Greek Police Arrest Baby Trading Suspects

On Friday, Greek police authorities arrested seven men suspected for illegal baby adoption in Magnesia, central Greece, Five of the suspects are of Bulgarian origin and two are Greeks. The suspects were arrested while they were selling a ...

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OUR GREEK STORY… DETROIT

Name: Nick PhillipsItem price: News, Arts, Detroit Greek CommunityLocation: Detroit, MIDescription:OUR GREEK STORY… DETROIT

Detroit’s Greek-American community started developing in the late 19th century, and really started booming with the high amount of immigrants coming from Greece and Cyprus after 1912. A big symbol of this community is the area of Detroit known as “Greektown”, an area of about two blocks in Downtown Detroit that today contains Greek restaurants, a pastry shop, dance clubs, a Greek Orthodox Church, and a casino. Today a majority of the patrons in Greektown are people of all races and nationalities. During the first half of the 20th century, Greektown looked very different from what it is today. Greektown was a very private place for Greeks, which at one time contained coffee houses where men would be at whenever they weren’t at work. Greektown wasn’t very commercial or as popular for non-Greeks as it is now, but more of a private hangout for Greek men.

The life of the people in the Greek community revolved very much around the church. The church was a place for Greek families to come together and support each other, while Greektown was more of a place for the men to meet and come together in the coffee houses, which later became more heterogeneous. The church became a place for the Greeks to come together not only in a spiritual way, but also in a familial way. The church became a large extended family for every single Greek person. This family was created by the creation of many organizations within the church. There was an organization for everyone, from the Greek school and Sunday school for the children, to the senior citizens and men’s clubs for the older generation of Greeks. The Church was transformed from just being a place of worship and prayer, to being the parent (i.e. the priest) of a family who would bring its members together and provide and care for them. There are many photographs chronicling the various church services and different community groups and events that were based out of the church, though there haven’t been many written documents chronicling the history of the churches, or the community as a whole.

The Greeks were discriminated against when they came to America, so the only ones they could rely on were each other. That is why there were so many community organizations within the Greek community. In a sense, Greeks had to support each other, or else they wouldn’t have been able to survive economically, mentally, or emotionally.

To contact Our Story of… Please email Executive Producer, Keith Famie at famie@famie.com Or Call (248) 869-0096Images:

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National Bank of Greece escapes nationalization

The biggest lender in debt-stricken Greece, the National Bank NGB, has announced that it raised the necessary amount of private capital to avoid nationalization. It secured even more money than required by law. The National Bank of Greece confirmed Friday ...

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Second bites: Revisiting Tacoma eateries My Greek and Soul

Second bites: Revisiting Tacoma eateries My Greek and SoulTheNewsTribune.com (blog)My Greek owner Nader Morcos with a plate of lamb souvlaki. Lui Kit Wong/Staff photographer. As this paper's dining critic, one of my favorite functions is to master the art of a second bite — or a “do-over,” as I call them. In Part 2 of my series ...

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Dixons sticks with recovering Greece

Dixons sticks with recovering GreeceKathimeriniAs speculation swirled in 2012 that Greece could abandon the euro, Dixons stockpiled security shutters to protect its nearly 100 stores in the country. Recent data suggests the economy is on the brink of recovering from a six-year recession, boosted by ...

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Farage on Friday: After my latest Strasbourg speech, even the Greeks want to ...

Express.co.ukFarage on Friday: After my latest Strasbourg speech, even the Greeks want to ...Express.co.ukThe Greeks have taken over the six-month rotating presidency of the European Council, despite the fact they aren't even allowed to run their own country. Mr Samaras gave a speech to the MEPs in Strasbourg in which he said he represented the “sovereign ...Greek presidency of the EU: MEPs express concern over economic situation in ...European Parliament (press release)Greek Economic Rebound: The Bond Boom May Be Short-Term Exuberance ...International Business TimesCrisis: disappointment urges thousands of Greeks to migrateANSAmedDalje.com -Greek Reporterall 57 news articles »

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US: Ehrmann creates Mixim Greek yoghurt for US market

German dairy group Ehrmann has created a Greek yoghurt brand, Mixim ... Strawberries with Granola; Blackberry Pomegranate with Granola & Dried Fruits MIXIM fat-free Greek yogurt is made with Cultured Pasteurized Grade A Milk (Live cultures: Lactobacillus ...

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Greek Economic Rebound: The Bond Boom May Be Short-Term Exuberance That Will Lead To Long-Term Pain

There was a time, not so long ago, when Greek bonds were given up for dead, along with the rest of the Greek economy. At the height of Greece’s economic crisis, in October 2011, trading volume in the secondary securities market for the country’s state-issued debt was zero. Fast-forward two and a half years: Much of the new narrative takes for granted that Greece is over the crisis. “Success ...

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Zeitgeist: Islanders Sweeten Offer to Thomas Vanek with Greek Diner

Zeitgeist: Islanders Sweeten Offer to Thomas Vanek with Greek DinerLighthouse HockeyAlthough contract talks have not officially started between Thomas Vanek and the New York Islanders, the team is hoping to make the pending free agent feel more at home on Long Island by giving him his own Greek diner. Vanek confirmed that while the ...

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How has England changed?

