New York University

It was December in northern Syria and the temperature was dropping fast. Local militias fighting the Islamic State had suffered heavy casualties after a tough battle, and U.S. special operations forces urgently needed to get blankets to their partners. They turned to a small charity run by Jim Hake, a former venture capitalist who made his fortune on tech startups in California.

John Freely, the well-known author of many history and travel books on Istanbul, Turkey and Greece, passed away on April 20 at age of 90. 

Freely wrote more than 40 books over the course of his long life, including his masterpiece "Strolling Through Istanbul: A Guide to the City," which is seen as the perhaps the best guide to Istanbul ever written.  

Indonesia has cut some ties with JPMorgan Chase & Co after the bank's research analysts issued a negative report on the country, the latest in a series of skirmishes between Wall Street banks and governments in emerging markets.

The new Secretary General of the UN Antonio Guterres may choose more than one deputy, predicted in an interview for BNR Jim Della-Giakoma, Deputy Director of the Center on International Cooperation at New York University.

“City & State”, a newspaper based in New York, announced the annual list of the most successful people under 40, with Greek-American Eftichia Thomopoulou among the winners for 2016. She is from Nafpaktos, a small city in Western Greece and is the daughter of George Thomopoulos and Vasiliki Goupiou.

The jobs university graduates will be doing in five or 10 years' time may not have been discovered yet, says the senior assistant director of global admissions at New York University, Claire Wilkins, following a trip to Athens, where she visited a number of schools.

Spain's Princess Cristina and her husband went on trial Jan. 11 under intense global media scrutiny in a landmark corruption case that has outraged the country and sullied the monarchy's reputation.

Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli Ambassador to the United States (1993-1996), spoke with Novinite last week, while he was in Bulgaria to attend a conference on education and culture and their role in combating extremism.

By Nikos Chrysoloras, Alessandro Speciale & Rebecca Christie

European leaders and the head of the International Monetary Fund agreed to step up the intensity of talks over Greece?s fate after an extraordinary meeting in Berlin about ways to avert a default.

Turkish-American jazz musician and teacher Emre Kartari and a group of Turkish and American jazz musicians, Sazl? Cazl?, are continuing performances for students and organizing workshops around Turkey.