The words “Price Tag” daubed on a vandalized car parked outside the 11th-century Monastery of the Cross suggested that militant Jewish settlers were responsible and police said they were investigating that possibility as well as other angles.

The term refers to retribution the settlers say they will exact for any attempt by the Israeli government to curb settlement in the West Bank, an area Palestinians seek as part of a future state.

“Price Tag” attacks have targeted mosques, Palestinian homes and Israeli military installations in the occupied West Bank, but vandalism of Christian holy sites in Jerusalem is extremely rare.

Police said “Death to Christians” was painted in Hebrew on the outer wall of the fortress-like monastery administered by the Greek Orthodox Church in a valley overlooked by Israel’s parliament.

“I am a priest and I forgive,” Father Claudio of the monastery told Reuters.

Elsewhere in Jerusalem on Tuesday, “Death to Arabs” was painted in Hebrew on the wall of a playground of a Jewish-Arab bilingual school.

In the West Bank, anti-Muslim slogans were daubed on the walls of several homes in the village of Al-Lubban al-Sharqiya overnight, a Palestinian official said, blaming Jewish settlers.

A similar incident occurred on Sunday in the West Bank village of Al Janiyeh, the official said.

(Source: Reuters.com)

In 1985, Faryad came to Greece after visiting Paris and undertaking a course in the Greek language at the Hellenic-American Society. He entered the University of Athens to study modern Greek and Greek Literature in general.

At the same time, he began to translate Greek poets and writers. In this way he acquainted Persian readers with Elitis, Sinopoulos, Vrettakos, Livaditis and many others.

In 1990, a large anthology of Ritsos’ poetry was published in Iran with the title “The Diary of an Exile”. For this translation Faryad won the 1991 prize from the Greek Centre for the Translation of Literature. In the same year he taught Persian in the University of Thessaloniki. From that year on, he began to study Ancient Greek, and finished a translation of an anthology of short stories of Antonis Samarakis.

In 1997 he published a translation from ancient Persian literature into Greek – the first book of its kind, entitled “Stories from Paradise”. It includes five magic stories from four classical Iranian poets – Ferdowssi, Nezami, Attar, and Khajouye-Kermani.

The latest work of Faryad was an anthology of modern Greek poetry from Solomos, Kalvos, Palamas, and Kavafy, up to the present time.

Many celebrated poets and writers have written in praise of Faryad’s poetry: for example – Antonis Samarakis, Manolis Anagnostarkis, Titos Patrikios, Dinos Christianopoulos, Katerina Angelaki-Rook, Kostas Asimakopoulos, Michael Meraklis, Kostas Tchaousis, Pandelis Boukalas, Maria Markantonatou, as well as the great poet Iannis Ritsos, and French writer and poet Jacques Lacarrier.

This will be his second visit after performing 11 concerts in August 2011 in the Tohuku area for the disaster victims. He is planning to visit the area again in March, which will be one year exactly since the devastation.

Sponsors of the concert are the Japan-Greece Society, the Japan-British Society and the Japan Emergency NPO (JEN).

The music to be performed includes composer Hadjidakis’ “Three Greek Pieces” (from “For a little white seashell”), Say’s “Black Earth” (“Kara Tropak”), Takemitsu’s “A Song of Love” (from Uninterrupted Rest) and Chopin’s “Ballade No.4 in F minor, Op. 52”.

The Greek residents in Japan, as well as all Japanese, are kindly invited to this charity concert of March aiming at offering some help to those in need.

Doors open at 18:30 on Friday, March 16. Ouji Hall is located on Ginza 4-7-5 Chuo-ku (for more information visit www.ojihall.jp) and the fee is 4,000 yen (free seating). For early reservations made in February the fee will have a discount of 500 yen.

Further information is posted on “Greeks of Japan”, a community website created to unite the Greeks and people interested in Greece who live in Japan.

For those interested please contact Fay Savaidis on faysavaidis@ever.ocn.ne.jp by the latest on February 29, 2012, or visit http://www.greeksofjapan.com/.