In 1994 Will Self wrote a long essay about English culture: how has the nation changed since then? And do the old cherished ideas of Englishness bear any resemblance to reality? • Read Will Self's original 1994 article

Nearly 20 ago I wrote an essay for the Guardian on English culture – and by extension, Englishness. I entitled it "The Valley of the Corn Dollies". Returning to it and the consciousness it exhibits I am struck by the many obvious continuities – the sense I have of Englishness enduring – but also by the transformations that have taken place in England, and by extension within English identity, over the last two decades, and that were quite unforeseen by me. Not that in 1994 I was in the business of writing futurology, still, any attempt to fix a culture in time must pay due heed to the particular nature of its fluxions. This lack of foresight is also matched by the essay's comparable lack of hindsight; I don't mean by this that it displays no concern with where the ideas and practices associated with Englishness may have come from, only that as its author I seem to have had little precise sense of their evolutionary timescale. This is understandable, I suppose; the concerns of a 32-year-old are, one hopes, different from those of a quinquagenarian. I say "one hopes", although the very adoption of the impersonal first person and the continuous present relocates the aspiration to a nebulous cultural realm, not this England at the beginning of this particular year: the 2014th of the Common Era.

In fact, the very assumption that generations are capable of individuation and of possessing their own geist is one that the last 20 years have ground away at, and I realise now that implicit in it were notions of the cultural primacy of the young. The impact of a rapidly ageing population on English culture (and by extension, Englishness) is something I will return to, but for now it will suffice to remark that while this phenomenon – the banking-up of the baby boomer generation into a grey market at the end of the consumerist conveyor belt – may be widespread in the so-called developed world, the impact it is having on England seems especially powerful given that Englishness its self is almost always conceived of in terms of gradual evolution rather than abrupt change.

In 1994 I was much taken by what I saw as the peculiarly English genius for satire both political and social, and I took this to be evidence of an underlying vigour in the nation's primary institutions – parliament, the law and the media, if not the monarchy and the established church. I located the satiric wellspring as residing still in a class system that had, by and large, resisted essential alteration by skilful co-option – but I suppose I then believed that the dramatic ironies might tend towards dissolution. Arguably, an England without the double-speak of snobbery and exclusion might be less funny, but there were surely other things it was possible to laugh about. I now look back on this attitude as being excessively sanguine; a recent article by the impeccably middle-English novelist Jonathan Coe nailed shut – for me – the coffin lid on the ghoulishly self-satisfied face of contemporary English satire. To paraphrase Coe's argument: far from standing in a dynamical relation to the exercise of power, the whole tendency in postwar English snook-cocking – from the so-called "satire boom" of the 1960s, all the way through to the politico-shit-kicking of Armando Iannucci's The Thick of It – has been implicitly to legitimate the status quo; for, by attacking the political class en bloc and without distinction, the satirists have both abandoned their own moral compass and allowed the wielders of power to appropriate the very weapons deployed. The end result is that one of the most high-profile politicians in contemporary England is the seemingly buffoonish mayor of London, Boris Johnson, whose self-satirising shtick consistently bastes him with buttery public approval.

Another instance of my younger self's myopia was my failure to anticipate the coming era of digital media. Perhaps this was forgivable: in 1994 mobile phones were still a rarity, satellite and cable TV services remained trapped in the coils of government regulation; and while locally networked personal computers were becoming reasonably prevalent in English offices, the web was too diaphanous to be seen. At least by me – I remember a salesman visiting me at the small business publishing company I ran in the early 1990s, and attempting to explain the benefits of connecting to the internet and thereby gaining access to the emergent web. I sort of grasped what he was talking about, but simply couldn't see what use my business could make of these innovations: we had all the information we needed at our fingertips already – or so I believed. Again, the shockwave from the subsequent technological revolution is still reverberating around the world, and there seems no reason why English culture should be particularly affected – except that the web and the internet helped to make manifest one of the longer-term, but previously hidden developments in English culture and society. This was the nation's transformation from a manufacturing economy to a mercantile and service-based one; a change that saw even more economic power shift to London and the south-east from the northern industrial cities. It was accompanied by the rise of a commercial bourgeoisie that viewed its own prosperity as intrinsically related to transnational capital flows, even as its loyalty became more fervidly attached to symbols of nationhood (the monarchy, the armed forces) that within the context of a declining empire – and still more so after the treaty of Rome – should have increasingly appeared as mere rhetorical tropes.

But nationalism is itself always a rhetorical trope, and while England may have a curiously contrary way of articulating its self-belief – proceeding, one might say, by an apophatic process, whereby Englishness is given greater focus and intensity by mounting up affirmations of all that it is not – nonetheless there is a core English identity to be discovered, one that solidified in the late 19th and early 20th century; one that has proved remarkably resilient throughout the last turbulent 100 years; and one that shows every sign of remaining intact even as the original factors that brought it into being are changed out of all recognition. It's instructive to map my own rather naive speculations of 1994 on to the current dispensation, but it's more productive by far to examine the period 1980-2020 in terms of the equivalent span a century before; such an overlay may also mean that I don't look back in 2034, appalled by what I missed.

This late 19th-century shift in the locus of power – from north to south, and from land and manufacturing to retail and financial services – was accompanied initially by the ascendancy of the collectivist and utilitarian tendency in English liberalism. The first world war hammered home with the monstrous cacophony of the guns the idea that to be a free Englishman (and despite the suffragists the accent was still on men at this stage) was to have one's liberties underwritten by the positive interventions of the state. John Bull's green and pleasant island, where vinous-faced squires rode to hounds and "do what thou will" was nine-tenths of the law remained as a sort of organic reverie, inhering in an invented English countryside of rolling hills and productive mixed-arable and dairy farming. This Englishness – which was subscribed to as wholeheartedly by utopian socialists as it was by belligerent Tories – was a gestalt unconsciously devised to counter the standardised torments of mass villadom; and it finds its fullest spatial articulation in the Arts and Crafts semi standing in a suburban cul-de-sac, replete with unique features. That simulacra of these houses are being built to this day – and indeed, that the current rowdy debate on the paucity of housing still concentrates on this stock-brick-castellated ideal – tells you almost everything you need to know about Englishness, which is that the principal reason for its endurance lies in the very fictitiousness of its premises.

