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On Sunday, Britain's Daily Star reported that Lady Gaga and Angelina Jolie — two white actresses — are competing for the role of Cleopatra, sparking outrage across social media. Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) demanded that the African queen should be played by a woman of color, even though the historical Cleopatra was Greek, not black. "Stop whitewashing Cleopatra!!!" tweeted Kendra James, a writer and editor at Shondaland.com. "Film the story of literally any other queen on the vast African continent."

FBI agents served a federal search warrant at a lice removal salon in Los Altos Wednesday (Dec. 5) morning, but declined to say what the investigation was about. Agents showed up at LoveBugs Lice Removal, located at the Rancho Shopping Center, around 8 a.m. Wednesday, according to an employee at the 76 gas station nearby who said a customer had seen the agents. FBI spokeswoman Cameron Rogers Polan declined to say what the investigation was about because, she said, the affidavit supporting the warrant had been sealed by a judge. LoveBugs founder Marika Mavromatis did not return multiple requests for...

President Andrew Jackson took a keen interest in the construction of the federal mint in Philadelphia, a grand, columned edifice, inspired by the temples of ancient Greece, that opened in 1833. Jackson was not a man known for his appreciation of cultural and artistic pursuits. A populist who famously railed against the elites, he had initially wanted to construct a simple building for minting money quickly, because there was a severe shortage of specie—coins—in the country at the time. Gradually, though, he came around to the idea of a grander mint, and became personally involved in many aspects of the...

A Biological Dig for the Roots of Language By NICHOLAS WADE Correction Appended Once upon a time, there were very few human languages and perhaps only one, and if so, all of the 6,000 or so languages spoken round the world today must be descended from it. If that family tree of human language could be reconstructed and its branching points dated, a wonderful new window would be opened onto the human past. Yet in the view of many historical linguists, the chances of drawing up such a tree are virtually nil and those who suppose otherwise are chasing a...

The job posting seems normal enough until you learn that the sanctuary isn’t in some sad brick building lined with cages, but is instead located on the stunning Greek island of Syros, where all the cats run free. With the job, you’ll not only have the love of many cats, but you’ll also have a fully paid for, modern little house with its own garden that also has a view of the Aegean Sea, and a small salary to boot.

Greece has declared a state of emergency after multiple wildfires burned out of control on either side of Athens. The fires reportedly just burst out in the forests near the seaside towns outside the Greek capital, prompting thousands of people to flee for their lives. Many jumped into the sea for survival to escape the flames. According to the Greek media, several of the dead had drowned. The wildfires have left Greece with a devastating aftermath, as the death toll has climbed to 91 people, with nearly 200 injured, and many are in critical condition. Twenty more are missing. Relatives and...

Hundreds of residents of the seaside resort of Mati, east of Athens, sought refuge on Monday to nearby beaches to evade the approaching fire that has claimed the lives of at least 50 people.Heartbreaking photos have emerged of panicked residents trying to escape the rage of the flames and waiting to be rescued by the Greek coast guard and private boats. (note: many more photos at the link and 2 videos) -- Greeks Turn to Social Media to Find Missing Persons A group of Greeks have created an electronic database with photos and names of missing persons following Monday’s devastating fires...

Rowan W. Dorin, assistant professor of history, with the miscataloged parchments whose mystery he is working to solve. Credit: L.A. Cicero __________________________________________________________________________ When historian Rowan Dorin first stepped onto the Stanford campus in early 2017, he made it a habit to visit Green Library every week to dig through its collection of medieval documents and objects. After a few months, Dorin, an assistant professor of history specializing in medieval Europe, discovered something out of the ordinary. Three leaves of ancient parchment were labeled as a Hebrew translation of text about grammar, but its margins had Latin words like fish, capers...

July 4, 2018 Independence Day To the Most Reverend Hierarchs, the Reverend Priests and Deacons, the Monks and Nuns, the Presidents and Members of the Parish Councils of the Greek Orthodox Communities, the Distinguished Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Day, Afternoon, and Church Schools, the Philoptochos Sisterhoods, the Youth, the Hellenic Organizations, and the entire Greek Orthodox Family in America Beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ, As we commemorate Independence Day, we are gathered in Boston for our 44th Biennial Clergy-Laity Congress. We are meeting in a city that has deep historical connections to the struggle for independence, a...

There is wide consensus among scholars that Aramaic was the primary language spoken by the Jews of first century Palestine. The vast majority of Jews spoke it. Jesus spoke it. This has been the commonly accepted view since 1845, when Abraham Geiger, a German rabbi, showed that even Jewish rabbis from the first century would have spoken Aramaic. He convincingly argued that the Hebrew from the first century (Mishnaic Hebrew) only functioned as a written language, not as a living, spoken language. There are two reasons most scholars believe Aramaic was the primary language of Jesus’s time—and the language Jesus...

