European Parliament narrowly approves EU migration reforms. Credit: Coast Guard News. CC BY 2.0/flickr
The European Parliament has marginally passed the wide-reaching reform of the European Union’s migration and asylum policy, which was preceded by uncertainty due to the growing voices of rejection from both the left and right.
“We have listened, we have acted and we have delivered on one of the main concerns of people across Europe,” said Roberta Metsola, the Parliament’s president.
“This is a historic day,” she declared.
The reform, named the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, which encompasses a set of five separate but intertwined pieces of legislation, just needs the final green light from member states, which is expected at the end of the month.
The five new migration laws
The five laws contained in the New Pact and approved on Wednesday by MEPs are:
The Screening Regulation envisions a pre-entry procedure to swiftly examine an asylum seeker’s profile and collect basic information such as nationality, age, fingerprints, and facial image. Health and security checks will also be carried out.
The amended Eurodac Regulation updates Eurodac, a large-scale database that will store the biometric evidence collected during the screening process. The database will shift from counting applications to counting applicants and prevent the same person from filing multiple claims. The minimal age for collecting fingerprints will be lowered from 14 to 6 years.
The amended Asylum Procedures Regulation (APR) sets two possible steps for claimants. The first of these is the traditional asylum procedure, which is lengthy and a fast-tracked border procedure, meant to last a maximum of twelve weeks. The border procedure will apply to migrants who pose a risk to national security, provide misleading information, or come from countries with low recognition rates, such as Morocco, Pakistan, and India. These migrants will not be allowed to enter the country’s territory and instead be kept at facilities on the border, creating a “legal fiction of non-entry.”
The Asylum and Migration Management Regulation (AMMR) establishes a system of “mandatory solidarity” that will offer member states three options to manage migration flows. This will include relocating a certain number of asylum seekers, paying €20,000 for each claimant they refuse to relocate, or financing operational support. Brussels aims at 30,000 relocations per year but insists the system will not force any country to accept refugees as long as they contribute one of the other two options.
The Crisis Regulation foresees exceptional rules that will be triggered when the bloc’s asylum system is threatened by a sudden and massive arrival of refugees, as was the case during the 2015 to 2016 crisis, or by a situation of force majeure, like the COVID-19 pandemic. In these circumstances, national authorities will be allowed to apply tougher measures, including longer periods of registration and detention, and the Commission will be empowered to request additional “solidarity” measures.
Migration poses a complex challenge for Greece
Last month, Greece’s Immigration Minister expressed concern about the recent spike in the number of undocumented migrants arriving in the southern islands of Crete and Gavdos.
“The flow of migrants from eastern Libya is small, but with an increasing trend, which worries and concerns us, and that is why we are taking a series of initiatives to deal with this new front,” the Minister of Immigration and Asylum Dimitris Kairidis told SKAI at the time.
He was speaking after a boat carrying 91 migrants reached Gavdos, a small island south of Crete and the southernmost Greek island. A coast guard statement said the migrants, who were found on a beach on Gavdos in early March, were being taken to reception areas on Crete.
They are believed to have set off from the coast of eastern Libya about 170 nautical miles to the south. Their nationalities were not made public. Local authorities on Gavdos and Crete said they are seeing a spike in the arrival of people attempting the long and dangerous crossing from Africa.
Etruscan bronze oil lamp depicts Greek god Dionysus, new study claims. Credit: CharlesFred. CC BY 2.0/Flickr
A bronze, hanging oil lamp found in a ditch near the town of Cortona, Central Italy is far older than previously thought and depicts the Greek god Dionysus, a new paper published in De Gruyter’s Etruscan and Italic Studies argues.
The lamp was recovered together with a damaged and inscribed bronze plaque in 1840, but the dating of the objects has caused some consternation among the archaeological community. It is generally accepted that the lamp and the plaque are of different dates. In 1988, radiography revealed the lamp and plaque have different chemical compositions and thus were not made from the same batch of bronze.
However, the dating of the lamp and the meaning of its elaborate decoration have been the cause of some controversy since its discovery. Now, however, PhD student Ronak Alburz and Associate Professor Gijs Willem Tol of the University of Melbourne, Australia, have utilized several literary sources and other iconographic evidence to carry out a comprehensive new analysis of the item.
The Cortona lamp is formed roughly in the shape of a chandelier, measuring 60 centimeters across and weighing nearly 60 kilograms. It has its origins in the Etruscan civilization of Archaic Etruria, a region of Central Italy corresponding roughly to present-day Tuscany and part of Umbria. Etruscan civilization flourished from around 900 BC until it was gradually absorbed into the Roman Republic after about 400 BC.
