Greek culture on display during Greek Festival

Greek culture on display during Greek FestivalCarlisle SentinelFor nearly three months, members of the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral, where the festival is being held, have been preparing the sites, smells, and flavors of Greece to continue the church's long standing tradition of showcasing Greek culture ...and more »

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IMF’s Strauss-Kahn Gives Further Insight in Eurozone Crisis

New facts have emerged about the European sovereign debt crisis and Greece’s recourse to the European stability mechanism in 2010, as former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Dominique Strauss-Kahn revealed Friday on French TV channel France 2 that former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou had first requested IMF credits in 2009. Strauss-Kahn, who was forced to resign over a sex scandal in 2011, acknowledged that many mistakes were made concerning Greece, and that many crucial decisions were delayed up to 12 months, only making matters worse. IMF’s ex-chief also disclosed a conversation he had with the Greek PM in 2009, in which Papandreou asked the IMF to draw up a plan for Greece. Strauss-Kahn is said to have replied that any scenarios should firstly be discussed with Greece’s EU partners prior to getting any IMF help. The story also features comments by Sarkozy’s Budget Minister François Baroin, who was also present at the 2011 Cannes G20 summit, hence confirming the facts recently disclosed in a Financial Times piece, according to which Papandreou was basically blackmailed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “You are free, of course, to hold a referendum, but you can’t put on a vote whether or not the money we lend you is acceptable. The question you will ask the Greek people, and this is non-negotiable if you want to get the funds, is whether or not they want to stay in the eurozone,” the two leaders are reported to have told Papandreou at the time, following his decision to hold a national referendum. The French story also reveals that Merkel, at first, wished for only the IMF to contribute to saving Greece, opposing a joint package proposed by the French side, because she was aware that Germany would have to pay the price for saving Greece’s economy. Only U.S. President Barack Obama finally managed to change the Chancellor’s attitude, as said in the story.  

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International Museum Day Celebrations in Athens

The theme of this year’s International Museum Day, which is on May 18, 2014, is “Museum collections make connections.” The Athens Organization of Culture Youth and Sports will participate in the celebration with various events at the city’s most important museums. The International Council of Museums (ICOM) established International Museum Day in order to encourage public awareness about the role of museums and culture in different societies. The Acropolis Museum has organized two special gallery talks on the topics of: “The Hare of the Acropolis” and “The Moscophoros: A New Display of an Acropolis Masterpiece.” The first will take place at Sunday in English, French and Greece and they are limited to 30 participants per session. Furthermore, the museum will open its doors for free from 8am to 4pm; however, it will close early due to the Greek municipal elections. The Angela Hatzimichali Museum of Folk Art and Tradition will be open on Saturday and Sunday from 11am to 2pm, presenting the work of Angela Hatzimichali, a Greek folk specialist, in an exhibition that explores the links between contemporary and traditional artifacts. The exhibition will feature handicrafts by Artemis Alkakai, Eleni Krikki and Eleni Tzatzalos. Musical guided tours will place at the Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika Gallery of the Benaki Museum, while the Hellenic Cosmos Cultural Center will offer free entrance to the exhibition to “Patterns of Magnificence: Tradition and Reinvention in Greek Women’s Costume,” as part of the International Museum Day celebration.

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Profile of the Greek Reader

The Greek magazine “The Reader” organized a book conference on the profile of the Greek Reader. The conference was held in Thessaloniki during the 11th Thessaloniki International Book Fair. According to data provided by public libraries, 75 percent of Greek readers are women who mostly read “pop culture” books. Among the most popular writers are Chrisiida Dimoulidou, Lena Manda and Kalie Karatza. It is also worth mentioning, that 31 percent of the books lent is contemporary foreign literature. The financial crisis appears to affect readers as well, since borrowing books from public libraries has skyrocketed from 2009 to 2012 (when the crisis began). As far as children’s literature is concerned, literary critic Mariza Decastro stated that children’s books seem to perpetuate social stereotypes (e.g “Dad reads the newspaper,” “Mam goes to the hairdresser’s”), they use a limited vocabulary, including various idioms and slang as well as trying to imitate famous children’s author, Eugene Trivizas. Venetia Apostolidou, Professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, underlined that reading books is not only a pleasure but “a nation’s cultural asset” as well.