The letter, sent on January 27 by the Assyrian Genocide Research Center to numerous members of the Knesset of the State of Israel, noted that hundreds of thousands of innocent Assyrians and Greeks “faced targeted killings, rape, abuse, destruction of home and villages and the razing of churches at the hands of the Ottoman Turks and their Kurdish allies” during the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire between 1914 and 1923.

While the better-known genocide of Armenians has garnered more international attention, Assyrians and Greeks worldwide have campaigned passionately for the recognition of their genocides alongside that of the Armenians. “Many do not know”, the letter notes, “that genocide was also committed against other ethnic groups, namely the Assyrians and Greeks, who were living from time immemorial on their ancestral lands, which were within the borders of the Ottoman Empire in 1914.”

Despite the extensive corpus of academic research and archival material proving the reality of the genocide, the Turkish Republic has until now refused to formally recognize the genocide of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks. Numerous governments, parliaments and international bodies have recognized the genocide. Most recently, the Parliament of Sweden endorsed a resolution to officially recognize the Assyrian genocide, alongside those of the Armenians and Greeks.

(Source: AINA)

Papandreou said that during the meeting they discussed the crisis in the Eurozone as well as the proposals suggested by Greece and PASOK for a “developmental prospect of the European Union”.

Moreover, Papandreou emphasized the great effort being made by the Greek people and the transition government so that Greece can pull through the crisis and the economy can become more sustainable and more competitive.

The PASOK leader also noted the progess that has been made concerning the relations between Greece and Israel in the last two years and their close cooperation in tourism and energy, stressing the need for greater cooperation in the region in order to generate a sense of security and certainty.

George Papandreou has been always the initiator concerning the resurgence of Greek-Israeli relations, and thus it is natural he attended the meeting, in which many ministers and businessmen took part.

During the presentation AtaTravel Ltd and Le Grand signed a cooperation agreement. Speaking at the event, AtaTravel’s director Vusal Aliyev emphasized: “AtaTravel was established in 2011 by AtaHolding OJSC and offers numerous services for organizing tours in all corners of the world, provides clients with services on booking hotels, air tickets, tours, transfers, insurance and visa support.

According to the agreement signed today, AtaTravel has become Le Grand’s official partner in Azerbaijan. We’ll organize trips and tours of Azerbaijani tourists to Greece. Besides which, in the future, taking advantage of tourist company Le Grand, we’ll begin to invite Greek tourists in our country”.

During his turn, Mr. Konhidis spoke regarding the beginning of cooperation with the Azerbaijani company: “Greece has an ancient history. Beautiful nature, recreational sites and antiquities of Greece attract the attention of tourists. Every year the number of inbound tourists to Greece from around the world increases. Our country has created on tourist sites all sorts of conditions for reception and full rest of tourists, including the future tourists from Azerbaijan”.

Le Grand was founded in Heraklion Crete in 1985. The Company offers high-level trips for visitors to all corners of Greece, including Crete, Rhodes, Kish, Santorini and other islands. The company annually takes approximately 200,000-215,000 tourists. Its guaranteed hotel fund is 2,000 rooms. The Company prefers not to accommodate its clients in different hotels and book all the seats at selected hotels for them.

(Source: ABC.AZ)

The act is aimed at acquainting Greek society with Hafiz poetry, given the fact that the book has never been translated into their language before.

In the meeting, Pakravan, Iran’s cultural attaché in Greece, remarked on the long-lasting ties between Iran and Greece and stated that ICRO has published many Persian books translated  into Greek so far.

As he said, the organization is currently arranging cultural programs in Greece including dramatizations, conferences, scientific meetings and the like, in the presence of scholars of the related fields.

For their part, Greek translators and cultural activists stated their readiness to cooperate with the organization, in its fulfillment of its cultural plans in Greece.

(source:Iran Book News Agency)

Speaking at a conference organised by the Greek association for European studies and the Jean Monnet European Centre of Excellence last Friday (20 January), the diplomat highlighted the contribution of China to the eurozone debt crisis while making special reference to the prospects of Greek-Chinese relations.