The Cortona artifact is a large, intricately designed bronze hanging lamp that might have been part of rituals paying homage to the Greek god Dionysus, but it took a long time to reach this conclusion. https://t.co/u50feeiMKX
The Cortona lamp, in particular its iconography, has not succumbed to a satisfactory explanation for two main reasons. Firstly, very few similar items have been unearthed in Etruscan or ancient Greek art, making it a challenge to draw useful comparisons, and secondly, the lamp has no context, having been discovered with only an inscribed bronze plaque that is from a much later period.
This vagueness means there is no further information about the building it was potentially used in or how it was related to or associated with other artifacts. Researchers were thus limited to examining individual decorative motifs displayed on the lamp.
Etruscan lamp depicts Greek god Dionysus, authors claim
In their thorough re-evaluation, Alburz and Tol identified additional similarities with other iconography that indicate the lamp was created around 480 BC, much earlier than many previous estimates.
The pair also claim earlier scholars were incorrect in identifying the lamp’s sixteen bull-horned figures as the Greek river god Achelous. By drawing on a range of literary sources and presenting new iconographic evidence, they show that Dionysus, the ancient Greek god of wine and pleasure, was also typically depicted with the features of a bull.
They hence claim that the lamp depicts the Dionysian thiasus, the ecstatic retinue of Dionysus who are often portrayed as inebriated revelers.
Lead author Alburz said, “The lamp was probably an object associated with the mystery cult of Dionysus. Its decoration represents the Dionysian thiasus, perhaps engaged in a cultic performance in the cosmos of the mysteries in celebration of Dionysus.”
The education system needs to adapt to the new reality of AI. Credit: oleksandr p, Pexels
The unprecedented and rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) in a wide variety of fields and sectors is fundamentally transforming many aspects of our lives, and the field of education is no exception.
As AI continues to profoundly reshape industries across the world and redefine the skills required by employers and people for success, the traditional educational approaches we are all familiar with, which heavily focus on memorization and standardized testing among other things, are becoming increasingly outdated and the alarm bells for what’s to come have already started to sound.
To prepare students for the AI-driven future that is inevitable, policymakers, educators, and parents must adapt their practices, the school curricula as well as their mindsets to prioritize the development of creativity and critical thinking skills.
The importance of creativity in the new AI world
In an era in which AI has already begun automating many tasks that used to rely on memorization and repetition on the employee’s behalf, creativity and critical thinking emerge as uniquely human skills that cannot easily be replicated by machines and will be desperately needed in the coming years and decades.
These particular skills enable students, regardless of their age, to approach complex problems from multiple angles. This is something that will not be as easy to find as it is now. People should therefore be able to generate new and innovative solutions and adapt to the ever-changing demands of the constantly-advancing modern world.
By focusing heavily on cultivating and promoting creativity and analytical thinking, teachers of the new age will be in a position where they’ll have the ability to equip students with the tools they are going to need to become lifelong learners. This is the most crucial aspect of the new era we’re all entering. We will need people capable of finding the right path to address the challenges and opportunities presented by the AI revolution that has only begun to unfold before our very eyes.
Credit: tima miroshnichenko, Pexels
The AI revolution is exposing limitations of traditional education
We all know, no matter where we come from, that traditionally, all educational systems place a strong emphasis on rote memorization.
Rote memorization involves the repetition and retention of information and facts without necessarily promoting a deeper understanding of subject matter. This is particularly true when it comes to exams, either the Panhellenic exams in the case of Greece or GSCEs and A Levels in England or any other examination system that exists in the world.
While this approach may have proven to be effective for short-term recall—this is actually why it’s been used for so many decades in so many countries—it fails to adequately prepare students for real-world problem-solving scenarios.
This couldn’t be more true in an AI-driven world. In this new era, the ability to apply knowledge creatively and critically will be far more valuable and important than the mere memorization of information that prior generations have become accustomed to.
Thus, overreliance on rote learning will hinder the development of higher-order thinking skills, leaving many of today’s students severely ill-equipped to tackle the challenges of the workforce of the 2030s and beyond.
Strategies for integrating critical thinking in education
The one-million-dollar question is going to be “How do we implement these fundamental changes in our educational systems?” Unfortunately, there is no clear answer to this, as we are all heading to uncharted territory based on the rapid pace of AI advancement. However, basic steps can be taken to help us head to the right direction.
