How the world sees Greece
 Greek Reporter | Greece Will Tell Troika: No Public Firings Greek Reporter public sector Inspectors from Greece's international lenders who returned to Athens on March 3 to assess progress on reforms to meet fiscal targets are going to be told that the government will not begin firing of public workers as ordered because it ... |
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International creditors told that mass layoffs out of the question with unemployment at European high of 27%
Greece was heading for a full-on collision with its international creditors on Sunday as Athens' uneasy coalition, struggling to meet the onerous terms of the country's latest bailout, ruled out layoffs in the public sector.
Flying into the capital at the start of a quarterly review of the debt-choked economy, mission heads from the EU, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank were told flatly that mass firings were out of the question when unemployment had reached a European record of 27%.
"The public sector has shrunk by 75,000 people in the last one and a half years," the finance minister, Yannis Stournaras, told a newspaper in a taste of the stiff resistance the auditors are likely to meet. "There will be no layoffs."
The Eurogroup of finance ministers is expected to discuss the dire situation in Greece and Cyprus, which has asked for a bailout worth almost 100% of its national income.
Stournaras, a technocrat widely credited with smoothing often fraught relations between Greece and its foreign lenders, has encountered mounting hostility from within the tripartite government over the dismissals.
Athens agreed to cut 150,000 posts from its unwieldy public sector by 2015 as part of a wide-ranging package of austerity reforms promised when the "troika" unlocked €54bn in long overdue aid in December.
Under that plan, 25,000 employees were to be transferred this year to a "mobility" scheme, the first step towards redundancy. Streamlining so far has relied on a policy of natural attrition, with only one person being hired for every 10 who retire.
But the conservative-led administration has faced growing pressure from its leftwing junior partners. Acutely aware of the country's economic tailspin, Fotis Kouvellis, who leads the Democratic Left, has warned that with 1.4 million Greeks now unemployed, the prospect of yet more losing work could threaten the fragile social peace.
Mired in what economists are calling a "great depression", with its GDP set to contract for a sixth straight year, Greece is projected to see unemployment exceed 30% by the year's end as a growing number of businesses file for bankruptcy. Over 60% of those without work are under 25.
Public-sector firings are among a series of neuralgic points likely to be raised by the troika. Representatives, who indicated they would not be visiting Athens "to renegotiate its rescue package but supervise its economic performance", are also expected to address the thorny issues of progress on privatisations, tax administration reforms and bank recapitalisation.
Paitence is in short supply. Creditors have committed more funds to Greece – at €240bn, the biggest bailout in world history – than any other troubled economy since the tiny nation, revealing the unsustainable level of its public debt, triggered the eurozone crisis in late 2009.
Piling on the pressure ahead of the monitors' visit, the Euro Working Group chief, Thomas Wieser, emphasised that Athens had to keep its side of the deal. "All that was agreed in the bailout plan has must be implemented. These reforms were agreed to make the Greek economy stronger, flexible and more competitive," he told the Greek newspaper Realnews.
Although the IMF has publicly admitted that it seriously underestimated the impact of Greece's recession on its ability to deliver, there are growing concerns over the government's determination to crack down on tax collection – the single biggest drain on the country's economic performance.
A confidential report prepared by the EU and IMF and leaked to the Greek media last week showed that the nation was lagging severely in key revenue targets, with Athens' tax collection mechanism being singled out for particular criticism.
While Greece had managed to rein in public spending – pulling off the biggest fiscal consolidation of any OAED country – tax avoidance, particularly among high earners, remained "astounding", said the report, estimating that the unpaid tax of at €55bn amounted to nearly 30% of GDP.
Indicative of the febrile mood enveloping Greece, the radical left Syriza opposition party said that. in light of the missed targets, it was clear the coalition partners were preparing new wage and pension cuts. "They are discredited and dangerous," it railed in a statement. "The sooner they leave, the better for Greek society and the economy."
