sovereignty over both territories in perpetuity to today's Kosovo. In addition, Kosovo would also hold claims over a region in south-east Bulgaria, formerly referred to as Bulgarian Macedonia until the Socialist regime changed the name to Pirin region. Reaction to the development, which has far-reaching consequences not only for the protracted impasse over the name of Macedonia but for South-Eastern Europe politics, the economy, but also for the demographic future of Europe, drew immediate and impassioned reaction from...

PEORIA - This weekend figures to be a busy one for those involved with military in the Peoria area. Forty Marine reservists from Company C, 6th Engineer Support Battalion are headed home this morning after seven months in Iraq. Then, at 9 a.m. Sunday, 60 Illinois Army National Guard members will leave Peoria and head to Indiana to begin training for a yearlong deployment to Kosovo as part of the NATO-led peacekeeping mission known as Kosovo Force 10 (KFOR10). In both cases, the public is welcome to attend the ceremonies but should arrive at least 30 minutes before. Parking might...

Rene Magritte, the celebrated Belgian surrealist painter, once painted an apple and wrote on it, "This is not an apple." He did the same on a pipe. Today, he could as well paint his country, Belgium, and certainly Kosovo, the youngest nation in the world, and write, "This is not a country." Belgium is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions, with its majority Dutch-speaking, many French-speaking and few German-speaking citizens unable to decide what and for whom the state stands for. Kosovo is a self-inflicted pain and the world will not be able to withstand it given the...

Like pensions and insurance, defence is one of those subjects to which too many people only pay attention when things go wrong. You might think, in the light of the past decade, that this would have changed. But you would be sadly mistaken. Even today, even after Iraq, few mainstream MPs without an immediate personal or constituency interest in the subject turn up in the Commons for defence debates. Many politicians who are thoughtful about a range of domestic issues still pass by on the other side when the conversation gravitates to the military. In this they reflect the British...

March 25, 2008 Arrests made after police crack down on China protests at Olympic torch ceremony John Carr in Athens Anti-China protesters evaded tight security to disrupt yesterday’s Olympic torch ceremony, raising fears that the flame’s procession through London in a fortnight may be similarly hijacked. Three men from a French media rights group breached a police cordon around Olympia to unfurl a flag demanding a boycott of this summer’s Beijing Olympics. Later ten Tibetan activists staged a protest in the town’s main street before they were detained or chased off by Greek police. Tenzin Dorjee, a Tibetan activist who...

ANCIENT OLYMPIA, Greece - Even before the Olympic flame was lit Monday, a protester of China’s human rights policies disrupted the solemn ceremony, foreshadowing the prospect of demonstrations throughout the 85,000-mile torch-relay route right up to the Beijing Games themselves. Forecasts of clouds and rain had been considered the main threat to the pomp-filled torch-lighting. But in the end, while the sun sparked the flame to life, it was the protesters who turned the joyful bow to the Olympics’ roots into a political embarrassment for China over its crackdown in Tibet and other rights issues.

How the Greek Agora Changed the WorldBy Heather Whipps, LiveScience's History Columnist posted: 17 March 2008 08:15 am ET It was the heart of the city – where ordinary citizens bought and sold goods, politics were discussed and ideas were passed among great minds like Aristotle and Plato. Who knows where we'd be without the "agoras" of ancient Greece. Lacking the concept of democracy, perhaps, or the formula for the length of the sides of a triangle (young math students, rejoice!). Modern doctors might not have anything to mutter as an oath. What went on at the agora went beyond...

via translation - ALERT - UL-2008 - Two men are trying to disrupt the ceremony ignition OLYMPIA (Greece) - Two men attempted to grab the microphone during the speech of the head of the Chinese Organizing Committee for games (Bocog), Liu Qi, ceremony, lighting of the flame in Olympia, according to several witnesses.