To effectively integrate skills such as creativity, critical thinking, and logical reasoning into the existing curricula, policymakers along with teachers can employ various strategies that don’t require a radical change of their current systems, but instead, offer a more gradual transition to the new world.
One approach is to incorporate much more active, project-based learning. There is clear scientific evidence that this encourages students to explore real-world problems for themselves and develop innovative solutions as they encounter hurdles along the way. By engaging in hands-on projects inside and outside our schools, students can therefore apply their knowledge in meaningful ways and develop a much deeper understanding of subject matter. This comes in direct contrast with the traditional rote memorization that, unfortunately, many schools continue to employ.
Inquiry-based learning is another great and powerful tool that could be utilized by educators across the world. It allows students to ask all sorts of questions, investigate topics independently and on their own accord, and finally draw their own conclusions, which will help them attain a better grasp of the issues they are dealing with.
Our schools need to offer children the skills they will need in 20, 30, or 40 years. Credit: cottonbro studio, Pexels
One might think that schools, especially in the developed world, such as in Europe and North America, have already taken great steps to integrate technology into their learning. And this is true, as interactive boards, tablets, and laptops are indeed being used more and more by teachers and students in classrooms worldwide. However, the way these tools are being used plays a fundamental role in the way the younger generation is taught how to utilize them.
Integrating technology that will be focused on teaching how to use certain AI tools will further support creative problem-solving and critical analysis on the pupils’ behalf by providing them with access to vast amounts of information and enabling them to visualize and manipulate data in new ways. This should be done in ways that will be helpful in students’ future professional endeavors.
Moreover, fostering a classroom environment that values diverse perspectives instead of suppressing them in favor of the mainstream narrative is also very crucial. The AI-era classroom needs to encourage open-minded discussions that will be vital for the development of critical thinking skills. By exposing students to a wide range of sometimes conflicting viewpoints and encouraging them to respectfully challenge and build upon each other’s ideas, teachers will be able to create a space where this much-needed critical thinking thrives.
Furthermore, providing opportunities for children and adult learners to engage more proactively in creative activities, such as art, music, and independent writing, will help them develop their imaginative capacities and express themselves in unique ways. This is particularly crucial, as we all know that in many countries across the world, spending cuts and lack of adequate funding for state-run schools means subjects like these always take a hit. This is so as to balance issues such as lack of specialized teachers, support staff, resources, or even a combination of all these.
Finally, collaboration and teamwork should also be truly emphasized, as they promote the exchange of ideas and facilitate the provision of constructive feedback between students and even educators alike, further enhancing creativity and critical thinking among younger generations.
Adapting education to the world of AI
Of course, for creativity and critical thinking to become central components of this new educational experience, teachers of all levels and backgrounds must be willing to radically change and adapt their teaching methods. This is something that is undoubtedly not easy.
Professional development opportunities should start to focus more on equipping teachers with the skills and strategies desperately needed to effectively integrate these competencies into their lessons instead of thousands of hours being, quite frankly, wasted with unnecessary bureaucratic and admin training that shouldn’t even be a teacher’s job in the first place.
By modeling well-thought creative problem-solving and critical thinking in their own practice, teachers can truly inspire and guide students to embrace these skills. Additionally, collaboration among teachers, administrators, and policymakers is key if we want to drive systemic change in our schools and educational settings and ensure that the development of creativity and critical thinking becomes a national and international priority at all levels of educational systems around the world.
The big education crisis caused by AI is not going to be in schools (there was cheating before AI & we can figure out AI uses that boost learning), but after graduation.
White collar work is secretly based on an apprenticeship system that will break
In this challenging yet exciting new era of artificial intelligence, we all have an incredible opportunity to reimagine education and equip our children with the skills they’ll need to not just survive in this new landscape but thrive. By putting creativity and analytical thinking front and center in our classrooms, we will be able to ignite the sparks of imagination and independent thought in young minds, something that will prove extremely valuable in the coming years and decades.
This isn’t just about preparing children for future jobs and careers. It’s about empowering an entire generation to approach the new and somehow still unknown challenges with fresh perspectives. We need to help these young minds dream big and come up with innovative solutions that will question the status quo and create a better, much more inclusive world where AI will be an assistant rather than a threat. We need bold, original, and innovative thinkers who can see the potential in all these new emerging technologies and have the vision to use them proactively in ways that will benefit all of humanity instead of marginalizing people who start their journey in life from a disadvantaged position.
This is why educators are at the crossroads of a major change and have the profound responsibility and privilege of nurturing these crucial and essential skills in the minds of the younger generations. Of course, we all know that it won’t always be easy, as something like this requires a strong will to break free from the confines of rigid and old-established curricula and standardized tests.