Du Qiwen said that Beijing has increased its contribution to the IMF and stressed that his country had bought up Greek debt at the request of Athens. “The Chinese Investment Bank established a special fund with initial amount of $5 billion (€3.84 bn) to provide financial services to the Greek shipping industry, among others,” he said.

Particular reference was made to the Greek-Chinese cooperation in tourism with Air China, the airline, set to reopen direct flights to Athens.

The diplomat also emphasized his country’s commitment to double the bilateral Greek-Chinese trade at $8 billion (€6.15 bn) within 5 years from 2011. He noted that the “first 10 months of 2011, Greek exports to China grew 83.5%”.

Finally, the diplomat said there was a sense that “whatever China buys, its price rises while everything that sells its price falls”. In the case of Greek wine, oil and marble, this rule should also apply, because China wants Greek farmers and producers to have more economic benefits, he concluded.

(source:EurActiv.com)

“Two Modern Greek One-Act Plays: Letter to Orestes and Thebes Sidestreets” is yet another aspect of Greek literature that is being introduced to Iran by Reza Shirmarz.

Born in Teheran but having lived in Greece for the past few years, Mr. Shirmarz began translating the ancient Greek plays into Persian about fourteen years ago. He has translated the complete plays of Aristophanes (11 Comedies / Father of Old Comedy) and Menander (Father of New Comedy), while Aristophanes’ The Birds became a bestseller in Iran a couple of years ago.

Mr. Shirmarz has a long history of translating theatrical works behind him, including more than 100 plays from different playwrights from around the world, such as George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, Evanjelin Machlin and others.

Moreover, the Greek professor will now formally begin his close partnership with the International Institute for Carbon-Neutral Energy Research (I2CNER) of Kyushu University, in search of ways in which hydrogen affects the mechanical behavior of construction materials.

Mr. Aravas accepted the invitation of the renowned Japanese University with great pleasure and satisfaction. “The Research Committee of I2CNER had submitted its proposal to include me in its research programme, and I am more than happy to be able to travel to Japan on January 28 for the initial meeting” said Mr. Aravas.

The I2CNR is the sixth and most recent member of the WPI Research Centre Initiative, which was founded in 2007 by the Ministry for Education, Culture, Science and Technology of Japan.

Upon explaining his object of study, Mr. Aravas mentioned that the research programme will focus on extracting energy from hydrogen. “Besides the many benefits hydrogen-based energy can display, there is one evil: hydrogen erodes materials and decreases their strength. Our work is to solve such problems.” said Mr. Aravas.

Having worked for 16 years at the Department of Mechanical Engineering in the University of Pennsylvania, the Greek professor has underlined that his cooperation with the Japanese Institute will also be beneficial for the Greek Center for Research and Technology — Thessaly (CE.RE.TE.TH.), which was founded in 2006. Mr. Aravas is the current director of the “Mechatronics Institute” in CERETETH.

Nick Aravas was born (1957) and raised in Thessaloniki, Greece, where he studied Mechanical Engineering at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and graduated in 1980. He received his M.S. (1982) and Ph.D. (1984) in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).

During his graduate studies he worked as a Teaching and Research Assistant, and in 1982 he received the “J. O. Smith Award for teaching excellence”, which is presented every year by the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics of UIUC to an “outstanding young teacher in Engineering Mechanics”.

In 1987 he received the “Presidential Young Investigator Award” presented by the President of the USA “in recognition of ability and potential for contributing to the future vitality of the scientific and engineering effort of the Nation”.

From 1999 to 2002 he was a member of the first elected University Administration and held the positions of Vice Rector for Research and Development and Chairman of the Research Committee of the University of Thessaly. When the Engineering School at the University of Thessaly was formed, he was elected as the first Dean of Engineering and served from 2004 to 2007. Prof. Aravas has also served as Chairman of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and as Acting Chairman of the Departments of Civil Engineering and Computer and Communication Engineering at UTH.

Prof. Aravas has worked as an engineering consultant for various companies in the areas of mechanical and aerospace structures, metal forming, ceramic- and metal-powder processing, analysis and design of composite materials, computer manufacturing, etc.