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CIAA Greek Step Show FOX Charlotte High school students from across the southeast battled it out at the Grady Cole Center Saturday. The CIAA Step Show brought out Several Charlotte High Schools as well as local church groups performing with their own dance teams. Step teams from North ... |
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Golden Greek comes up short in return to ring The Athens Messenger Brian "The Golden Greek" Camechis (right) prepares to deliver a body blow to Michael "Cold Blood" Clark Saturday night in Columbus. Clark won the fight by unanimous decision. Posted: Sunday, March 3, 2013 11:09 am | Updated: 1:10 pm, Sun Mar 3, 2013. |
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The actor has long had a fraught relationship with the media and their intrusions on his private life. As he promotes his new film with Steven Soderbergh, he talks about life post-Leveson and his love of theatre
'I'm 40! I'm an adult!" shouts Jude Law. "Aren't I?" We hold these truths to be self-evident, I reply, as the actor, laughing, stares across the table with those adorable baby blues and more hair than's fair. "But," he says more quietly, "part of me thinks I can't play a doctor. Who would come to me?"
You've got to be kidding. Who wouldn't come to Dr Jude? In Steven Soderbergh's film Side Effects, Law plays an Englishman in New York, a slimy limey of a pill-dispensing psychiatrist who becomes entangled in murder, drug switcheroos, a risible lesbian insider trading scam and lots more vaguely voguish, putatively Hitchkockian hokum before the credits. Astute critics have compared this performance with the one Law gave in the 2004 film I Heart Huckabees, where he played a shallow business exec in psychic meltdown. "The de-smugging of Jude Law is yet again a dramatic motor to swear by," wrote the Daily Telegraph. Quite so: seeing Dr Jude losing his Brit cool when wrong-footed by faux-innocent Rooney Mara or handbagged by crackers shrink Catherine Zeta-Jones is worth the price of admission alone.
We're sitting in a conference room at the Guardian in London's Kings Cross. For an hour his PR chaperones have left him alone with the clown who once inadvertently cycled into the canal we can see from the window. If Law sacks his minders later, that would be understandable.
Between us is a pill bottle whose label says it contains 20mg capsules of a new antidepressant called Ablixa. Perhaps if the media inquisition gets too much, you could neck some, even if the directions explicitly state "Take ONE daily" and warn that side-effects include sleepwalking and insomnia. "But they look like Smarties!" says Law. That's because they are Smarties. The PR people for Side Effects, which deals with the perils of prescription drugs, handed out the bottles at the press screening the night before. Nice gag. One could barely concentrate on the final credits for the rattling of antidepressants as the hacks scrambled out of the cinema.
"Are you sure they're Smarties?" asks Law, examining them. That's what the PR person said. "Maybe give them to the kids and then see how they feel." Yes, indeed, that would be the responsible thing to do, Dr Jude. If you wanted your medical licence shredded.
Like Tigger, Law seems in a jaunty mood today. "On the whole I'm happy. What's not to be well adjusted about? I tell you what helps me – running. I've always liked to have a couple of fags and a few drinks and look after myself – the best of both worlds, you know? But recently I've really got into running – it clears my brain."
Let's unbounce Tigger with some questions about that most dismal of subjects, media ethics. What is his life like post-Leveson, now that phone-hacking is history and some of Murdoch's evil henchpeople have been reined in? "My life is much less harassed, thank goodness," says Law. How come? "Because the the root has been cut off so it doesn't feed the poisonous little plant that was growing, do you know what I mean? Without headlines they've no need for ridiculous photos of me opening a gate and getting into a car. So that's all gone. What a blessing!"
It's just over a year since the actor accepted damages of £130,000 plus legal costs from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp for its repeated hacking of his phone between 2003 and 2006. Initially, Law suspected friends and family of leaking personal details about his personal life to the tabloids. He changed phones repeatedly, hired security consultants who swept his home and car for bugs, but still the stories about his private life kept appearing. Only in 2011, when police replayed him vociemails left by his children's nanny, did Law realise the extent and nature of the intrusion – what his lawyer called "a sustained campaign of surveillance, pursuit and harassment".
But the legal profession and the police didn't come out of this smelling of roses either. Law told the Observer in 2003 that when he was living in Primrose Hill with his then wife, actor Sadie Frost, and their children, the police betrayed them. "There were two instances where the police called for whatever reason and they sold the stories, telling lies." In that year, too, the affadavit of his decree nisi ending his marriage with Frost was sent from the high court to a tabloid before it reached him.