The 20th century looks momentously transformative for England on paper: the near-decimation of a generation between 1914 and 1918; the loss of imperial grip in the interwar years and its complete abandonment after 1945 (to be replaced by another fictive gestalt: "the Commonwealth"); the final attainment of universal adult enfranchisement in 1927; the second great spasm of collectivisation in 1939-45, and its sequels in the form of the National Health Service, universal state education, a burgeoning public housing sector and so on. But, with the benefit of our centennial overlays on the overhead projector, we can see that these are as nought when compared with the way ideal Englishness continues to inform and legitimate the real exercise of power. Writing at a time when Burkean Tories and Benthamite Liberals share the cabinet table, and the prime minister declares that the British army's mission in Afghanistan has been successfully completed, it's difficult not to feel trapped within the farcical phase of history's repetition.

Englishness, taken to be the lowest common denominator of what any given individual identifies about his or herself as an English person, remains overwhelmingly located in these rhetorical tropes: the supervening political wisdom of the head of state (who is at once magnificently disengaged and fully apprised); the immemorial beauty of the countryside (which is paradoxically tied to its anthropic character: we have English Heritage, the US has wilderness); the bivalent concept of "fair play", which unites the negative libertarianism of John Bull with the positive state engagement of Clegg and Miliband; and – most important this – a complex and often contradictory understanding of inclusiveness, which is seen as served just as well by co-option to elites (black and brown coronet-sporters in the House of Lords), and impersonation (Hackett-clad hacks out hacking, Burberry-clad members of the chavistocracy fine dining). For the English, the ability of any given individual to assimilate has been taken as a confirmation of the nation's essential inclusiveness; and the way to "get on" is to accede to a tokenism that will, given time, fade to grey. The unparalleled success of English Jews in achieving this ideal was as marked in the 1900s as it is in the 2000s. The Marconi scandal of 1912, which had a solid undertow of antisemitism, was complemented by the insider trading scandal of the Guinness Four in the 1980s, by which time to mention that all the defendants were Jews was as infra dig as alluding to the semitic origins of half of Thatcher's inner cabinet.

In the years from 1880 to 1920 concerns with "the other" were focused in part on the Ashkenazi Jews, refugees from Russian pogroms who at that time were settling in the East End of London. But far more significant was the uses to which the Celtic fringe could be put – in particular John Bull's other island. Whether as the unwelcome Gastarbeiter of their day, or as fractious malcontents rocking the imperial vessel, the Irish – supposedly fey and improvident at the very best – shored up the immemorial citadel of Englishness. In my 1994 Guardian piece, with the Good Friday agreement still in the future, I quoted an Irish friend – the writer Robert McLiam Wilson – saying what a reliable appetite the English had "for hearing what shite they are". I took this – like the satire – to be a good quality, and evidence of a productive dialectic in English culture and character; it doesn't look that way to me any more. In fact, like any individual who tolerates such abuse, the English, taken collectively, hide their bullying and their arrogance behind a willingness to hear what shite they are; low self-worth is not a recipe for a happy nationalism – ask the Italians, or the Egyptians for that matter. The absolute intractability of the Irish question for successive waves of the English liberal consensus remains with us, at least in the diminuendo of Ulster, to this day; but revolving round this primum mobile of colonialism (and recall: Ireland was put to the sword by parliament, not monarch) are all the other crystal spheres of the expansive English cosmos. The fundamental problem for the English – how do they reconcile a recent history typified by violence, exploitation and rapacious greed with their overwhelming sense of fair play – must be staged again and again, because the tension of these opposites can only possibly find resolution through its re-enactment. Twenty years ago, with devolved government for Scotland and Wales still in the future, and Irish people of all stripes reminding us of what shite we were, I paid the traditional obeisance: acknowledging the separateness of these cultures and applauding their ability to still shine in the dark shadow thrown by their behemoth of a neighbour. But I also had to be clear: London was a whirlpool worthy of an Edgar Allan Poe story, sucking in all the raw talent that ventured anywhere near it; culturally speaking, the Celts could only hold their mournful tune if they kept well away from the cacophony.

In 2014 all possible forms of alterity are faced down by the English with the same biblical stare: either go with the goatish adherents of political Islam or be herded with the rest of the sheep into the pastures beloved of Constable, where ye shall lie in peace down beside the British lion. And if you're a Romanian or a Bulgarian, don the sorting hat that other eastern Europeans have put on before you; either take a worthy low-paid job – preferably mopping up after our incontinent elderly – live in a bought-to-let garage, spend your money in our economy rather than sending it home, and then send yourself home after you've made a "net contribution"; or alternatively be forever condemned as a slimy slithering scrounger – and probably a "gyppo" to boot. If you've chosen well you might get a bit part in The Archers – the gold standard for English inclusiveness; if badly you'll feature disproportionate to your offending behaviour on Crimewatch.

