Greece Outside In

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Greece 'American Ninja' hopeful gets his chance

Greece 'American Ninja' hopeful gets his chanceRochester Democrat and ChronicleGreece businessman Carl Fantauzzo can't say how he fared at the qualifying rounds for the reality show American Ninja Warrior held last month in Denver, but we can all tune in on Monday night and find out. For months, the liquor store owner trained and ...

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Frozen Greek Yogurt

Summer has arrived! It’s officially ice cream season! But for a taste that’s just as refreshing, and unmistakably Greek, try Frozen Greek Yogurt. It’s a cinch! Serves 6-8 Ingredients: 3 cups full fat real Greek yogurt ¾ cup evaporated sugar cane juice 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract Directions: Mix the yogurt, sugar and vanilla together […]

The post Frozen Greek Yogurt appeared first on The National Herald.

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Greek festival rolls out the music, cuisine in Camarillo

Food, fun and family embodied the 36th annual Ventura County Greek Festival.

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Sunday, June 29

by Associated Press Sunday, June 29 by The Associated Press, Associated Press - 21 June 2014 20:02-04:00

Today is Sunday, June 29, the 180th day of 2014. There are 185 days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

1520 - Montezuma II, ninth and last emperor of the Aztecs, dies in Tenochtitlan of wounds he received, according to Spanish accounts, from his alienated subjects when he tried to speak to them three days earlier.

1529 - Religious civil war in Switzerland ends with Peace of Kappel, where the Catholic cantons give freedom of religion to the Protestants.

1847 - Convention of Gramido ends civil war in Portugal.

1848 - Austria's Archduke John is elected Regent of the Reich, replacing German Confederation.

1880 - Australia's most infamous bushranger, Ned Kelly, is wounded and captured at Glenrowan, Victoria.

1880 - France takes control of South Pacific island of Tahiti.

1888 - Professor Frederick Treves performs the first appendectomy in England.

1896 - Expedition under Major Marchand leaves France to advance on Fashoda and claim Sudan.

1913 - Bulgarian forces attack Serbian and Greek troops in Macedonia, sparking Second Balkan War. Bulgarians are defeated in August.

1939 - First commercial plane flight from United States to Europe is completed as Dixie Clipper lands at Lisbon, Portugal.

1943 - U.S. forces land on New Guinea in Pacific in World War II.

1946 - British arrest more than 2,700 Jews in Palestine in attempt to stamp out terrorism.

1949 - South Africa begins implementing apartheid, its racial segregation rules.

1963 - Dispute between Soviet Union and China worsens as Soviets demand recall of three officials at Chinese embassy in Moscow.

1966 - Hanoi, North Vietnam's capital, and Haiphong, its principal port, are bombed by United States for first time in Vietnam War.

1967 - Israel defies international protests and unites divided city of Jerusalem for first time in two decades, following victory in Six-Day War.

1974 - Soviet ballet star Mikhail Baryshnikov, touring with the Bolshoi Ballet, defects in Toronto, Canada.

1990 - Lithuanian parliament agrees to a 100-day moratorium on declaration of independence in exchange for an end to the economic blockade ordered by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

1991 - Yugoslav federal army threatens to take "decisive military action" against Slovenia unless the republic stops fighting government troops.

1992 - Mohammed Boudfiaf, head of the Algerian ruling council, is assassinated.

1993 - Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif imposes emergency rule in Punjab province, where more than half of the country's 120 million people live.

1995 - A posh five-story department store in Seoul, South Korea, collapses, killing at least 114 people and injuring 910.

1999 - A pre-dawn fire sweeps through a three-story summer camp in Hwasung, South Korea killing 23 kindergarten and grade school children.

2000 - An overloaded ship carrying almost 500 people, many fleeing sectarian violence in the Maluku islands, goes missing in remote eastern Indonesia. There are 10 known survivors.

2001 - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is unanimously re-elected to a second term by 189-member General Assembly. He pledges to redouble efforts to strengthen human rights and start carrying out a global plan to lift millions out of abject poverty.

2002 - A North Korean navy vessel sinks a South Korean naval patrol boat in an exchange of fire in the Yellow Sea. Four South Korean sailors are killed in the battle and 19 were injured.

2004 - The U.S. military announces the formation of a five-member military tribunal to preside over the first trials of terror suspects held at its naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

2005 - Hundreds of U.N. peacekeepers raid a Haiti slum filled with gangs loyal to ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, killing six gunmen and wounding five others.

2006 - Female voters in Kuwait, who won the right to vote and run for office last year, cast ballots in parliamentary elections for the first time.

2007 - Britain thwarts an attack in London's busy theater district when police defuse a lethal mix of gasoline, propane and nails discovered in an abandoned Mercedes. A second explosives-rigged car is also found nearby.

2008 - Zimbabwe's longtime ruler Robert Mugabe is sworn in as president for a sixth term.

2009 — Iraqi forces assume formal control of Baghdad and other cities after American troops hand over security in urban areas in a defining step toward ending the U.S. combat role in the country.

2010 - Drug cartels, which fund a tenth of Mexico's economy, insert themselves into politics, killing the leading candidate for governor of a northern state only days before elections in 12 states.

2011 - Greece fends off a bankruptcy that threatened to roil global financial markets, approving severe spending cuts and tax increases in the face of violent protests by Greeks who say they have suffered enough.