Nor, though, did Law play a blinder during those phone-hacking years. In 2005, it was revealed that he was having an affair with his children's nanny, Daisy Wright, while engaged to actor Sienna Miller. His by then ex-wife Frost reportedly sacked Wright after one of their children caught the nanny and Law in bed together. Later Wright sold her story. "It was mind- blowing rampant sex," she told the Sunday Mirror. "He is a great lover and he knows how to satisfy a woman." No doubt, but that press coverage prompted his mea culpa to Miller. "Following the reports in today's papers," he said in a statement in July 2005, "I just want to say I am deeply ashamed and upset that I've hurt Sienna and the people most close to us."
Law in those years certainly wasn't mere victim. "Don't tell me there isn't anyone who has done things they regret, or done things they shouldn't have," he said a couple of years ago. "Or done things that are silly. Or said silly things. That's life, right? That's what's wonderful about life. We all do this stuff we shouldn't do."
Today Law declines to talk about those wild Primrose Hill years. Instead he gives an appealing performance of an older, wiser, more humble Tigger – and one who also feels more hopeful than he has for many years about the power of the press to ruin his life. "What's going to be interesting, post-Leveson, is how long the head stays in the shell, how long before it pops out again. I don't know, we'll see."
But has the root really been cut off? Arguably, the poisonous little plant is still growing. Jude may want to be obscure, but that seems an unrealisable dream. Just before Christmas he was papped walking down the street in Primrose Hill, going to a Greek restaurant with two of his children, their faces pixellated. A few weeks later, at the end of December, he had a 40th birthday party in Los Angeles. The Daily Mail joined the party mood with a story, headlined: "Midlife crisis? Jude Law turns 40 in Los Angeles – and new love is 26." The story began: "Most men at risk of midlife crisis treat themselves to a flash new sports car - but not Jude Law." Yeah, right, "most men": during my many midlife crises I have scarcely treated myself to a second eclair.
On New Year's Eve, Law and his sons were papped body-boarding in Hawaii. In the published photos, his son's faces were again pixellated. "It's a very hard thing to talk about. There's an awful lot of people who think: 'You work in films, what do you expect? Stop bitching and moaning about it.' I'm maybe still blind to the fact that if I go to certain places this is going to happen and I have no right to get pissed off. I feel I do because I'm on holiday with my kids – leave me alone, leave them alone.
"We left the beach because we couldn't play there because there were three guys sitting there taking photos of us. So they can pixellate all they want, but the truth of the matter is that these greaseballs are still there and we have to leave the beach and go and sit in a garden or a room or whatever."
Law pours some water and looks cross. "But look, I really don't want to talk about it. I'm so bored of myself going on about it. And I'm so aware it's such an association with me. I know people are bored with it. I want to move on. I've got to make the decision where I've got to be a lot more private at times – and if I don't like it." At one point you considered leaving London for good? "Yeah, yeah. But I like living in London. I don't want to surround my kids with security, don't want to take my kids to private beaches on private holidays. But maybe I have to. Otherwise you'll have to put up with me bitching and moaning endlessly."
But Law has a problem today. He is giving an hour of his time to the media and thereby feeding what Peter Andre called the "insania". "The predicament I'm in is that when you're in a film like Side Effects which doesn't have a big sales budget and is up against, as ever, the big, more commercial movies, the way to get it out there is to talk about it and that inevitably is going to feed your relationship with the media. So it's a tricky situation." Can I get a boo-hoo?
It is a predicament and not one all creative types have to endure. Later this month (11 March) we will hear Law on BBC4 narrating a film about the late, great Scottish sculptor William Turnbull, made by the artist's son and Law's friend, Alex Turnbull, who is best known as a member of post-punk funk band 23 Skidoo. "Bill made a contribution without having to have a relationship with the media. He dragged British art kicking and screaming into modernism after the war." Indeed: Turnbull's sculptures and paintings spoke for themselves, so Turnbull could remain silent. Law wishes he could be more like that. "In the end the work keeps you interesting and interested. It's real, isn't it? It's a real contribution. That's what Bill did. All the rest – there are those who choose to make the other stuff a part of their contribution. I personally don't, but you get pulled into that stuff whether you want to or not."
Surely, though, you never wanted to be obscure. Isn't narcissistic display part of the allure of becoming an actor? "I wanted to be recognised as an actor, not for my looks or whatever." And very quickly he was, though the looks probably didn't harm his cause. Born in south-east London in 1973, Law joined the National Youth Music Theatre aged 12 and filmed his first TV series, Families, aged 17. In the early 90s the tyro thesp did a lot of theatre, with directors such as Katie Mitchell, Matthew Warchus and Sean Mathias in productions of Death of a Salesman, Les Parents Terribles and Indiscretion. And then, aged 23, two things happened: he became a father and his film career took off.