However, by embracing these new tools in the classrooms and using them as core educational values, teachers will be able to unleash a wave of human potential that will carry us forward into an exhilarating future.
The auction house withdrew four ancient Greek vases after archaeologists found they were from a convicted antiquities dealer. Credit: mharrsch. CC BY 2.0/flickr
Christie’s, a British auction house, has withdrawn four ancient Greek vases from a New York auction after an archaeologist found out they were all linked to Gianfranco Becchina, who was convicted in 2011 of illegally dealing in antiquities.
Dr. Christos Tsirogannis, an affiliated archaeology lecturer at the University of Cambridge and a specialist in looted antiquities and trafficking networks, said there was damning evidence within the auction house’s own correspondence with the dealer, which was seized by the police, as reported by The Guardian.
The academic leveled criticism against the auction house for failing to make public that the items, planned to be in its April 9th auction in New York, could be traced to Gianfranco Becchina.
Christie’s has withdrawn four ancient Greek vases from Tuesday’s auction after Dr Christos Tsirogiannis discovered that each of them was linked to Gianfranco Becchina, who was convicted in 2011 of illegally dealing in antiquities.https://t.co/uyhFQgLyXm
— Chasing Aphrodite (@ChasingAphrodit) April 9, 2024
The Christie’s catalogue apparently stated it had sold three of the items in its Geneva auction in 1979, but, according to Tsirogannis, the auction company had left out the fact they were consigned to the auction house by Becchina. “This is a new insight into the tricks used by the market at its highest level,” he told The Guardian. “They deliberately exclude the connection of a trafficker in these three examples, although they’ve known about that connection for 45 years.”
The ancient Greek vases withdrawn from auction
The antiquities in question include an Attic cup, adorned with warriors and other figures, from about 570 to 560 BC. It was estimated it would get $15,000 to $20,000 in the Ancient Greek Vases from the Zimmermann Collection auction, but it has now been taken down from the webpage after the auction company was confronted with Tsirogiannis’ evidence.
The sale catalog notes: “The ancient Greek vases collected by Dr Manfred Zimmermann (1935-2011) rank among the finest private collections of its kind assembled during the late 20th-early 21st century.”
Other disputed items included Lot 3, the lid of a lekanis bowl decorated with sphinxes from around 570-550 BC and valued at $8,000 to $12,000, and Lot 10, a hydra or water pot displaying Greek god Dionysus with a drinking horn from circa 530 to 520 BC, estimated at $7,000 to $9,000. These objects have also been removed from the online catalog.
The work of Greek wrchaeologist Dr. Christos Tsirogannis
Over the past 18 years, the Greek archaeologist has identified more than 1,700 looted antiquities within auction houses, galleries, museums, and private collections, informing Interpol and other police forces of these.
He is based in Cambridge but heads illicit antiquities trafficking research for the UNESCO chair on threats to cultural heritage at the Ionian University in Corfu, Greece.
The late Paolo Giorgio Ferri, an Italian public prosecutor who went after and prosecuted traffickers of looted antiquities, valued Tsirogiannis’ work so highly that he made available to him tens of thousands of images and other archival material seized in police raids from Becchina and dozens of traffickers.
Tsirogiannis stated that documents related to the 1979 Christie’s sale were within Becchina’s seized archive and include Christie’s correspondence and the auction catalog, with objects circled by Becchina in red ink.
He thinks that, while the documentary evidence suggested that the owner was a “Mr Borowowza” with an Amsterdam dealer as his agent, that was a fake name, appearing at the bottom of Christie’s correspondence: “When a problem arose related to this auction, Christie’s contacted Becchina directly, which shows who the real owner is,” Tsirogiannis told The Guardian.
Tsirogiannis also noted that a Christie’s letter of 1981, related to the 1979 sale, notified Becchina that it was reimbursing him for lost antiquities. Tsirogiannis said: “But this lot is among the same consignments of the 1979 sale of ‘Mr Borowowza’ through [the Amsterdam dealer]. Why were Christie’s notifying Becchina directly? The answer is that the real owner and consignor was Becchina.”
Another removed Greek vase from the auction site, which previously filled Lot 20, was a lekythos or oil jar, displaying the Athenian hero Theseus, dated to 500 to 490 BC and estimated at a value of $20,000 to $30,000.
An example of a decorated ancient Greek lekythos or oil jar. Credit: diffendale. CC BY 2.0/flickr
In its ‘collecting history,’ Christie’s stated that Zimmerman had purchased it from a German dealer in the early 1990s, and it notes that, as with Lots 1 and 3, it was on display in two German museums in recent years. There was also no mention of Becchina here, but, among the material the police seized from him was an image of that vase.
