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     Greek News 2005 (from Yahoo news)    

Remember Athens 2004, and the others news by clicking under the archives below
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Friday the 23rd December 2005


 
A bomb exploded outside Greece's Development Ministry, causing minor damages but no injuries, police said.
The explosion occurred at 10.30 pm on Thursday, outside the ministry parking area which had been cordoned off by the police following a telephonic warning to an Athens newspaper.
Nobody claimed responsibility for the attack, but the needle of suspicion fell on the militant group, Revolutionary Struggle, which had bombed the National Economic Ministry on December 12 and warned of further bombings against government buildings, police sources added.


Wednesday the 21st of December 2005


 
Greek President Karolos Papoulias, right, stands with Jordan's King Abdullah II as they listen to Jordan's national anthem while a Greek Presidential guard, foreground, salutes, before their meeting in Athens.
 

Friday the 27th of November 2005

 
Greece sets off Turin Winter Olympics torch relay

ANCIENT OLYMPIA, Greece (AFP) - The Olympic Flame torch relay of the Turin 2006 Winter Games has set out in the hands of a Greek 19-year-old pole vault champion, embarking on a three-month journey from Ancient Olympia to Athens, Rome and northern Italy.
Dressed in the white-and-orange uniform of the 2006 Winter Games, Costas Filippidis became the first of 10,535 torchbearers in a relay exceeding 13,300 kilometres (8,264 miles), and expected to feature Italian designer Giorgio Armani, legendary gymnast Juri Chechi, Formula One driver Jarno Trulli and Pope Benedict XVI's Vatican Swiss Guard.
Overcast skies  and a rain forecast for Sunday prevented Greek organisers from fully carrying out a ritual ceremony involving actresses in the garb of ancient priestesses in Olympia, southwestern Greece, where the Olympics were born in 776 BC.
The priestesses were to use a polished concave mirror to capture the sun's rays inside the Temple of Hera, patron of marriage and the senior goddess of the ancient Greek pantheon.
Instead, Filippidis lit the sledgetip-shaped torch of the February 10-26 Turin Games with fire sparked by high priestess Theodora Siarkou during Saturday's successful dress rehearsal.
The flame had likewise failed to light at the designated moment for the Salt Lake 2002 Winter Games.

                     
 

Friday the 4th of November 2005

 
 
Greek musician and composer Mikis Theodorakis smiles during a news conference in Aachen, western Germany. Theodorakis will be awarded the prestigious UNESCO Music Award 2005.


Monday 31st of October 2005


 
Brussels confirms no sign of the virus in Greece

Greek health organisation officials spray disinfectant in an area outside a small farm, where a bird flu-infected turkey was found on October 17, at eastern island of Inousses October 19, 2005. Greece banned exports of poultry from some of its Aegean islands on Tuesday but warned people not to panic pending test results that could show the deadly H5N1 bird flu strain has reached the European Union.

Though follow-up tests showed no sign of the virus in the country.
Follow-up tests on the suspected Greek bird flu sample turned up negative at a European Union laboratory.


  Sunday the 25th of September 2005

Basketball : Greece won its 2nd European Basketball Championship

 BELGRADE: Greece won the European Championship basketball title for the second time on Sunday when it beat Germany 78-62 behind 22 points by Theodoros Papaloukas.
The Greek defense frustrated Dirk Nowitzki, the tournament’s MVP and top scorer, who scored 23 points but went only 1-for-8 from the 3-point range. He had nine rebounds but also four turnovers. Greece won its first title at home in 1987 and this time it must have felt like playing at the Olympic Hall in Maroussi. Seven planeloads of Greek fans arrived Sunday to join those already in the Serbian capital and the full 20,000-seat Belgrade Arena was awash in blue-and-white Greek colors.
After the final buzzer, the winners broke into a “Zorba the Greek” dance. “It was a dream final for us, we showed a great team spirit and tonight I don’t think that any team in Europe could have beaten us,” said Papaloukas, whose team did not include any NBA players. The game was decided in the third quarter when Greece went hot from 3-point range, making three straight at the start of the period, two of them by Papaloukas. When Papaloukas hit another with 1:53 left in the third, Greece had a 17-point lead and the game was all but over.
Nowitzki, who had carried Germany virtually single-handedly to the final, left the game with 3:22 remaining to a standing ovation. “We are happy with what we achieved. Greece was simply the better team,” Nowitzki said. When the Dallas Mavericks star was presented at the medal ceremony, the crowd chanted his name and gave him another ovation. He finished the tournament averaging 26.1 points. Germany won its first medal since claiming the title at home in 1993.
“They were just a step quicker,” said Germany coach Dirk Bauermann. Center Patrick Femerling added 11 points for Germany. Greece made seven of 21 3-point attempts while Germany went 3-for-16. Nikolaos Zisis had 13 points for Greece and Michail Kakiouzis added 11. “We played our best game in the tournament. Now I am on top of Europe, not as a player but as coach,” said Greece coach Panagiotis Yannakis, who played on the 1987 team. Earlier, Tony Parker scored 25 points to lift France to a 98-68 victory over Spain in the bronze-medal game, giving France its first medal at the European Championship since a silver in 1959.