The mayor of Greece’s second-largest city, Thessaloniki, was treated in hospital after he was beaten up by nationalist extremists. Mayor Boutaris had been at an event commemorating the killing of ethnic Greeks by Turks.Boutaris was being escorted from an event that commemorated the massacre of Black Sea Greeks, when members of the crowd turned violent. Footage showed the 75-year-old Thessaloniki mayor being heckled by dozens of people as he left the event on Saturday evening. Bottles were thrown at Boutaris, who is known for his strong anti-nationalist stance, before he fell down and was kicked and punched in the head...

In a sometimes-surreal interview with Greek television news channel Antenna, Antonios Pagourtzis, the father of the accused school shooter in Texas said that his son wasn’t a criminal, but a victim. His comment came during a telephone interview that the network broadcast on their newscast in Greece. Pagourtzis denied any responsibility in his son’s murderous rampage that killed ten people in a Texas school, criticizing people who said that there was blood on his guns. “The guns were clean,” Pagourtzis said in the interview, adding that he as hurt that a lot of the negative press about him was coming...

The 17-year-old suspect in Friday's shooting at a Texas high school killed a classmate who turned down his repeated advances, killing her first in his deadly rampage that also killed nine others, according to the girl's mother. Student Shana Fisher's mother told the LA Times that junior Dimitrios Pagourtzis gave her daughter "4 months of problems" before Fisher rejected him publicly in front of classmates. "A week later he opens fire on everyone he didn't like," she wrote to the newspaper. "Shana being the first one."

The Foreign Ministry has rejected as “hypocritical” statements by European Union Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker regarding two detained Greek soldiers in Turkey. “With these remarks ... The EU authorities lose their credibility and reliability day by day,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hami Aksoy said in a written statement on April 26 During a recent visit to Greece, Juncker said Turkey must release the Greek soldiers, detained after inadvertently crossing the border last month. “We reject this statement, which is far from being serious and lacks legal basis. Greek soldiers who violate Turkish law do not have any privileges before the independent...

Turkish President Recep Tayipp Erdogan said he would consider releasing the soldiers if eight Turkish servicemen, who sought assylum in Greece following the failed 2016 coup attempt, were sent home first."Blackmail" Athens has described this as "blackmail", with the Defence Ministry describing the soldiers as "hostages", and the Greek Supreme Court has sided with the government. President Prokopis Pavlopoulos of Greece said: "There was an unacceptable connection made between the Greek officers who were arbitrarily detained, and Turkish citizens who came to Greece, and requested asylum. Because Greece implemented - I emphasize this - implemented international law, it was granted....

Turkish propagandists also have been twisting facts to try to portray Greece as the aggressor. Although Turkey knows that the islands are legally and historically Greek, Turkish authorities want to occupy and Turkify them, presumably to further the campaign of annihilating the Greeks, as they did in Anatolia from 1914 to 1923 and after. Any attack against Greece should be treated as an attack against the West. There is one issue on which Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its main opposition, the Republican People's Party (CHP), are in complete agreement: The conviction that the Greek islands...

"You can live a normal life here [Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus] if you keep quiet, if you don't tell the truth that we live under Turkish occupation, that much of our territory is a military zone where we can't go." — Şener Levent, owner and editor of the daily newspaper Afrika, in Turkish-occupied Cyprus. In 1974, the Turkish army brutalized and terrorized at least 170,000 indigenous Greek Cypriots into fleeing to the free, southern part of the island, seized their properties, and replaced them with illegal settlers from Turkey. "40,000 Turkish troops remain in Cyprus as a presence that prevents...

WASHINGTON—The Hellenic American Leadership Council (HALC) and the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) have launched a national advocacy campaign encouraging U.S. Senators to block a planned sale of U.S. F-35 stealth fighters to Turkey’s increasingly erratic and anti-American Erdogan regime. The ANCA and Hellenic American Leadership Council have joined forces to launch a grassroots campaign to block the impending F-35 sale to Turkey (Graphic: ANCA) This joint Hellenic-Armenian American initiative – the most recent in a series of ANCA-HALC advocacy campaigns – warns Senators against the dangers of providing Erdogan with advanced weapons that he may turn against our...

NEW YORK – The Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate elected unanimously today the Very Reverend Archimandrite Nathanael Symeonides as Metropolitan of Chicago. Immediately following the election, His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios of America stated: “I express my wholehearted congratulations on the election of Very Reverend Archimandrite Nathanael Symeonides as Metropolitan of Chicago, wishing the abundant blessing of God on the sacred ministry the Church has entrusted him with. The newly-elected Metropolitan has served as Deacon, Priest and Director of the Department of Inter-Orthodox, Ecumenical and Inter-Religious Relations for a number of years, and I am certain that he...

Researchers think Plutarch’s De Facie tells the tale of Greek sailors making the treacherous transatlantic crossing. They dug into the science to show how it could have happened. The story of the European settlement of North America usually features a few main characters: red-headed Norsemen who sailed across an icy sea to set up temporary outposts, Spanish conquistadors, white-collared English separatists, French trappers, and Dutch colonists. Now a team of Greek scholars proposes another—and much earlier—wave of European migration: the Hellenistic Greeks, in triremes powered by sail and oar in the first century CE, nearly a millennium before the Vikings.These...