The rise and, for the most part, the acceptance of identity politics in England plays to the advantage of traditionally constituted Englishness, an ideology that thrives on physiological metaphors and which allows for different groups – "communities" in the modern idiom – inasmuch as they are prepared to become "sustainable" organs generating "growth" within the body politic. The Edwardians who hushed up the Cleveland Street gay brothel scandal, while sending Wilde to jail, would have appreciated an England within which being flamboyantly gay could be squared with being outrageously conformist; no doubt, in time, they could have got used to black men with dreadlocks sitting in the House of Lords, or feminist women taking their strident turn at the dispatch box. What they understood is that there can always be an England so long as these "communities" can be persuaded not to see themselves as part of a larger one: the community of the dispossessed. The question of whether or not English Muslims will hurry up with their assimilation or persist with their tiresome religio-cultural revanchism is of course intimately bound up with Englishness itself; an Englishness that – as that other economic sponger-cum-migrant Karl Marx understood only too well – cloaks its cold mercantile heart in swaths of chiffon sentiment. Knowing the price of everything is … exhausting, and it's a taedium vitae that persuades the English to indulge in successive cultural – and even spiritual – devaluations; anything but allow Englishness to find its true level in the world.

Earlier I said that digital media had made manifest the century-old north-south power shift; now I should explain. In 1994 I was much exercised by "retail services", the huge English export of which I chose to see, through Panglossian spectacles, as to some extent synonymous with the undoubted English brilliance at purveying popular culture – street fashions, dance music etc. The truth is that financial services were the real export earner then, and despite – or arguably because of the 2007-8 ruction – they remain so now. What's more, courtesy of the tax payer, they are fully engrafted in the state apparatus as the largest and most symbiotic instance of a public-private finance initiative. Popular culture is merely the window dressing: like Danny Boyle's lavishly staged charade in the Olympic stadium. It follows that England – and by extension true Englishness – exists if at all in an accommodation with this dispensation, which is really only the kulturkampf of that self-same commercial class that first pioneered capital flight a century ago.

To be English is to subscribe at some level to this debt-financing model of national character; the mortgaged heart of oak labours sclerotically on while a billion tweets and Facebook status updates are its exaggerated cardiogram, evanescently recording the peaks and troughs of its Kate Middletonesque narcissism. And of course, given that Englishness is the genius loci of an imaginary place – the green and pleasant land through which runways are forever bulldozed, and in which high-speed rail lines are entrenched – it follows that it's a bespoke national character for the ageing: in this relaxed-fit, red-white-and-blue garment they call "British" the English can punch at, above, or well below their weight internationally. Again, as I write, in the aftermath of the conviction of Lee Rigby's crazed killers, and with the parliamentary committee with responsibility for their oversight making the usual doomy pronouncements on the parlous state of the armed forces, it's worth noting that servicemen and women have never been so popular. Only with a national character as capable of being altered on the hoof could a decade's worth of defeats and withdrawals be a cause for such rejoicing; yet even with a possible Scottish secession (taking with it if not the actual formations and materiel, at least the long and honourable tradition of providing the recruiting office for imperial hard men), I feel confident that the English will carry on being British when it suits them. It may be that historians developed the army-nation concept to explain successive crises in the legitimacy of 20th-century French regimes, but the relationship of the British army to Englishness is just as significant, for, like the English constitution, its permanent condition of crisis may in fact be its abiding strength.

It would be comfortingly simple to compare the role the European Union plays in the English collective psyche in 2013 with that of the British empire in 1913; and given that the English prize both comfort and simplicity let's do just that. Both are hinterlands to which loyalty is accorded on the basis of trade and profit alone, both are sources of potential immigrants, both evince a troubling inclination to believe themselves to be dog-wagging tails, and both stir up the ancient fudge of the English settlement. One of the most popular sub-genres of late Victorian and Edwardian English literature was the invasion fantasy – the most famous examples of which are Erskine Childers's The Riddle of the Sands and HG Wells's The War of the Worlds. The zeitgeist – whether paranoiac or real – plays little part in the contemporary literary consciousness, which prefers to flee to the Tudor period (or a version of it, at least); and instead we have real-life invasion fantasies courtesy of the John Bull de nos jours, Nigel Farage, and his Greek-debt-crisis chorus, the English Defence League. The irony of this embattled Englishness would not have escaped the late Victorians and Edwardians, who, following in the wide wake left by their portly sovereign, were only too happy to attend Shavian debunkings or consume a Wildean diet of hearing what shite they were, but who nonetheless still had a sense of themselves as being at the very centre of the world.

In 1917, when the doughboys entered the Flanders trenches, that centre decisively shifted towards the US; it was an invasion of England via Belgium that none of the science fiction writers foresaw, mostly because the neoliberal faith that in time became incorporated in invaders' ecclesiastical institutions – Bretton Woods, the IMF, the Federal Reserve – was already shared, in embryo, by the conquered. No one needs to be a seer to predict that by 2020 the world cynosure will have just as decisively shifted to the south-east – but not England's. The emergent Chi- or Bric world will impact just as powerfully on Englishness in the 21st century as the hegemonic US did in the 20th; yet having already masterfully performed the trick of retaining a sense of metropolitan pre-eminence while becoming parochial, there seems no reason to think that Englishness won't keep calmly constipated and carry on with the same old shit. This year's centenary of the first world war's outbreak will give the ageing English – wearing their habitual British costume – the opportunity to stage their favourite sort of mummery: the glorification of machine-made death and destruction on a colossal scale. Already minister after minister is rising to the dispatch box to declare that while the first world war should not be prettified, and the commemorations should be an opportunity to educate the young; those same young people should be made to swallow the idea that their beloved homeland faced a terrible existential threat in 1914. Thousands of young men took His Majesty's shilling, and a century on the poster boy for their recruitment, Lord Kitchener, gets to be on a £2 coin: because England is the land of debt-financed nationalism, it is also the one where people are perfectly happy to inflate reputations.

