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2,500 years ago, a city bigger than Athens in Orissa 11 Feb 2008, 0028 hrs IST,Minati Singha,TNN Experts say Sishupalgarh is the ‘most visible standing architectural monument’ discovered in India (TOI Photo) BHUBANESWAR: From under the ruins of an ancient fort on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar, archaeologists have dug out the remains of a 2,500-year-old city which they believe was bigger than classical Athens. Eighteen pillars were found among the remnants of the grand city at Sishupalgarh, a ruined fortification first discovered 60 years ago. The findings include debris of household pottery and terracotta ornaments, pointing to an advanced lifestyle...

Although the White House is poised to back away from misguided attempts to "engage" the Iranian mullahs, don't expect the State Department to play along. Just as State has undermined the president multiple times already on matters relating to every spoke of the "axis of evil," State most likely will continue talking to the mullahs. A recent Washington Post article gave an indication that Foggy Bottom officials may grudgingly embrace a new tough-on-Iran policy—if officially handed down by the White House—noting that State "appears inclined to accept such a policy." But history suggests otherwise. The State Department's top policy official,...

Greek forest fires kill 47 as blaze nears Athens By Roya Nikkhah, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 1:40am BST 26/08/2007 Forest fires have ripped through southern Greece, killing 47 people, injuring 40 and leaving hundreds homeless. A hot, dry summer and a three-day heatwave with temperatures of 40C created the tinderbox conditions A national state of emergency was declared yesterday as firemen fought up to 170 fires which have raged since Friday, forcing the evacuation of dozens of villages. The southern Peloponnese region was described as a "crematorium" by officials, who said the death toll was expected to rise as gale-force...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) -- A man was being detained in New York for the death of a woman who was dragged for several miles under a minivan after trying to stop the driver from fleeing a collision, officials said Monday. Abdelaziz Bilal Hamze, 24, was detained on Delta flight 132 bound for Athens, Greece, Broward County Sheriff's spokesman Elliot Cohen said. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained him while the plane was pulling away from the gate at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, Cohen said. Broward sheriff's deputies were en route to New York to interview Hamze,...

Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis - January 19, 2007, Friday Analysis. By GIS Staff. Reliable sources indicate that the Chinese-built RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade fired at the US Embassy in Athens on January 12, 2007, was supplied to the leftist Greek terrorist organization, Revolutionary Struggle, by the Albanian jihadist -linked group, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA/UCK). The confirmation of the link demonstrates the growing linkages between anti-Western leftist terrorist groups and anti-Western Islamist jihadi groups, and there is some suggestion that the reappearance of Revolutionary Struggle may have been prompted directly by support received from the cash-rich KLA. The KLA...

Dig unearths ancient theater Excavation work at a site in a northern Athens suburb, where sections of an ancient Greek theater were discovered on Thursday, should prove whether the structure is the fabled ancient theater of Acharnae, archaeologists said yesterday. Modern Menidi, where the remains of the 4th century BC theater were found by construction workers, is believed to have been built upon the ancient village of Acharnae, the largest of a string of settlements outside Athens, according to chief excavator Maria Platonos-Yiota. If the theater is proven to be that of Acharnae – which is referred to in the...

Greece’s political world unanimously condemned the hit at the US embassy compound in central Athens. A rocket-propelled device was fired early on Friday morning from across the street and hit the third floor of the building, causing minimal damage only. The Greek Government declared its determination to stamp out reviving terrorism, whose latest hit is but a blow against Democracy and Greece’s interests, and affects the bilateral ties between Greece and the USA. Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis was immediately briefed on the attack, and then chaired a meeting at Maximos Mansion attended by Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Public Order,...

Hieromartyr Hierotheus the Bishop of Athens Commemorated on October 4 (Old Calendar Oct 17) The Hieromartyr Hierotheus, the first Bishop of Athens, was a member of the Athenian Areopagos and was converted to Christ by the Apostle Paul together with St Dionysius the Areopagite (October 3). The saint was consecrated by the Apostle Paul to the rank of bishop. According to Tradition, Bishop Hierotheus was present with St Dionysius at the funeral of the Most Holy Theotokos. St Hierotheus died a martyr's death in the first century.

Police arrested a University of Georgia student Tuesday for allegedly running down two women in the parking lot of a local McDonald's after they argued over who was next in line. Ruth Catherine Driscoll-Dunn, 24, was taken into custody at her apartment a half-mile from the fast-food restaurant on Gaines School Road and charged with two counts of aggravated assault. Police said Driscoll-Dunn argued Saturday morning with two women over who was first in line when a new cashier opened up, and that Driscoll-Dunn waited for the women in her Jeep Cherokee in the parking lot and veered into them...

The California Assembly just passed a bill widely described in the press as “an end run around the Electoral College.” It now goes to the California Senate, which is likely to agree. There is only one slight problem with this proposal. It is thrice-times unconstitutional. The bill is an “interstate compact,” and has been introduced in the legislatures of most of the largest states, by do-gooders who are clueless about the Constitution and how it works. The theory is that if states possessing “a majority of the votes in the Electoral College” pass similar bills, those states would be committed...