“There is no condition report on the piece in the [April] Christie’s catalogue…It’s now in perfect condition, but they don’t say anything…According to hand-written notes by Becchina himself, the lekythos was delivered to him on 21 April 1990, which explains how Zimmermann acquired it in the early 1990s,” Tsirogiannis said. “But what is omitted is the most crucial information, that it is from Becchina, from the convicted looter Raffaele Monticelli.”
He added: “Not the auction house, not the collector or his family, not even the museums are bothered to check with the authorities to see if they are involved in exhibiting illicit objects.”
A recent chemical analysis has revealed the Byzantine origin of silver coins that stimulated trade and helped bring about the development of new towns. These were used beginning in the seventh century in England.
Starting around 660AD, for many decades after the Sutton Hoo burial, there was a sudden surge in the number of silver coins in circulation in England. This left archaeologists and historians stumped for quite some time.
The silver coinage rush was a welcome injection for trade and development at a time when new settlements were popping up around the country. Now, archaeologists and scientists finally understand where it all came from.
Using lead isotope and trace element analysis, in particular gold and bismuth, researchers have been able to determine that early Anglo-Saxon silver coins were made from Byzantine plates, while later coins used silver from a mine in France.https://t.co/VBrXY2asXx
Metallurgical analysis of early medieval coins has provided the answer. The power brokers of the era melted down their collections of Byzantine silver treasures in a kind of primitive quantitative easing that kickstarted the economy of England and established a monetary system that would last for a millennium.
Chemical analysis of coins from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge has revealed two distinct phases of the silver rush. For nearly one hundred years from the 660s, coins were minted from silver bullion that originated in the Byzantine Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean. Then, once stocks of those treasures began to diminish around 750, silver from a mine in Western France came to be dominant in Europe. That was during the rule of Charlemagne.
“This was such an exciting discovery,” Rory Naismith, a professor of early medieval English history at the University of Cambridge and one of the academics behind the study, told The Guardian.
“Now we have the first archaeometric confirmation that Byzantine silver was the dominant source behind the great seventh-century surge in minting and trade around the North Sea,” Naismith said.
The coins minted were silver pennies each roughly worth around £20 to £30 in today’s currency. That formed “the bedrock of the English economy” until around the 16th century, according to Naismith.
Byzantine silver used to produce coinage in England
The isotopic signature of Byzantine silver apparently showed it was already decades or more old. This led to suggestions that it had likely been a prize possession of its owner, helping to display wealth and power.
The ruler honored at Sutton Hoo, believed to be Raedwald of East Anglia, was buried with a collection of Byzantine silver bowls and other objects, which, if melted down, could have produced ten thousand pennies, the researchers said.
Example of a Byzantine silver bowl. Credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art. CC BY 1.0/Wikimedia Commons/Metropoltican Museum of Art
“It’s fair to say we were surprised by this result,” Dr. Jane Kershaw, an associate professor at Oxford University’s School of Archaeology and the study’s lead author, told The Guardian.
“We know of some surviving Byzantine silver from Anglo-Saxon England, most famously from Sutton Hoo, but far greater amounts of Byzantine silver must have originally been held in Anglo-Saxon stores,” Kershaw added.
According to Kershaw, “This was quantitative easing—elites were liquidating silver stored in valuable objects and using that silver to make coins that then circulated widely. It would have had a big impact on people’s lives. Far more people than before would have used coined money and thought in terms of monetary values.”
Boeing is being investigated by federal authorities after a whistleblower raised safety concerns. Credit: Jetstar Airways. CC BY 2.0/Flickr
Boeing is being investigated by federal authorities after a whistleblower raised safety concerns about two widebody jet models. The individual said the company threatened him with termination.
Engineer Sam Salehpour, a Boeing engineer, alleges that the company took shortcuts when building its 777 and 787 Dreamliner jets. According to Salehpour, the risks become more pronounced as the airplanes age. The New York Times first reported the whistleblower statement. However, Boeing said the claims were “inaccurate” and was confident its planes were safe.
“The issues raised have been subject to rigorous engineering examination under [Federal Aviation Administration] oversight,” the company told the BBC, adding: “This analysis has validated that these issues do not present any safety concerns and the aircraft will maintain its service life over several decades.”
Shares in the plane company dropped almost two percent on Tuesday, April 9th after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it was looking into the claims, and the manufacturer reported it had delivered just eighty-three planes to customers in the first three months of the year. This is the smallest amount since 2021.