And finally: a word about food – and newsprint. In my 1994 essay I drew the central motif of Englishness from an instance of marketing: in Richard Eyre's 1983 film The Ploughman's Lunch (scripted by Ian McEwan), the MacGuffin is thematic rather than narrative. During a conversation between the protagonist – a cod-idealistic television journalist – and the much older ad director whose lefty wife he has just cuckolded, the ad man tells him that the ploughman's lunch, far from having been some timeless titbit of the English peasant, was in fact invented in the 1960s to vitalise pub snacking. I could say a lot more about The Ploughman's Lunch – which in turn attempts to say a great deal about the fellow-travelling English character during the Thatcher revolution – but let's just focus on the food. In 1994 – let alone 1984 – food was still largely conceived of as a form of sustenance. In 2014 it has become the primary way that the English take their culture: to be English is to eat; to eat out, to eat many different cuisines, to watch cookery programmes and to have an opinion on the alleged drug-taking habits of celebrity chefs. It follows that Englishness itself is a gastronomic affair – and I think what I've written above bears this out: Englishness is at once a praxis: a way of going about things; and a way of transforming what is not English – shish kebabs, onion bhajis, ackee and salt fish – into what is. The problem for Englishness is that it tends to eat too much, and too indiscriminately – and that's not healthy for the ageing national character. Of course fish and chips (an inspired example of English praxis: Belgian fried potato mixed with Ashkenazi fried fish) was traditionally served in newspaper; but it isn't my partisan status as a journalist that leads me to believe that the English would have done well to hang on to the wrapping and discard the food. At least, I would've wished them to have done this if their great and passionate belief in the freedom and independence of their press wasn't – like so much that's English to the core – something of a myth.

• A new edition of Englishness: Politics and Culture, 1880-1920, edited by Philip Dodd and Robert Colls, for which Will Self has written the introduction, will appear from Bloomsbury later this year.

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Bullets Mailed to Greek Central Banker, Journalist

San Francisco ChronicleBullets Mailed to Greek Central Banker, JournalistABC NewsGreek police say the head of the financially struggling country's central bank and a prominent TV journalist have been sent threatening letters containing bullets. They say the letters were signed by a group calling itself "The People's Avengers," but ...Greek central bank chief received bullets in mail - policeReutersGreek Banks May Need More CashGreek ReporterGreek central banker gets bullets in the mailGlobalPostall 50 news articles »

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Greek food and family: Olympus Grille opened in Sept.

Greek food and family: Olympus Grille opened in Sept.Wicked Local- CohassetThe Olympus Grille, located in the Old Colony Square plaza along Route 3A (Chief Justice Cushing Highway) offers fresh, authentic Greek food, from gyros and kebabs to falafel and spanakopita (spinach pie). While the menu offers all kinds of sandwiches ...

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Greek Central Bank Chief Gets Death Threat

Greek police are investigating a death threat made against the country's central bank governor after two bullets were sent to his office.

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Hollande visits Trierweiler in hospital as fresh affair allegations are published

French magazine Closer claims relationship with Julie Gayet began in 2011 and included weekends in south of France

François Hollande has visited France's first lady for the first time since she was hospitalised for rest following a gossip magazine's report that he was having an affair with an actor.

An official at the presidential palace said on Friday that Hollande had visited Valérie Trierweiler the previous evening. Doctors had previously prevented the French president, 59, from visiting his partner, saying she was tired and needed a complete break.

Meanwhile the tumult surrounding Hollande has grown with the publication of a string of further allegations concerning his personal life.

In a second "special edition" that went on sale on Friday morning, Closer claimed to have more allegations about the on-off relationship between Hollande and the actor Julie Gayet, which the magazine said had lasted for more than two years and included weekends spent together in the south of France.

The magazine alleges that far from being simply a fling or a recent romance, the couple have been living an "eventful idyll" since 2011, shortly before Hollande's campaign to be the Socialist party's nominee in the presidential election the following year.

During the past few years, Closer claimed, the couple have endured "ruptures and reconciliations".

Trierweiler was taken to hospital a week ago after Closer published revelations of Hollande's alleged affair. On Thursday, RTL radio claimed to have spoken to Trierweiler, who said she did not feel abandoned by him.

"François Hollande has not yet visited her in hospital, but Valérie Trierweiler doesn't want people to think he is neglecting her at such a painful time," RTL said on Thursday. "She has let it be known that it is the doctors who have banned the head of state from coming to see her … a widespread practice in cases of psychological distress."

RTL said Trierweiler was "temporarily confined and being kept at a distance from her entourage to give her space to get back on her feet. But François Hollande speaks to the care team and has met them personally."

Trierweiler, 48, was said on Thursday to be "very tired to the point of not being able to stand up", and suffering from low blood pressure as well as low morale. "She hopes to leave with her head held high and shows a willingness to fight at least for her dignity."

RTL said Trierweiler had let it be known that she had not had a "nervous breakdown" when Hollande confessed to his alleged affair with Gayet, 41, hours before Closer magazine published its claims that Hollande had been secretly leaving the Elysée Palace to meet the actor. Other newspapers and magazines claimed Trierweiler was determined to "stand by her man" and fight to save her relationship with Hollande.