Typhoid May Have Caused Fall of Athens, Study Finds Nicholas Bakalar for National Geographic News February 27, 2006 An ancient medical mystery—the cause of a plague that wracked Athens from 426 to 430 B.C. and eventually led to the city's fall—has been solved by DNA analysis, researchers say. The ancient Athenians died from typhoid fever, according to a new study. Scientists from the University of Athens drew this conclusion after studying dental pulp extracted from the teeth of three people found in a mass grave in Athens' Kerameikos cemetery. The mass grave was first discovered in 1994 and was dated...

ATHENS (AFP) - Its austere white is on every postcard, but the Athens Parthenon was originally daubed with red, blue and green, the Greek archaeologist supervising conservation work on the 2,400-year-old temple said. "A recent cleaning operation by laser revealed traces of haematite (red), Egyptian blue and malachite-azurite (green-blue) on the sculptures of the western frieze," senior archaeologist Evi Papakonstantinou-Zioti told AFP. While archaeologists had found traces of the first two colours elsewhere on the temple years ago, the malachite-azurite colouring was only revealed in the latest restoration process, Papakonstantinou-Zioti said. Given the testimony of ancient writers, it is not...

Secret of ancient Athens plague is being unraveled Kerameikos, Athens’s ancient cemetery, has yielded conclusive evidence as to the nature of the plague that decimated a third of the population of the ancient city and influenced the outcome of the Peloponnesian Wars. Scientists at Athens University’s School of Dentistry have used molecular biology to help solve the riddle of one of history’s biggest mysteries.Greek scientists find typhoid after excavating graves By Dr Manolis Papagrigorakis (1) Recent findings from a mass grave in the Ancient Cemetery of Kerameikos in central Athens show typhoid fever may have caused the plague of Athens,...

strong earthquake occurred at 11:34:52 (UTC) on Sunday, January 8, 2006. The magnitude 6.7 event has been located in SOUTHERN GREECE. The hypocentral depth was estimated to be 38 km (23 miles). (This event has been reviewed by a seismologist.) Magnitude 6.7 Date-Time Sunday, January 8, 2006 at 11:34:52 (UTC) = Coordinated Universal Time Sunday, January 8, 2006 at 1:34:52 PM = local time at epicenter Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones Location 36.250°N, 23.498°E Depth 37.7 km (23.4 miles) Region SOUTHERN GREECE Distances 95 km (60 miles) NNW of Chania, Crete, Greece 150 km (95 miles) SE of...

US vows to track down hijacker freed early By Anton La Guardia, Diplomatic Editor (Filed: 23/12/2005) The United States has vowed to track down and bring to trial a Lebanese hijacker who has been secretly released after serving 19 years in a German prison for seizing an airliner in 1985 and killing a US navy diver. The Bush administration said it had asked Germany not to release Mohammed Ali Hamadi, who was jailed for life for his role in the hijacking of TWA's Flight 847 from Athens to Rome and the shooting of one of the passengers, Robert Stethem. Despite...

The main square in Athens has been rocked by a bomb explosion, police say. The blast occurred at about 0600 (0400 GMT), in or just outside a post office in Syntagma Square, near the Greek finance ministry building. It was not immediately known if there were any casualties from the blast. TV pictures showed damaged to nearby cars, cafes and shops. A Greek daily newspaper received a bomb warning 30 minutes before the blast, state television said. Police say the device was apparently made from several gas canisters. No group or individual was known to have claimed responsibility for the...

MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (Nov. 16, 2005) -- An Athens, Ga. native was presented the Purple Heart Medal here Nov. 10 for wounds received in combat in Iraq. Lance Cpl. John T. Shepard, a 31-year-old boat mechanic formerly with Small Craft Company, Headquarters Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, and several members of his unit had been conducting a foot patrol through Ramadi’s streets in August when they were ambushed by several insurgents. The capital city of western Iraq’s Al Anbar province is located approximately 100 kilometers west of Baghdad, and has been a focal point of resistance against U.S....

E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend Version November 07, 2005, 11:15 a.m. Ruin? Was is death or renewal in Athens? EDITOR'S NOTE: Victor Davis Hanson's latest book, A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War has recently been released by Random House. This week National Review Online will be excerpting Chapter 10 of the book. Below is the first part. Check back tomorrow for part two and click on Amazon to purchase A War Like No Other here. Was Athens — or Greece itself — destroyed by the war? An entire...

Paris - A confusing series of alarm signals and the lack of an effective common language between its pilots doomed a Cypriot airliner that crashed near Athens last month, killing all 121 people on board, the daily International Herald Tribune said on Wednesday, quoting investigators. An air system knob that had been incorrectly set during maintenance on the ground prevented the Helios Airways Boeing 737 from pressurising properly, but the crew failed to notice the problem during their preflight checks, people connected to the investigation told the newspaper. Then, as the aircraft ascended through 3 000m, a pressurisation alarm -...