SH 130 Concession Company LLC finalized the legal details of a financial close with Texas DOT on a $1,360m toll concession to build SH130 segments 5&6 Thursday and Friday last week in bankers' offices in New York City - at Orrick, 666 Fifth Avenue. The actual money flows should occur on Thursday or Friday (Mar 13 or 14) this week, Jose Maria Lopez de Fuentes, president of Cintra North America, told us this morning. Hundreds of documents and over 20 lawyers were involved last week representing TxDOT, private equity people, banks, mostly European, the TIFIA loan group from FHWA, and...

Greek workers discovered around 1,000 graves, some filled with ancient treasures, while excavating for a subway system in the historic city of Thessaloniki, the state archaeological authority said Monday. Some of the graves, which dated from the first century B.C. to the 5th century A.D., contained jewelry, coins and various pieces of art, the Greek archaeological service said in a statement. Thessaloniki was founded around 315 B.C. and flourished during the Roman and Byzantine eras. Today it is the Mediterranean country's second largest city. Most of the graves — 886 — were just east of the city center in what...

On March 13, 2008, more than 280 artifacts from the ancient land of Crete, most of which have never been shown outside of Greece, will be on view at the Onassis Cultural Center... through September 13, 2008... The exhibition will chronologically map in 11 thematic sections covering the establishment and great achievements of the Minoan culture... Information gathered from studies of the Early, Middle, and Late Minoan periods -- also referred to as the Prepalatial, Protopalatial, Neopalatial and Postpalatial periods -- is derived mostly from objects excavated from the island's burial grounds and settlements... gold jewelry... inscribed clay tablets... ceremonial...

Heavy snowfall left about 200 villages cut off across Greece Monday and forced airport authorities to cancel dozens of flights. Civil defense authorities were on alert, and problems with power and water supply were reported across the country as Greece was gripped by the second day of a winter storm. Schools and universities were shut throughout the greater Athens area and in many other parts of Greece. About 200 villages, most on the southern island of Crete, were cut off by the heavy snowfall. Between four to six inches of snow blanketed the center of Athens, an unusual occurrence in...

via translation - ALERT - Magnitude 7.3 Earthquake in Greece WASHINGTON - An earthquake of magnitude 7.3 struck Thursday southern Greece and its epicentre was about 61 km southwest of the city of Kalamata, announced the American Institute of Geophysics (USGS).

ATHENS (Reuters) - Bells tolled across Athens and canon shots were fired as Greece on Thursday buried the head of its Church, Orthodox Archbishop Christodoulos, with a funeral befitting a head of state. Tens of thousands of mourners followed a funeral procession through the city centre to Athens cemetery as public offices and schools were shut on a day of nationwide mourning for the passing of the head of the country's powerful church. Christodoulos, who mended ties with the Vatican but clashed with the Greek state, died after a seven-month battle with cancer on Monday at the age of 69....

The head of Greece's powerful Orthodox Church, Archbishop Christodoulos, died of cancer on Monday at the age of 69.A staunch defender of the role of the church in Greece, he died at his home in Athens, only months after plans for a liver transplant in the United States were cancelled."He was an enlightened church leader whose work brought the church closer to society, closer to modern problems and to young people," Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis said in a statement.Condolences poured in and crowds of black-clad mourners gathered at his Athens home, where he died, as well as the Metropolitan Cathedral...

ATHENS, Greece, Jan. 26 Greek experts have expressed concern for the unexplained disappearance of large quantities of honey bees.

NEW DISCOVERIES AT THE ASH ALTAR OF ZEUS, MT LYKAION, OFFER INSIGHTS INTO EARLY ORIGINS OF ANCIENT GREECE’S MOST POWERFUL GOD Mt. Lykaion Excavation and Survey Project Finds Early Activity Atop Arcadia’s Famous Mountain The Greek traveler, Pausanias, living in the second century, CE, would probably recognize the spectacular site of the Sanctuary of Zeus at Mt. Lykaion, and particularly the altar of Zeus. At 4,500 feet above sea level, atop the altar provides a breathtaking, panoramic vista of Arcadia. “On the highest point of the mountain is a mound of earth, forming an altar of Zeus Lykaios, and from...

