Greeks

Modern Greek will be one of 13 languages other than English to be taught to preschoolers in Australia this academic year through ELLA, an educational program aimed at acquainting young learners with different cultures and helping them develop essential cognitive skills such as memory recall, critical thinking, verbal and spatial awareness.

According to a European Parliament survey, Greeks are skeptical about joining the EU and its benefits, with only 23% believing that the EU is contributing to economic growth. On the contrary, 36% of European citizens feel that the Union is contributing to economic growth.

Greek companies reportedly pay five times the amount in contributions and taxes for the same turnover as their counterparts in Cyprus.

The huge gap in contributions has reportedly prompted thousands of self-employed professionals (engineers, doctors, businessmen consultant, accountants and others) to set up offices in Cyprus and move their base to the Eastern Mediterranean island.

The city of Ksanthi in northeastern region of Greece celebrated its anniversary of the liberation on October 4 from Bulgaria in 1919. The city was mainly under the Islamic Ottoman yoke for 550 years. For the past 98 years students in public schools have been taking part in parades in commemoration of the event in the city called “Eleftheria” which is translated into freedom.

On Sunday September 24, 2017, the Pan-Pontian Federation of USA and Canada in collaboration with another 15 organizations celebrated the publication of the new book “Genocide in the Ottoman Empire: Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks, 1913-1923”, at the Hellenic Cultural Center in Astoria.

The head of the Greek Orthodox Church on Monday criticized the country's leftist-led government for pushing draft legislation that will allow individuals to freely determine their gender identity irrespective of how it was recorded at birth.

Making things out of clay, singing Greek folk songs along with karaoke, learning the secrets to baking the perfect spinach pie, putting together a magazine in Greek: these are just a few of the activities that young members of the Hellenic Kids Club in the port city of Southampton on England's southern coast can have a go at while practicing their Greek.

The Independent Authority for Public Revenue expects to receive by the end of this month details concerning the bank accounts and generally the financial commodities held by Greeks in 49 other countries, as part of mutual data exchanges.

An analysis of ancient DNA has revealed that Ancient Minoans and Mycenaens were genetically similar with both peoples descending from early Neolithic farmers.
They likely migrated from Anatolia to Greece and Crete thousands of years prior to the Bronze Age. Modern Greeks, in turn, are largely descendants of the Mycenaeans, the study found.

Six of Greece's 74 regional units rank near the top of the European Union's list of areas with the highest number of fatalities from road accidents.