Previous Boeing safety issues
The whistleblower statement is the most recent incident to draw attention to the safety of planes manufactured by US-based Boeing, one of the world’s two major producers of planes. The company was already under criminal investigation and other legal troubles, following an unused exit door breaking off of one of its smaller 737 Max 9 planes not long after take-off in January.
Those on board escaped serious injury, but the incident has put the company in crisis, bringing about a temporary grounding of dozens of 737 Max 9 planes. The incident also led to regulatory checks and prompted Boeing to significantly slow down production of its planes.
Placed under serious scrutiny, the plane manufacturer led its Chief Executive David Calhoun to announce last month that he would step down by the end of the year.
Yesterday, lawyers serving engineer Salehpour claimed Boeing had made decisions for 787 aircraft manufacturing that placed stress on joints that linked up parts of the body of the jets. This was an issue affecting more than a thousand planes.
In a whistleblower statement filed with the FAA in January, he alleged the assembly method could reduce the lifespan of the plane.
“These problems are the direct result of Boeing’s decision in recent years to prioritize profits over safety, and a regulator in the FAA that has become too deferential to industry,” his lawyers, Debra Katz and Lisa Banks, said in a statement.
The lawyers also stated that Salehpour had been transferred to work on the 777 plane after he raised concerns. They added that he had soon noticed other issues in the assembly of that plane.
“He was threatened with termination, excluded from important meetings, projects, and communication, denied reasonable requests for medical leave, assigned work outside of his expertise, and effectively declared persona non grata to his colleagues,” they said.
Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner planes, which entered service in 2011, have a fifty-year lifespan or a capacity of roughly 44,000 flights each, the company said, as reported by CNN. The safety allegations are not new, however. For nearly two years beginning in 2021, the FAA and Boeing stopped deliveries of the new Dreamliners while they looked into the gaps. Boeing claimed to have made changes to its manufacturing process, and deliveries ultimately resumed.
Fasolada, the Greek bean soup, is ideal for Greek Orthodox Easter Lent. Credit: EYGASTRONOMES Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0
Fasolada, the delicious bean soup dubbed the “national dish” of Greece is at the forefront again, as it is every year during the forty days of Greek Orthodox Easter Lent.
For decades, the traditional bean soup has been a staple for countless Greek families and a comfort food for many. It is inexpensive, easy to make, and definitely rewarding, especially during the cold winter months.
Fasolada’s origins are humble and so are its ingredients: medium white beans, carrots, onions, celery leaves, grated tomatoes, olive oil, salt and pepper. It is a dish of cheap protein, humble ingredients, and elementary cooking.
Even though nowadays it is snubbed by non-traditionalists as the poor man’s dish and is not served in most big city restaurants, you can find it in rural taverns made fresh and with a lot of gusto. Nevertheless, it remains a favorite for many, as it reflects the real taste of Greece.
It is documented that fasolada was the staple of the great fighters of the Greek War of Independence two centuries ago. It is touching to close your eyes and imagine that a bowl of this humble bean soup filled the stomachs and warmed the hearts of those brave men who fought and possibly died so that we can be free today.
It wouldn’t be a terrible exaggeration to say that the modern Greek state started with a thirst for freedom, a loaded musket, a flag with a cross, and a battered tin bowl of fasolada.
The ideal food for Orthodox Lent
During the Lent for Greek Orthodox Easter, no meat or fish is allowed. Moreover, dairy foods cannot be consumed.
As a cheap and tasty source of protein, fasolada can sustain a Greek Orthodox believer through the forty days of Easter Lent. It is easy because there are so many flavors “swimming” in a bowl of Greek-style bean soup.
Another great thing about fasolada is that around the steaming deep dish, tradition dictates that there should be lots of different appetizers, such as olives, pickles, tomatoes and cucumber with vinegar, pickled vegetables, and—though not during Lent—savory fish like smoked herring, anchovies in vinegar, or Atlantic bonito in olive oil.
All these appetizers are like a bridge connecting summer to winter and the mountains to the sea and this all around a simple dish of Greek bean soup.
Let’s make fasolada
Making a Greek bean soup is very simple if you properly prepare for it. First of all, you need to soak the beans for twelve hours. You can do so at night when you are sleeping. You sleep and the beans are getting tender for you. Easy.
You boil the beans in water with one tablespoon of baking soda. The only challenge is exactly how long it will take and how much water is needed, which unfortunately no one knows before boiling them. So it’s good to be close by and keep an eye out every now and then to see if the beans need more water.