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EP review: Blast your spring open with Greek Fire's 'LOST' release

Rock band Greek Fire has been Saint Louis' best kept secret for so long, it's become time to let them loose on the rest of the world. Their music has been on heavy rotation on Saint Louis radio stations for so long, it's almost inconceivable that it hasn't ...

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Scientists Express Concern About Mild Cases Of MERS

By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO, May 16 (Reuters) - Scientists leading the fight against Middle East Respiratory Syndrome say the next critical front will be understanding how the virus behaves in people with milder infections, who may be spreading the illness without being aware they have it. Establishing that may be critical to stopping the spread of MERS, which emerged in the Middle East in 2012 and has so far infected more than 500 patients in Saudi Arabia alone. It kills about 30 percent of those who are infected. It is becoming increasingly clear that people can be infected with MERS without developing severe respiratory disease, said Dr David Swerdlow, who heads the MERS response team at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "You don't have to be in the intensive care unit with pneumonia to have a case of MERS," Swerdlow told Reuters. "We assume they are less infectious (to others), but we don't know." The CDC has a team in Saudi Arabia studying whether such mild cases are still capable of spreading the virus. Swerdlow is overseeing their work from Atlanta. They plan to test the family members of people with mild MERS, even if these relatives don't have any symptoms, to help determine whether the virus can spread within a household. Cases of the disease, which causes coughing, fever and sometimes fatal pneumonia, have nearly tripled in the past month and a half, and the virus is moving out of the Arabian peninsula as infected individuals travel from the region. Since late April, the first two cases of MERS have been reported on U.S. soil. Dutch officials reported their first two cases this week. Infections have also turned up in Britain, Greece, France, Italy, Malaysia and elsewhere. Since MERS is an entirely new virus, there are no drugs to treat it and no vaccines capable of preventing its spread. It is a close cousin of the virus that caused Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS, which killed around 800 people worldwide after it first appeared in China in 2002. Because MERS patients can have "mild and unusual symptoms," the World Health Organization advises healthcare workers to apply standard infection control precautions for all patients, regardless of their diagnosis, at all times. "Asymptomatic carriers of diseases can represent a major route for a pathogen to spread," said Dr Amesh Adalja of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. "Just think of Typhoid Mary," he said, referring to the asymptomatic cook who spread typhoid fever to dozens of people in the early 20th century. NOT EVEN A COUGH Milder symptoms played a role in the second U.S. case of MERS, a man who started having body aches on a journey from Jeddah on Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast to the United States. It took the patient more than a week before he sought help in an emergency department in Orlando, Florida. Once he arrived, he waited nearly 12 hours in the ER before staff recognized a MERS link and placed him in an isolation room. The patient did not have signs of a respiratory infection, not even a cough. Dr Kevin Sherin, director of the Florida Department of Health for Orange County, believes that made it less likely that he could spread the infection. Hospital workers have tested negative, but the health department and the CDC are still checking on hundreds of people who might have been in contact with the patient. A CDC study published earlier this week looked at some of the first cases of MERS that occurred in Jordan in 2012. Initially, only two people in that outbreak were thought to have MERS. When CDC disease detectives used more sensitive tests that looked for MERS antibodies among hospital workers, they found another seven people had contracted MERS and survived it. That suggests there may be people with mild cases "that can serve as a way for the virus to spread to other individuals, which makes it a lot harder to control," Adalja said. Scientists are especially concerned because a lot of recent cases of MERS are among people who did not have contact with animals such as camels or bats that are believed to be reservoirs for the virus. "If they don't have animal contact, where do they pick it up? Potentially, asymptomatic cases," said Dr Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert from the University of Minnesota. (Additional reporting by Sharon Begley in New York; Editing by Michele Gershberg)

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PM confident about coalition's future as Greeks vote in first round of local elections

The country’s governing coalition may grow in numbers after the May 25 European Parliament elections, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said Friday as Greece prepares for the first round of local polls Sunday. With speculation growing about whether the New D... ...

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