Le Nouvel Observateur said she "has not the slightest intention of packing her bags". "She's OK to forgive, but not OK to leave," it said.

In its second round of "exclusive" revelations about the personal life of the French president, Closer reported on Friday that Hollande had met Gayet at an informal gathering of friends and political allies in a Paris restaurant in 2011 after the actor supported Ségolène Royal, Hollande's former partner and mother of his four children, in her unsuccessful battle against Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2007 presidential election. Royal had hoped to stand again, but was beaten to the nomination in a vote of party members.

Closer claimed on Friday that the pair would originally meet at an apartment in rue du Faubourg-Saint Honoré, not far from the Elysée, but stopped meeting there because a concierge had recognised them and tried to take, and sell, photographs.

The magazine quoted a restaurant owner in Mougins – a picturesque village outside Cannes where Hollande has a flat – who claimed to remember the couple dining there. Closer also reported that Gayet was seen with him in Tulle, his former parliamentary constituency, and claimed that she introduced the president to her grandmother and members of her family who live outside Paris.

After Hollande was elected president in May 2012, he celebrated with Trierweiler. A few months later the president and his so-called "first girlfriend" spent part of the summer holiday at the official residence at the Fort de Bregançon on the French riviera.

It was, said Closer, to be the presidential couple's last summer holiday together. In 2013, Trierweiler flew to Greece with two of her sons, while Hollande retreated to his constituency at Tulle in the Correze, where the magazine claimed he and Gayet were seen walking together.

Gayet has launched a lawsuit against Closer for breach of privacy, claiming €50,000 (£41,000) in damages and demanding publication of the legal award across half of the front page.

Her ex-husband Santiago Amigorena, with whom she has two sons, told Europe 1 radio: "Julie is very calm with all this and very sure of herself because nobody's done anything wrong, nobody's cheated on anyone."

François HollandeValérie TrierweilerFranceEuropeMagazinesNewspapersNewspapers & magazinesKim Willshertheguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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Greece's Golden Dawn investigated over mock execution pictures

Thousands of pictures and video clips allegedly show party members posing with weapons and giving Nazi salutes

Greek authorities are studying what is being described as a cache of "highly incriminating" photographic material in which members of the far-right Golden Dawn party are allegedly depicted participating in mock executions, posing with weaponry and giving Nazi salutes.

The hoard of almost 14,000 pictures and 900 video clips – discovered in computers and mobiles phones confiscated from two MPs and the man who headed one of the group's local branches – has been handed by police to a public prosecutor investigating the extremists' alleged illegal activities.

"What this confirms, without a shadow of doubt, is that Golden Dawn is not only a Nazi group but a criminal organisation that operated as a paramilitary structure," said Dimitris Psarras, the country's leading authority on the party.

"We are literally talking about thousands of pictures," he told the Guardian. "And many are highly incriminating, portraying well-known members receiving armed training in summer camps."

Among them, he said, was Giorgos Roupakias, the self-professed killer of Pavlos Fyssas, a leftwing rapper whose murder in September spurred the Greek government to scrutinise what remains the country's third biggest political force.

Golden Dawn had previously denied any association with the 46-year-old, who stabbed the musician in the heart and chest after being called to the scene of a fight between followers of the neo-fascist party and leftists in a working-class Athens suburb. In the wake of the government crackdown, the party had also rejected suggestions that it subscribed to the dogma of neo-Nazism.

The archive, which has been backed by similar evidence unearthed in the private computers of other lawmakers, including the organisation's imprisoned leader, Nikos Michaloliakos, has triggered widespread disbelief.

Although somewhat inured by the high drama that has enveloped their country since its near economic collapse in 2010, Greeks have been shocked by the sheer scale of the hoard and the lighthearted nature of many of the images. Some portray female supporters in bed brandishing handguns, while others show men posing with swords and assault rifles. Children, presumably encouraged by parents, are also seen raising their hands in Nazi salutes.

"It is an astonishing collection that shows just how emboldened they felt," said Psarras, an investigative journalist who has followed the extremists since their appearance as a fringe group in the aftermath of the rightwing military coup more than 30 years ago. "Given the climate of ever-worsening poverty, extremism and austerity, they thought they could get away with more or less anything."

Six of Golden Dawn's 18 MPs have been imprisoned pending trial in a crackdown during which riot police have stormed the party's offices, raided MPs' homes and rounded up supporters. Three other deputies, including the party's press spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris, also face charges of using the party to operate a criminal organisation with the intent of demolishing democratic institutions in Greece.

Last month, the Greek parliament, the scene of often raucous debate since the election of the extremists in June 2012, voted to cut off annual state funds of around €800,000 (£660,000) to which the party would have been entitled as of this year.

As they were led to jail this week, after extensive cross-examining, three of the lawmakers hurled abuse at reporters, shouting that Golden Dawn was a "legitimate force" elected by democratic process.

A GPO poll released for a Greek media outlet on Thursday showed that, far from being diminished, Golden Dawn was still garnering support of around 11% – almost four times higher than the popularity of the socialist Pasok, the junior partner in Greece's fagile ruling coalition.

Last week the ultra-nationalists vowed to challenge the government crackdown in the European court of human rights despite the party's open contempt for the EU.

Attending a press conference to announce the move, Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National party, said the clampdown against his "patriot comrades" had been motivated purely by Golden Dawn's meteoric rise in the polls.

On Friday, the far-right group announced it had set in motion plans to sue three senior judicial officials overseeing the investigation into their alleged illegal activity for "breach of duty".