                                   

 

                 Konstantinos Tsartsaris, left, Dimitrios Diamantidis,
center and Lazaros Papadopoulos

Pannayotis Yannakis

Michail Kakiouzis


 Samedi 16 Juillet 2005

 

 ATHENS, Greece - For years, tourists to the Acropolis have been frustrated to find ancient monuments shrouded in scaffolding, thanks to a long and painstaking restoration project. Now, an end is in sight.
Greek cultural officials said Wednesday that work on the Parthenon, the Athena Nike temple and the massive Propylaea gate — treasures built in the mid-fifth century B.C. at the height of Athenian glory — should be finished by the end of next year.
"These three works will be finished at the end of 2006," said architect Haralambos Bouras, a senior project official. "All three were vitally necessary, and failure to carry them out could have resulted in severe damage to the monuments."Still, more scaffolding could go up at the Parthenon — the biggest crowd-puller — as projects on the Acropolis hill are expected to continue until 2020.
The multimillion-dollar restoration started 30 years ago, but the complexity of the work and funding snags caused considerable delays, with scaffolding embarrassing authorities during the 2004 Athens Olympics.
So far, the ancient marble structures have survived wars, fires and earthquakes, not to mention decades of modern pollution. Botched restoration efforts in the 1930s used iron clamps that rusted over the years, causing the marble to crack and break.
Work on the Athena Nike temple, an elegant Ionic structure at the entrance to the citadel, started in 1998. The whole building had to be taken down to its foundations.
According to Maria Ioannidou, who is supervising work on all three buildings, the ongoing effort is "the biggest restoration project currently under way in the world." The total estimated price tag is $84.4 million.
So far, nearly 1,000 blocks of stone have been removed from the three monuments and 1,100 parts have been assembled from ancient fragments. Restorers used marble from Mount Pendeli, north of Athens, whose ancient quarries provided the original building material. More than half of the blocks have now been treated and put back.
"We treat each piece like an individual work of art," Bouras said.
Only one of the four major Acropolis monuments, the Erechtheion temple, has been fully restored. In addition to the Parthenon, further repairs are needed to Propylaea and the wall surrounding the citadel.
Afterward, the hilltop will be landscaped with hundreds of tons of earth.


 Saturday the 16th of July 2005

the 16th of July 2005 in the church of Meignanne (49) David and Isa, authors of this website said YES to each other !
our friends did a very nice surprise after the ceremony, for our wedding to look like a greek one, they buit a greek temple : the one of love, and wore toga, they danced a sirtaki !
a wonderfull day !!!



     

 


Saturday the 23th of May 2005

 Greek singer Helena Paparizou performs in Athens May 23, 2005, upon her arrival from Kiev where she won the 50th Eurovision song contest on Saturday with the fast-moving 'My Number One' song. Paparizou, who finished third in Eurovision in 2001, scored 230 points in telephone voting from viewers in 39 countries for a performance relying heavily on Greek folk music.(REUTERS)


Saturday the 30th of April 2005


 

Eastern Orthodox Christians will celebrate Holy Pascha (Easter) on May 1.


Tuesday the 19th of April 2005


 


ATHENS (AFP) - Soldiers of the Greek Presidential guard perform their changing of guard ceremony in front of the parliament in Athens April 19, 2005. Greece became the sixth European Union state ratifying the European Union constitution when its parliament overwhelmingly voted in favor of it


 


Friday the 25th of March 2005


 

ATHENS (AFP) - Presidential guards raise their rifles during a changing of the guard ceremony, at the tomb of the unknown soldier, in front of parliament in central Athens on Tuesday, March 23, 2005.
 

