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Turkey took a major step in altering the naval balance in the eastern Mediterranean by contracting the construction of a multi-purpose amphibious assault ship. In late December 2013, Turkey took a major step in altering the naval balance in the eastern Mediterranean by contracting the construction of a multi-purpose amphibious assault ship that can function as an aircraft carrier, potentially providing Turkey an unprecedented measure of sea control in the region. The heightened threat perception for Israel, Cyprus and Greece will impact the imminent decision regarding whether Israel will export its natural gas to a planned Cypriot LNG terminal with...

CIA Director: Jonathan Pollard Is In Prison Because He's JewishBy Karen Levy Israel News AgencyJerusalem — February 9, 2014 ... There have been many senior US officials who have called for Israeli Jonathan Pollard to be released, but none ever came from this highest of security institutions. Former CIA Director James Woolsey has reiterated his call for the immediate release of Jonathan Pollard, now in his 29th year behind American bars over charges of spying for Israel. Speaking to the Israel News Agency, Woolsey stated: "It's enough. After a quarter century the time has come to free Pollard. That doesn't...

In the wake of government austerity, some closest to Greece's treasures are advocating turning them over to private companies... Miller has a solution, which he says will generate jobs and protect Greece's vast archaeological wealth from the ravages of an economic crisis which has closed down ancient sites, shuttered museums and caused looting to surge. In a detailed proposal sent to the government at the end of last year, he suggests letting private companies take over the development, promotion and security of certain under-exploited sites in exchange for a share of revenue generated from tourists.

ATHENS, Greece - British and Greek archaeologists are preparing a major excavation on a tiny Greek island to try to explain why it produced history's largest collection of Cycladic flat-faced marble figurines. Artwork from barren Keros inspired such artists as Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore but also attracted ruthless looters. Now experts are seeking insight into the island's possible role as a major religious center of the enigmatic Cycladic civilization some 4,500 years ago. Excavations will run April through June. "Keros is one of the riddles of prehistoric archaeology," said Peggy Sotirakopoulou, curator of the Cycladic collection at the Museum...

Unlike its larger, postcard-perfect neighbors in the Aegean Sea, Keros is a tiny rocky dump inhabited by a single goatherd... more than half of all documented Cycladic figurines in museums and collections worldwide were found on Keros. Now, excavations by a Greek-British archaeology team have unearthed a cache of prehistoric statues -- all deliberately broken -- that they hope will help solve the Keros riddle... British excavation leader Colin Renfrew now believes Keros was a hugely important religious site where the smashed artwork was ceremoniously deposited.

WITH ALL THE WAR NEWS blaring from our TV sets, few Americans found time last week to mark the passing of 87-year-old Thor Heyerdahl. Yet his death haunts and accuses us, like a dagger pointed at our hearts. The great Norwegian explorer lived as few men dare to live in this effeminate age. Heyerdahl roamed the seas in primitive, handmade craft, as intimate with death as his Viking forebears had been. In 1947, he sailed more than 4,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean in a balsa-log raft named Kon-Tiki. He crossed the Atlantic in 1970, in a ship of reeds,...

Only a few poems of the Greek poetess Sappho’s work have survived but thanks to a leading scholar’s investigation two new works have just been recovered—and gives experts hope to find more. A chance inquiry by an unidentified collector has led to a spectacular literary discovery: Parts of two previously unknown poems by Sappho, the great Greek poetess of the 7th Century B.C. One of the poems is remarkably well preserved and adds greatly to what is known about Sappho and her poetic technique. The two poems came to light when the owner of an ancient papyrus, dating to the...

Swedish archaeologists in Jordan led by Professor Peter M. Fischer from the University of Gothenburg have excavated a nearly 60-metre long well-preserved building from 1100 B.C. in the ancient settlement Tell Abu al-Kharaz. The building is from an era characterised by major migration... Pottery from one of the rooms from 1100 B.C.‘We have evidence that culture from present Europe is represented in Tell Abu al-Kharaz. A group of the Sea Peoples of European descent, Philistines, settled down in the city,’ says Peter Fischer. ‘We have, for instance, found pottery resembling corresponding items from Greece and Cyprus in terms of form...

Recently released documents that were made public under the freedom of information order, “in compliance with the duty of candour” in our ongoing legal action against the the British government for banning Robert Spencer and me, it was revealed reveal that a chief reason why we were banned from the country was because we strongly support Israel. In one of them, an official in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office whose name was redacted wrote this letter on May 7 to a recipient, whose name was also redacted: I have received initial feedback from Post to say that they do not...

Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, while in Russia on Thursday, was reported to be signing a $1 billion natural gas project in Gaza with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. While exact details of the deal or start-dates for the project remain unclear, the Russian state news agency ITAR-TASS reported that Russia's natural gas giant Gazprom intends to produce 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas off the Gaza coast. Further, Russia's Technopromexport engineering firm appears to be pursuing an oil development project near Ramallah. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who met with Abbas, said "relations between Russia and Palestine are...