The traditional fasolada recipe for four people is:
500 gr. beans
½ tbsp. baking soda
2 carrots, sliced
2 onions finely chopped
3-4 stalks of celery, finely chopped, with their leaves
200-400 gr. diced tomatoes (depending on how red you want your beans)
50 ml. extra virgin olive oil Salt, Pepper
1 dried hot pepper (depending on how spicy you want it, you can add the whole pepper, a bit of it, or none at all)
It is important to check the beans once in a while and add water as needed. After the beans have boiled, add the onions, carrots, celery, hot pepper (optional, but great), salt and pepper, and olive oil. Now you can add the quantity of tomato you prefer. Allow the beans to simmer, adding boiling water if and when necessary until you see that it has curdled as you want.
The times and amount of water required in this recipe are always very much related to the quality of the raw ingredients and the degree to which “the beans are boiled and mushy.” It can take anywhere from an hour to two and a half hours. Keep the pot uncovered to allow the steam escape because that way, you will pay attention and check to see how the cooking is progressing every now and then.
Fasolada is so soothing in taste that it asks for intensity. This would be the hot, spicy taste that comes from the peppers. However, on the plate, it needs a pinch of raw extra virgin olive oil and a few drops of lemon for acidity. Surround your plate with goodies (no meat or fish during Lent) and enjoy like the Greek you are!
Hotel Lakonis, which took millions of euros to build and was dedicated to the gods with its spectacular circular atrium, lies abandoned. Public Domain
In one of the most beautiful beaches of the Peloponnese, Greece lies a derelict hotel that in its glory days was frequented by the international jet set.
Angelina Jolie, Sophia Loren and Telly Savalas were some of the celebrities who stayed in the 100-room luxury hotel with its serene surroundings and the magnificent beach.
Today Hotel Lakonis, which took millions of euros to build and was dedicated to the gods with its spectacular circular atrium, lies abandoned. It has been deserted since 2002. No one seems keen to touch it. “Some people think it is cursed,” a local restaurateur said back in 2015, when the British tabloid Daily Mail ran a feature on the hotel.
Situated a few kilometers away from the picturesque town of Gythio, the hotel took three decades to complete, but the developer who still owes a “significant amount of money” to banks and the state was forced to close it down.
Lakonis boasts a magnificent beach. Public Domain
The sale of the hotel bogged down in legal confusion
With its 900-feet (300m) long secluded beach, 59,000 square feet (5,500 sq. meters) of buildings – including 10 residential outbuildings – dedicated to gods including Artemis, Poseidon, Athena and Aphrodite – and 7.4 acres (30,000 sq. meters) of gardens, it remained for decades a prime site for development.
It has a parking facility for 100 vehicles and the main building is just 900 feet (300 meters) from its own secluded beach.
Its seafront is blue-flag class — meaning it’s been classified as one of the most pristine beaches in the world. There is also the opportunity to have a private marina built to accommodate luxury yachts.
But, despite efforts to attract investment over the years, the hotel had no takers until now. Selling agents had it listed for 5 million euros. But for years its sale has been bogged down in legal confusion.
A new lease of life for the derelict hotel in Greece
The former Hotel Lakonis is being transformed. Credit: Radisson Hotel Group
The property will open its doors again in 2025 as Radisson Blu Resort and will be the fifth consecutive Radisson Blu hotel in Greece after Athens, Crete, Mykonos, and Santorini.
The American multi-national hospitality company says that the hotel will offer a range of dining options, including an all-day dining restaurant, a terrace restaurant on the beach and a poolside bar. The resort offers relaxation by the pool or on its extensive, fully landscaped beach, a hotel fitness center and a 1.5km turtle nesting beach.
Situated near important archaeological sites such as the castles of Mystras and Monemvasia, and on the Blue Flag beach, Selinitsa Beach, the resort is 3 hours from Athens International Airport and less than 2 hours from Kalamata International Airport.
The hotel offers a wide range of accommodations, from standard and accessible rooms to suites, including a presidential suite. All rooms have a private outdoor terrace with ocean views. In addition, most suites have a private infinity pool for an added sense of luxury.
“The idyllic location of the Radisson Blu Resort, Mani will offer a stunning product complementing the rest of our portfolio in the region and the country,” Elie Milky, vice president of development for Greece, Cyprus and the Middle East at Radisson Hotel Group said recently.