"I'd done 10 or 12 plays back to back. Suddenly this new medium offered itself and I was fortunate enough to work with some good people. Plus the money helped with a young family. It felt like an exciting time." In quick succession he was Oscar Wilde's lover opposite Stephen Fry, then a disabled former swimming star in Gattaca, then a hustler murdered by Kevin Spacey in Clint Eastwood's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Before he was 30 he had been Oscar-nominated twice – for his performances in The Talented Mr Ripley and Cold Mountain, both directed by Anthony Minghella. True, he did star in the last film I walked out on, Enemy at the Gates, in 2002, but let's not spoil the story: by 2006 he was in the top 10 of bankable Hollywood stars.
"I never planned a career in film. I don't know anyone who grew up in the 70s in Lewisham who did. It just wasn't realistic. Theatre was. I grew up watching and loving film but it was this other world – movie stars were like Newman and Mitchum and McQueen. And then this amazing crop of actors – Tim Roth, Gary Oldman and Daniel Day-Lewis – came along. Tim and Gary were round the corner from where I lived. That was very, very, very influential for me. I remember seeing Daniel Day-Lewis in My Beautiful Launderette and thinking: 'Oh, film can be part of my world as well.'"
By 2006, the London boy turned Hollywood A-lister had misgivings about his career. "I had to take a handle on what I was doing. I had to make a bit of money for the family [by then he was father to three children with ex-wife Sadie Frost] but I also had to think about how to please myself – and working in a play every year or every two years was an important step in that direction." Why? "I'll be honest. I feel – oh, I'm not going to give you that cliche that I feel more at home – but I feel more in control of the process in theatre and it's more familiar to me."
He returned to the stage in May 2009 as Hamlet. "I wanted to play him before I was 40. My feeling is always commit and do it. You don't want to get to 50 and have not played Hamlet." In the autumn we will see Law as Henry V, again directed by Michael Grandage. "I wanted to play Henry before I was 40 too, but I just missed it. He died when he was 37 so he has got to be played as a young king and I think I can get there with a little help from prosthetics. I'm joking."
Law doesn't yet do prosthetics. He does, though, bulk up. When he played Mat in the Donmar production of O'Neill's Anna Christie he had shape-shifted: he was chunky, lavishly bearded and, most improbably, Irish. "I was playing this guy from the west coast of Ireland so the accent was really tricky and really thick. And I was eating a lot of weird food and exercising to bulk up. I remember halfway through rehearsals wondering 'What am I doing? Am I in a pantomime? They're going to kill me!'" Who – the critics? "Everyone! Me! I'm going to kill me for doing this."
His performance opposite Ruth Wilson in Anna Christie in 2010 was critically feted. The Guardian's Michael Billington wrote: "I suspect it's a breakthrough performance in that it releases Law from the tyranny of always being seen as the good-looking lead man and allows him to become a character actor." As if to prove that point, the following year we saw Law in Joe Wright's adaptation of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, as balding non-hottie Karenin who, in an emblematic scene, takes a silver case out of his bedside table containing his reusable condom for cheerless sex with his understandably adultery-hungry wife (Keira Knightley). Soon, too, we will see him as the eponymous Dom Hemingway in a Brit flick in which he plays a chubby hood in nasty synthetic shmutter and a heinous beard.
He was reported as saying that this was going to be your decade. "I would never say that! Jesus God no way! I said I was optimistic about my 40s. The roles should get more complex. I look back and I'm proud of the work I've done but not fulfilled by it. I feel in some areas I've only scratched the surface." One itch he plans to scratch after Henry V is directing. His last time on the other side of the camera was in 1999 (on Tube Tales). Now Soderbergh has, reportedly, made his last film, perhaps you could take his place. "I wouldn't presume! But I do want to direct and I've got a novel I'm developing." There's a tantalising possibility that he and Werner Herzog might work together. "He rang up and said, pretty much: 'You, me, Borneo, piano, river, camera.' And I'm like 'Werner, I'm there.'" The money isn't yet, though. Shame: I'd pay to watch Jude Law as a latter-day Klaus "Fitzcarraldo" Kinski going nuts in the tropics. Make it happen, Hollywood.