A Hellenic Case Against Hillary by Theodore G. Karakostas The following critique is not motivated by partisanship. I am a critic of the anti-Hellenic and anti-Orthodox policies of both major political parties. However, the focus now is Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. In 1992, then Presidential Candidate Bill Clinton promised the Greek-American community he would not recognize Skopje with the name Macedonia. In 1994, the Clinton administration broke its promise and subsequently recognized Skopje under the Hellenic name of Macedonia. The Clinton administration subsequently tried to pressure Athens to lift the embargo that had been justifiably imposed by Greece...

St Peter of Argos’ relics have been found after being “lost” for over five hundred years. The relics of the saint were returned by Vatican clerics to the residents of Argos –in Greece’s Peloponnese – after a Catholic bishop took them to Rome in the 15th century. Greek newspaper Kathimerini reports local churchmen, who began searching for the relics of Saint Peter in the early 1990s, finally traced them to a monastery chapel near Rome. “We had looked everywhere for them,” local Bishop Iakovos said. Thousands of faithful thronged the streets and church bells sounded as the relics were carried...

The effects of the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 are only too well known: It knocked the hell out of Aceh Province on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, leveling buildings, scattering palm trees, and wiping out entire villages. It killed more than 160,000 people in Aceh alone and displaced millions more. Similar scenes of destruction were repeated along the coasts of Southeast Asia, India, and as far west as Africa. The magnitude of the disaster shocked the world. What the world did not know was that the 2004 tsunami—seemingly so unprecedented in scale—would yield specific clues to one of...

As Kosovo goes, so goes northern Cyprus? That's the way the Turkish Cypriots see it. They can't see any distinction between the West's plans for a new "independent" state of Kosovo and the aspirations of Turkey for an independent Turkish Cyprus. It's just one more reason against the creation of a new state of Kosovo, where none has ever existed before. The real problem with these fanciful new "independent" states is that they are not independent at all. Both will be aligned with Islamic world, where freedom, individual liberties and respect for peaceful neighbors and non-Muslim minorities are virtually unknown...

Turkey has halted the flow of Azeri gas to Greece due to a suspension of gas supplies from Iran to Turkey, a senior Turkish Energy Ministry official told Reuters on Wednesday. Iran, one of Ankara's main suppliers, stopped pumping to Turkey on Monday, Turkish officials have said. Tehran blamed the disruption on cold weather and a cut in Turkmen gas supplies. The senior Turkish Energy Ministry official said on Wednesday daily gas consumption in Turkey had fallen to 124 million cubic metres (mcm) from 142 million as a result of measures prompted by the halt in Iranian gas flows. "As...

Tradition attributed the prophetic inspiration of the powerful oracle to geologic phenomena: a chasm in the earth, a vapor that rose from it, and a spring... The ancient testimony, however, is widespread, and it comes from a variety of sources: historians such as Pliny and Diodorus, philosophers such as Plato, the poets Aeschylus and Cicero, the geographer Strabo, the travel writer Pausanias, and even a priest of Apollo who served at Delphi, the famous essayist and biographer Plutarch... in about 1900, a young English classicist named Adolphe Paul Oppe['s] opinions were so strongly expressed that his theory became the new...

Although the White House is poised to back away from misguided attempts to "engage" the Iranian mullahs, don't expect the State Department to play along. Just as State has undermined the president multiple times already on matters relating to every spoke of the "axis of evil," State most likely will continue talking to the mullahs. A recent Washington Post article gave an indication that Foggy Bottom officials may grudgingly embrace a new tough-on-Iran policy—if officially handed down by the White House—noting that State "appears inclined to accept such a policy." But history suggests otherwise. The State Department's top policy official,...