Having spent weeks talking amongst themselves about the chronic and dangerous rise of youth unemployment in Europe (as we warned here), the Center of planning and Economic Research in Greece has proposed a controversial measure. As GreekReporter reports, the measure includes unpaid work for the young and unemployed up to 24 years old, so that companies would have a strong motive to hire young employees. "Unpaid" work sounds a lot like slavery to us... but it gets better; the report also suggested "exporting young unemployed persons." No comment... Europe's youth unemployment problem is epic - 24.4% of Europe's under-25 population...

It is one the oldest mathematical problems in the world. Several centuries ago, the twin primes conjecture was formulated. As its name indicates, this hypothesis, which many science historians have attributed to the Greek mathematician Euclid, deals with prime numbers, those divisible only by themselves and by one (2, 3, 5, 7, 11, etc.). Under this assumption, there exists an infinite number of pairs of prime numbers whose difference is two, called twin primes (e.g., 3 and 5), but nobody has been able to confirm this so far.

The number of banks in the eurozone fell by almost 4 percent in 2013, according to data published Tuesday (21 January) by the European Central Bank. There were 6,790 monetary financial institutions (MFIs) based in the euro area at the start of 2014, compared with 7,059 one year ago, a 3.8 percent reduction. Crisis countries Cyprus and Greece saw the largest reductions, losing 26 percent and 17 percent of their financial sector firms over the past year. Greece now has just 62 financial institutions, while Cyprus’ sector has fallen from 409 firms when it joined the EU in 2004 to...

Support for Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’ New Democracy coalition has finally crumbled to pieces. For the year things had been close between New Democracy and opposition "Radical Left" party SYRIZA. Not anymore. The Greek Reporter notes SYRIZA Killing New Democracy, PASOK in Attica, a critical Athens region of Greece. A series of scandals, unresolved talks with the country’s international lenders, and the escape of a terrorist seem to be taking their toll on Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’ coalition government and his New Democracy Conservatives, who have fallen 7.7 percent points behind their rival, the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA)...

The UN has invited Iran to the Peace Conference on Syria in Geneva on January 22 . It was confirmed last night by the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki -moon, who stressed the potential positive role of Tehran in the future transition in Syria. The decision, however, has been challenged by the anti-Assad opposition that threatens a boycott of the conference, as well as by the United States : they have set support for points set out in Geneva in 2012 as a condition for participation. If Iran were to accept more than 40 countries will be present at the...

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Sunday that he had invited Iran to attend this week's Syria peace conference in Switzerland, also known as Geneva II. "I have decided to issue some additional invitations to the one-day gathering in Montreux. They are: Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Greece, the Holy See, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, the Republic of Korea, and Iran," Ban told reporters here at a press conference. "I believe the expanded international presence on that day will be an important and useful show of solidarity in advance of the hard work that the Syrian government and opposition delegations will begin...

Welfare spending in Britain has increased faster than almost any other country in Europe since 2000, new figures show. The cost of unemployment benefits, housing support and pensions as share of the economy has increased by more than a quarter over the past thirteen years – growing at a faster rate than in most of the developed world. Spending has gone up from 18.6 per cent of GDP to 23.7 per cent of GDP – an increase of 27 per cent, according to figures from the OECD, the club of most developed nations. By contrast, the average increase in welfare...

EU and US diplomats have voiced dismay after Ukraine on Thursday (16 January) criminalized almost every aspect of the pro-EU protest movement. President Viktor Yanukovych’s ruling Party of the Regions rushed through the legislation via show of hands in parliament. Reports say that electronic tellers in the Verkhovna Rada kept flashing up a figure of 235 votes in favor just a few seconds after each round of voting, before the hands could be counted. The laws impose fines of up to $1,275 a head or 15 days’ detention on people who install or supply equipment, such as tents or loudspeakers,...

The “troika” of international lenders, which sets the terms of eurozone bailouts with little or no democratic oversight, should be replaced by an EU system which is accountable to the European Parliament, MEPs say. “All European instruments that are not based on EU law are provisional. EU instruments should be based on the community method, with the European Parliament acting as democratic legitimator and control body,” Austrian center-right deputy Othmar Karas told press in Strasbourg on Wednesday (15 January). Karas is drafting a report together with a French Socialist colleague, Liem Hoang-Ngoc, on the work of the troika. The name...

About 25 years ago, I started diving in the clear blue waters of Zakynthos. Many times I passed through the water seeing small broken pieces of ceramics and I asked myself where they were from. I thought that maybe there was something buried in the sand. I believed that there was definitely something ancient around the area that deserved more investigation. For many years I didn’t find any other clues to prove this. My love for the sea made me buy an underwater camera to start taking photographs of my diving excursions. It was then that the secret was...