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 Press TV | Greek teachers, students stage protest against budget cuts in Athens Press TV Thousands of angry teachers have taken to the streets of the Greek capital Athens to protest education budget cuts. They say Greece's schooling infrastructure cannot take another year of cuts, as the teachers get poorer and the students do not have ... Raw: Greek protest against austerity reforms |
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 MiamiHerald.com | UCF greek suspension angers students UPI.com ORLANDO, Fla., March 3 (UPI) -- Students at the University of Central Florida said they are angry about the school's shutdown of Greek social activities. "Almost all of the Greek organizations adhere to the rules given by UCF," student Elisha Rodriguez ... Hazing has history on Greek Row UCF suspends socials for fraternities, sororities Fraternity hosts boxing night to fight cancer |
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Cash airlift helped avert Greek bank run during debt crisis-paper Reuters Fears the debt-laden country might ditch the euro and return to the drachma led Greeks to pull out billions of euros of savings in the last three years, stashing their cash under mattresses or in safe deposit boxes. "While many talked about a lack of ... |
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Cash airlift helped avert Greek bank run during debt crisis: paper Fox Business Fears the debt-laden country might ditch the euro and return to the drachma led Greeks to pull out billions of euros of savings in the last three years, stashing their cash under mattresses or in safe deposit boxes. "While many talked about a lack of ... |
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 Aljazeera.com | Where is Greece now? Aljazeera.com Greece, which ranked 18th in the UN's development index in 2008, fell to 29th place by 2011, having lost almost 40 billion euros of its GDP. It is now in its sixth year of recession. Unemployment in 2009 was estimated at 9.6 percent. Today, the country ... |
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 Economic Times | Troika auditors in Athens to scrutinise Greek accounts GlobalPost Greece's bailout lenders on Sunday began an audit of the country's accounts to assess its progress in implementing reforms needed to unlock another loan to help it out of the debt crisis. Representatives from the so-called troika of Greece's creditors ... Greece faces bailout review, plays down public sector job losses Greece Will Tell Troika: No Public Firings Greece opens new round of talks with EU-IMF auditors over next bailout tranche |
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 Sydney Morning Herald | Greece is the word for Australians Sydney Morning Herald If the owner of a taverna on a cliff top on Greece's Santorini Island comes running towards an Australian it is likely to be with wide-open arms. Australians are the biggest spenders of any holidaymakers in cash-strapped Greece. On average, they fork ... |
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Greek Fest Fox 4 Barbara Huepenpecker spends her winters in Fort Myers, but this is the first time she's come out to Greek Fest. "Of course I love Baklavah, I had to try some of that". "Food, plenty of it. Dancing, music, marketplace, who needs to go to the mall?" From ... |
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 Global Times | Grim times mean bonanza for Greek's far right as Golden Dawn shines Global Times The narration of the success story of Golden Dawn should include a reference to the fall of another Greek right wing, albeit less radical, party called LAOS (Popular Orthodox Alarm). LAOS won parliament seats in October 2009, gathering 5.63 percent of ... Greeks Can't Watch TV Greek House Hunt |
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Troika officials are returning to Greece today to assess the country's ... Seeking Alpha Troika officials are returning to Greece today to assess the country's progress on carrying out its bailout commitments, such as privatization, tax reform, bank recapitalization and cutting the public sector. The visit comes after Russell Investments ... |
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 Greek Reporter | Archestratus and the Secrets of Ancient Greek Gastronomy Greek Reporter gastronomia Ancient Greek poet and philosopher of Gela or Syracuse Archestratus, is often referred to as led the Father of Gastronomy. In his humorous didactic poem Hedypatheia (Life of Luxury) written in the 4th century BC, he advises a gastronomic ... |
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Annual event at Archangel Michael Greek Orthodox Church helps keep ethnic ... Youngstown Vindicator Greek food was plentiful and included mousaka, which is layers of eggplant, potato, cheese and beef in a cream sauce; spanakopita, thin layers of pastry dough filled with spinach and feta cheese; and tiropita, tissue-thin layers of filo folded into ... |
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Greece Olympia's Desmond Mobley wins state long jump title Rochester Democrat and Chronicle Greece Olympia senior Desmond Mobley had already broken the Section V record in the indoor long jump earlier this season and now he can add another label to his résumé in the event. State champion. Mobley jumped 23 feet, 5 3/4 inches —not as long as ... |
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