2012 - German lawmakers approve Europe's new budget discipline pact as the eurozone's permanent euro 500 billion ($623 billion) rescue fund hours after Chancellor Angela Merkel defends concessions she made to financially troubled European nations at a summit.

2013 — Thousands of Egyptians take to the streets on the anniversary of the inauguration of President Mohammed Morsi, demanding his resignation.

Today's Birthdays:

Giacomo Leopardi, Italian author/philosopher (1798-1837); Pietro Angelo Secchi, Italian Jesuit/astrophysicist (1818-1878); George Washington Goethals, U.S. builder of Panama Canal (1858-1928); Antoine de Saint-Exupery, French aviator and writer (1900-1944); Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands (1911-2004); Robert Evans, producer/former actor (1930--); Gary Busey, actor (1944--).

Thought For Today:

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers — Lord Alfred Tennyson, English poet (1809-1892).

News Topics: General news, War and unrest, Parliamentary elections, Government and politics, Racial and ethnic discrimination, Elections, Discrimination, Human rights and civil liberties, Social issues, Social affairs, Race and ethnicity

People, Places and Companies: Mikhail Baryshnikov, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nawaz Sharif, Kofi Annan, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Robert Mugabe, Angela Merkel, Mohamed Morsi, Gary Busey, United Kingdom, United States, South Korea, Vietnam, Middle East, Greece, Western Europe, Europe, North America, East Asia, Asia, Southeast Asia

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Lawsuit: Yogurt brand has nothing Greek about it

CNBC.com Lawsuit: Yogurt brand has nothing Greek about itCNBC.comIn the suit, the plaintiffs compare the nutritional value of Chobani's yogurt to a Nestle Fudge ice cream bar and attack the brand's name for being Turkish, not Greek. Furthermore, the suit points out that the yogurt is made by neither Greek nationals ...

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Food among highlights of Greek Festival

Food among highlights of Greek FestivalMason City Globe GazetteMASON CITY | North Iowans embraced the Greek culture with music, dancers, tiropitas, pastitso, souvlaki, Greek beer and other food on Saturday during the 25th annual Greek Festival at Holy Transfiguration Greek Orthodox Church, Mason City. "It's all ...

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Pagans, wiccans and revelers mark summer solstice at Washington state replica of Stonehenge

by Associated Press Pagans mark summer solstice at replica Stonehenge by NIGEL DUARA, Associated Press - 21 June 2014 19:22-04:00

MARYHILL, Washington (AP) — As their sons returned wounded, dead or not at all from heavy fighting across the Atlantic in 1918, people in this small Columbia Gorge town sought to commemorate their sacrifice.

On a visit to the original Stonehenge in England, a Quaker named Sam Hill heard stories of dark doings and ritual killings. What better way to mark the Great War then raging, he thought, than to construct a replica near his estate in Maryhill, Washington state, a town on the state's southern rim with Oregon.

Hill argued that combat between nations was an irredeemable folly and the dead soldiers an offering to the "god of war." So he built a West Coast incarnation of Stonehenge in tribute.

The monument nearly lines up with sunrise on the solstice, just like Stonehenge — though stories about Bronze Age human sacrifices there were almost certainly false. The original structure was likely one of the earliest calendars.

And much like Stonehenge, the replica draws a coterie of neo-Druids, pagans and wiccans each year on the summer solstice. On Saturday, about 30 turned out in small groups from Oregon and southern Washington state.

Hill's testament to the World War I dead stands alone on a reedy outcropping several hundred feet above the Columbia River. Inscribed inside are the names of slain soldiers from Klickitat County. Like Stonehenge, it contains an outer ring of 16-foot (5-meter)-tall stones, an inner grouping of 9-foot (2.7-meter)-tall stones and five pairs of arch-like stone pillars called trilithons.

Religions that treat the sun as a deity turned to the summer solstice as a holy day. Greeks celebrated their god of agriculture, Vikings planned raids and early governance around midsummer, and Plains Indians, including the Sioux, marked the occasion with a days-long ritual.

This year, Elise Mesnard, a 24-year-old artist from Portland, Oregon, said she arrived early Saturday and embraced the first rays of sunlight, which didn't peek around the Columbia Gorge cliffs until about 5:30 a.m.

"It's a beautiful, meditative area," Mesnard said.

Egypt Rose of South Prairie, Washington, got started before the sun came up. She lit a candle and dropped wax figurines into a cauldron. The site is a public park, so the open-fire option she prefers wasn't legal.

She and seven others chanted to the Egyptian god of the sun, Ra, and circled the Stonehenge monument three times, signifying the banishment of evil and the discovery of renewal on the longest day of the year.

"Personally, I don't really call it a religion, because to me that involves other people," Rose said. "It's hard to describe it that way. I guess some people would call it paganism."

Other solstice celebrations included thousands practicing yoga in New York City's Times Square. At the original Stonehenge, 36,000 sun-watchers gathered Saturday on the Salisbury Plain about 80 miles (130 kilometers) southwest of London. Couples kissed, dancers circled with hoops and revelers took part in a mass yoga practice as part of the free-form celebrations.

"We're celebrating the midpoint," Mesnard said, "where it's not gonna get any better than this."

News Topics: General news, Wicca, War and unrest, Paganism, Religion, Social affairs

People, Places and Companies: Washington, Oregon, United States, North America