The officials were accused of being "instruments of anti-Greek power" by the party, which claimed they had failed to properly follow the law in their haste to jail its lawmakers, not least Golden Dawn's enigmatic leader, Nikos Michaloliakos.

Golden Dawn partyGreeceThe far rightHelena Smiththeguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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Greek central bank chief, TV journalist, sent threatening letters containing bullets

Greek police say the head of the financially struggling country's central bank and a prominent TV journalist have been sent threatening letters containing bullets.

READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.foxnews.com

Greek Diaspora of Switzerland

Switzerland is a federal state in the west of Europe, an economical and commercial crossroad of international caliber. Many Greeks are currently living in Switzerland and the two countries have a long interrelated history behind them. The first ...

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Greece's Golden Dawn sues senior prosecutors heading probe into far-right party

Greece's far-right Golden Dawn party is suing three senior judicial officials leading an investigation into the party's alleged criminal activity, following the imprisonment of its leader and five other lawmakers charged with membership of a criminal organization.

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Greek President to see term through, to March 2015, his office says

The office of President Karolos Papoulias issued a statement on Friday, declaring that the president would see out his term in full in a bid to douse widespread speculation in the media about a possible early departure and calls by lefist SYRIZA for the 8... ...

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Greek central bank chief received bullets in mail

Greece's central bank chief received two rifle bullets and a threatening letter in a mailed envelope, police said on Friday. They said a previously unknown group called People's Punishers posted the envelope to central bank Governor George Provopoulos.

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Facebook page mocking Greek Orthodox monk leads to jail sentence

The GuardianFacebook page mocking Greek Orthodox monk leads to jail sentenceThe GuardianThousands of Greeks took to social networking sites to protest against the arrest in 2012 of Filippos Loizos, 28, who used a play on words to portray Father Paisios as a traditional pasta-based dish. "He was merely satirising in a country that gave ...Man sentenced to jail in Greece for calling monk a traditional pasta dishGMA Newsall 4 news articles »

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Man sentenced to jail in Greece for mocking monk

The GuardianMan sentenced to jail in Greece for mocking monkReuters UKWhile blasphemy charges are not commonly filed in Greece, a similar case in 2012 was brought against the team behind an American play that depicted Jesus Christ and his apostles as gay, drawing criticism from rights' groups and politicians who said the ...Man sentenced to jail in Greece for calling monk a traditional pasta dishGMA Newsall 4 news articles »

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Saving what's left

The restructuring of certain sectors of the Greek economy has become absolutely imperative. There are companies in certain sectors which are not sustainable, businesses that have failed to present any substantial plan for any kind of restructuring and hav... ...

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Bullets sent in mail to BoG governor, Mega TV presenter

Anti-terrorism officers were on Friday examining an envelope containing two bullets that was addressed to Bank of Greece Governor Giorgos Provopoulos but was stopped by security guards before reaching his office. The bullets were traced by a metal detecto... ...

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Police nab 7 suspected members of illegal baby trading racket

Seven suspected members of an illegal adoption racket were arrested in Magnisia, central Greece, on Friday, police said. The suspects, five Bulgarian nationals and two Greeks, were detained after officers intercepted a planned attempt by members of the ri... ...

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Group called 'Popular Avengers' claims bullet threats [UPDATE]

A previously unknown group calling itself Popular Avengers on Friday claimed responsibility for sending two separate envelopes containing bullets to Bank of Greece Governor Giorgos Provopoulos and Mega television channel presenter Yiannis Pretenderis. In ... ...

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Man sentenced to jail in Greece for calling monk a traditional pasta dish

Man sentenced to jail in Greece for calling monk a traditional pasta dishGMA NewsATHENS - A man who created a Facebook page poking fun at a revered Greek Orthodox monk has been sentenced to 10 months in prison in Greece after being found guilty of blasphemy. Thousands of Greeks took to social networking sites to protest against ...Man sentenced to jail in Greece for mocking monkReuters UKall 1 news articles »

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Provopoulos Says Greek Banks Ailing

ATHENS – If a still-unreleased stress test audit of Greek banks shows they are hurting from record bad loans, they may need yet more cash beyond the 50 billion euros ($68.06) already pumped into them in a recapitalization needed when a previous government stiffed investors with 74 percent losses, Bank of Greece Governor Giorgos Provopoulos […]

The post Provopoulos Says Greek Banks Ailing appeared first on The National Herald.

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Blasphemy Conviction For Monk Mocker

ATHENS – Ridiculing a deceased monk who is revered by many has cost a Greek man a blasphemy conviction and a 10-month suspended sentence handed down by a Greek court. The 27-year-old fish farm employee had set up a satirical Facebook page mocking Elder Pastitsios, whose sayings have gained prominence in recent years. Filippos Loizos, […]

The post Blasphemy Conviction For Monk Mocker appeared first on The National Herald.