Wenesday the 16th of February 2005
     

ATHENS (AFP) - One person was killed and four others were injured after a violent storm

A sailor aged 52 was swept off a quay by waves on the eastern island of Psara as he was struggling to moor his boat, a merchant fleet ministry statement said.
Ferry services to and from Greek islands from Athens' main seaport Piraeus were shut down and other merchant vessels docked there were told to wait for the storm to end before departing.
The atrocious weather brought down trees, cut power lines and disrupted both air and ground transport in and around the capital Athens.
Gusts of up to 100 kilometres per hour (60 miles per hour) were recorded in the city and the high winds caused serious damage to boats in Piraeus, fire fighting services said.
The national power company said some 10,000 homes were without electricity and telephone communications were also hit.
Two planes heading for the capital from the northern city of Salonika were unable to land earlier in the day due to the ferocity of the storm, while six other domestic flights were cancelled. International flights were delayed.
One woman was hurt in the city by a falling branch and another injured by a piece of metal sent flying by the strong winds.
A policeman and another person were injured in a traffic accident after a silo collapsed onto part of a motorway in the north of the capital, according to press agency ANA.
The authorities warned people to stay at home unless absolutely necessary.
High waves whipped up by the storm smashed through part of a breakwater protecting a marina for private yachts and pleasure boats at Piraeus. Several of the embarkation areas were damaged, according to ANA.
Boats were damaged in the ports of Rafina and Lavrio, east and south of the capital.
The emergency services were jammed with calls from people reporting fallen trees, street signs and television aerials. Several cars were damaged.
Many streets in the city centre were littered with debris, including fallen trees.
Forecasters said the bad weather was expected to abate later Tuesday.
 


Tuesday the 8th of February 2005


 

ATHENS (AFP) - Greece's Socialist former foreign minister, Carolos Papoulias, was elected president by the country's parliament, the only candidate to succeed conservative Costas Stephanopoulos.
Papoulias, 75, was elected in the first round with the backing of 279 deputies, representing both the governing conservative New Democracy party and those of the opposition Socialist PASOK party, out of 296 members who participated.
The two other parties represented in parliament, the communist KKE and the leftist Syn abstained, having not put up a candidate.
As the only candidate, Papoulias' election had been seen as a formality and he easily got more than the 200 votes needed to be voted in without going to a second round.
He will become the sixth Greek president since the end of the monarchy in Greece in 1975, succeeding 78-year-old Stephanopoulos, a right leaning politician who was elected by the previous PASOK government in 1995 and whose second and final mandate ends in March.
Papoulias, who has a law degree in law from Athens university and was a lawyer between 1963 and 1981, was foreign minister from 1985 to 1989 and 1993 to 1996.
He was a member of parliament between 1977 and 2000.
In announcing Papoulias as his party's candidate for the post in December, Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis described him as "a political personality of compromise who enjoys a great deal of recognition in society."
"Mr Papoulias, who is not currently a parliamentarian and has the necessary distance from the political scene, proved throughout his long term in office as foreign minister that he is a man of rare moderation and considerable experience," said Karamanlis.
 


Wednesday the 2nd of February 2005

 


 

 

Brussels (REUTERS) Greece's President Constantinos Stephanopoulos attends a service in the Belgium's Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Brussels. Stephanopoulos came to Belgium for a three-day state visit.
Greece's President Constantinos Stephanopoulos (L) and Belgium's King Albert II (R) review the troops during the welcoming ceremony outside the Brussels' Royal Palace.


    

 


Monday the 31st of January 2005


 

 

ATHENS (AFP) - A strong earthquake measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale struck off western Greece in the Ionean Sea early on Monday, but no casualties were reported, officials said.
The officials said the quake took place 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the island of Zante in the Ionian Sea.

 


Wednesday 5th of January 2005

Countries across Europe observed a three-minute silence

ATHENS (AFP) - The Greek flag flies at half staff in front of the Parthenon temple at Acropolis hill as a sign of mourning for the Asian tsunami victims in Athens. A two day donation drive by Greece state run television raised more than 12 milions euros (15,84 milions US dollars) for aid projects.


Tuesday 4th of January 2005


 

 

 

Earthquake rattles Athens, no damage

ATHENS (AFP)The region around the Greek capital was hit by an earthquake overnight but no damage was reported, the Athens observatory said on Tuesday.
The epicentre of the quake, which measured 4.9 on the Richter scale, was located 50 kilometres south of Athens in the Saronic Gulf at a depth of 100 kilometres.
The tremor "of weak intensity" was registered at 11:44 pm local time on Monday.
Greece is the European country most affected by earthquakes, with more than half of all temblors registered.

 


 


Saturday 1st of January 2005

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

Celebrations for the new year 2005

Fireworks explode over the temple of the Parthenon at the Acropolis hill during celebrations for the new year's day in Athens, Christmas tree and Christmas boat, part of an old Greek custom, are displayed in a central square of Thessaloniki, northern Greece.
 

                                             

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