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Greek Banks May Need More Cash

While insisting the economy shows all the signs of recovering – as he has previously said the last several years only to be proved wrong – Bank of Greece Governor Giorgos Provopoulos issued a caveat that the country’s banks – which have already received 50 billion euros ($68.06 billion) in recapitalization funds from the government, […]

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Greeks Favor Youtube

Maybe the social media infiltrated Greek society with a little delay, but now, they are a huge part of the everyday life of the Greeks. According to a survey that was carried out by the E-Business Research Center (ELTRUN) of Athens University of Economics and Business, YouTube is the most popular site among the Greek […]

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Greece Among Top 20 in Nutrition

Experts of the global organization Oxfam America, rank Greece among the 20 best countries in the world to eat. According to the latest report published by the group working to right the wrongs of poverty, hunger, and injustice, Greece ranks 13th worldwide. The basic criteria for the study, which was carried out in collaboration with […]

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The Most Popular Greek MPs of Athens

A new opinion poll carried out by GPO on behalf of newspot.gr, shows the popularity of the MPs in the first and second Constituency of Athens, as well as the rest of the Constituencies of Attica. In particular, the Greek MP of the Greek Communist Party (KKE), Liana Kanellis, is the most popular MP in […]

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Greek appetizer

Thyssen shows off El Greco works it is loaning to Toledo for 400th anniversary commemoration

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Greek FinMin, SYRIZA leader clash in Parl't over banks, corruption

KathimeriniGreek FinMin, SYRIZA leader clash in Parl't over banks, corruptionKathimeriniFinance Minister Yannis Stournaras and leftist opposition leader Alexis Tsipras clashed in Parliament on Friday during a debate about the proliferation of unsecured loans issued by Greek banks and the recapitalization of the country's lenders. "We ...

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Greeks Return to Their Past and Look Toward Turkey for a Better Future

VocativGreeks Return to Their Past and Look Toward Turkey for a Better FutureVocativAnna Andreadi, a 20-year-old law student at Istanbul Kültür University, is one of the many Greeks who have moved to Istanbul to escape their country's economic slump. She says moving here was not easy, having to leave friends, relatives and her life ...

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Greek Movie Fridays: “Well Kept Secrets” Last….Forever!

This Friday we are revealing some “Well Kept Secrets.” The Greek drama by Panos Karkanevatos tells a powerful story about love that takes place in two different time periods. The Greek leading film distributor and producer, Odeon S.A., and ...

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What Would Ancient Greek Music Sound Like?

What did the Sirens sing to enchant sailors? How did the ancient Greek melodies sound like and how different was the song’s tempo compared to today’s music? Armand D’Angour, a classical musician and professor of history at the University ...

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On Greece's Mani Peninsula, a family reunion filled with Zorba-like life lessons

Washington PostOn Greece's Mani Peninsula, a family reunion filled with Zorba-like life lessonsWashington PostBecause my in-laws didn't want to travel far from their home in Israel, we decided to gather in Greece. I pored over Web sites and found an appropriate house on the Peloponnese's Mani Peninsula, where none of us had ever been. According to the Web page ...

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Electoral bickering could hurt Greek recovery: central banker

Electoral bickering could hurt Greek recovery: central bankerGlobalPostElectoral bickering ahead of Greek local elections in May could hurt the country's fragile economic recovery, the central bank governor warned on Thursday. "The future course of the economy is subject to strong uncertainty," Bank of Greece chief George ...

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Vivartia looks to Italy, France through deal with Granarolo

Following its cooperations in the Middle East, domestic food group Vivartia has now turned its attention back to Europe as it seeks to tap the increasing demand for Greek-style yogurt: On Thursday the group announced the signing of a cooperation agreement... ...

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Vodafone eyes having a say at Forthnet

Vodafone’s head in Greece, Glafkos Persianis, confirmed to Kathimerini on Thursday that the mobile telecommunications company acquired a stake in triple-play provider Forthnet because it wanted to have a seat at the table to discuss the future of Forthnet... ...

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PAO, OFI, Atromitos and Apollon advance in cup

Panathinaikos, Atromitos, Apollon Smyrnis and OFI Crete are the first four teams to book their places in the quarterfinals of the Greek Cup after the return legs of the round of 16 that took place on Wednesday and Thursday. A solitary goal by Abdul Jaleel... ...

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Stock index fails to lock in early gains

The early gains quickly evaporated for most stocks on the Greek bourse on Thursday, with the session ending with a drop of almost 1 percent for the benchmark index. The Athens Exchange (ATHEX) general index closed at 1,271.31 points, shedding 0.97 percent... ...

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Greek anarchist rearrested after fingerprints found at Conspiracy safe house

Anarchist Costas Sakkas, who was granted conditional release in July after going on hunger strike to protest the fact that he had been held in detention for two-and-a-half years, was arrested again on Thursday by members of Greece's anti-terrorist squad. ... ...

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Georgiadis counters Kammenos's defamation claim in Athens court

Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis appeared in court in Athens on Thursday to respond to defamation charges filed by Independent Greeks leader Panos Kammenos (photo). The latter is claiming 670,000 euros in damages from the minister after Georgiadis allege... ...

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Greek government aims for February deal with troika

With an exact date for the return of troika inspectors to Athens still unclear, government officials are aiming for a comprehensive settlement on pending reforms and other issues next month to ensure that negotiations are not open in the countdown to Euro... ...

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Siemens executive denies bribes role

Heinrich von Pierer, a former president and managing director of Siemens, denied in an Athens court on Thursday any knowledge of the bribes the Greek branch of the German firm is alleged to have paid to public officials to secure contracts. According to s... ...

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Closure of state bodies to hit urban planning, say experts

Experts expressed dismay on Thursday at the government’s decisions to shut down organizations responsible for urban planning in Athens and Thessaloniki, as well as another public body that is overseeing the creation of pedestrian routes linking the Greek ... ...

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Measures to cut energy costs finally in pipeline

The government is planning measures that will meet Greek enterprises’ longstanding demand for a reduction in industrial energy costs, particularly natural gas rates, according to announcements made by Development Minister Costis Hatzidakis on Thursday. Th... ...

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