Artist’s reconstruction of the entrance to the summer place at Archanes, Crete, Greece. Credit: Greek Ministry of Culture
Greek archaeologists uncovered recently the ruins of a Minoan palace at Archanes, on the island of Crete, which they believe served as a summer residence for the kings and the elite of nearby Knossos.
The Greek Ministry of Culture announced that excavations in 2023 at the site of the “Shinning Palace” added many new facts about the building and completed our knowledge of its architecture and construction.
The most interesting element of last year’s excavations was the discovery of the use of a shiny material, gypsum, for its construction known to have been used at Phaistos and Knossos. Gypsum is a very soft mineral and it can form very pretty, and sometimes extremely large colored crystals.
Excavations at the palace of Archanes. Credit: Greek Ministry of Culture
At the palace of Archanes, it was used as decoration in pilasters and doors creating an image of a shiny building, fit for the Minoan elite.
The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age civilization of Crete that flourished from about 3000 BC to about 1100 BC. Its name derives from Minos, either a dynastic title or the name of a particular ruler of Crete who has a place in Greek legend.
Ancient treasures at the Minoan Palace of Archanes, Crete
The Greek Ministry of Culture says that another new element discovered in the excavations was the identification of the point where a fire started, destroying much of the palace.
Archaeologists identified the point where a fire started at the Palace. Credit: Greek Ministry of Culture
Also, about 20 large jars containing wine, oil, and even textiles were found gathered together, as well as special vases for perfume and an Egyptian scarab.
In an excavated area, believed to have been a sanctuary, several vessels were uncovered, including a crystal vessel, a grey one of incised steatite, as well as fragments of obsidian. Obsidian is a naturally occurring volcanic glass formed when lava extruded from a volcano cools rapidly with minimal crystal growth.
A seal was uncovered at the palace ruins. Credit: Credit: Greek Ministry of Culture
Parts of microscopic samples of large vessels have also been found in the sanctuary. Another ritual find was a sea newt, which was an instrument for invoking the deity. Larger sea pebbles, which symbolize the deity’s marine status were also found.
The floors of the building were extremely elaborate with pebble floors, a mosaic of small slates, slate slabs bordered by thin mortar bands, and also clay slabs in one area. On the ground floor there were slabs of hewn ashlars.
Credit: Greek Ministry of Culture
The walls, which were preserved at a height of 2 meters, were thinly plastered. Fragments of delicate mortars (red, blue and black) show that they bear frescoes, which, will be carefully removed later.
Item representing a Minoan deity. Credit: Greek Ministry of Culture
Archanes was an important city
The importance of Archanes for the Minoans was established last century when Sir Arthur Evans was the first to characterize the site as palatial, declaring that Archanes was likely a Summer Palace for the Knossos kings.
The ancient town near Crete’s capital city, Heraklion, was an important hub in the region during Minoan times. Archaeological evidence indicates that ancient Archanes spread out over the same area as the modern town of Archanes.
The Greek Ministry of Culture announced that a new Archaeological Museum in Archanes will be created.
Earlier excavations unearthed features such as ashlar blocks, limestone plaques and blocks, plaster, wood, stucco floor tiles, gypsum, mud bricks, ironstone blocks, blue marble flooring, carved concave altars, frescoes and doorways.
A variety of porphyrite stone lamps, vases, amphorae, cooking pots, cups, lamps, tools and everyday domestic items such as tweezers have also been unearthed at the site.
Many of these ancient treasures will be exhibited at the new museum.
The Greek coastguard discovered the bodies of three girls. Credit: AMNA
The bodies of three migrant girls have been recovered by the Greek coastguard after their dinghy hit rocks on Chios Island in Greece.
19 migrants were rescued and the coastguard said three patrol vessels were looking for other possible survivors.
The boat began its journey to Greece from the Turkish Aegean coast opposite Chios.
Around 10,163 migrants reached Greece by sea so far this year.
Greece is a major arrival point for migrants seeking a better life in the European Union. For years, most headed for the eastern Aegean Sea islands, such as Lesvos, Chios, and Samos near the Turkish mainland.
But increased Greek and European Union sea patrols in the area have prompted smuggling gangs to also seek alternative routes, including from Libya to southern Crete and from Turkey to Italy around the southern Greek mainland.
Migrant flows to Greece move from the Aegean to Crete and Gavdos
Greece’s Immigration Minister expressed concern recently about the recent spike in the number of undocumented migrants arriving in the southern islands of Crete and Gavdos.
“The flow of migrants from eastern Libya is small, but with an increasing trend, which worries and concerns us, and that is why we are taking a series of initiatives to deal with this new front,” the Minister of Immigration and Asylum Dimitris Kairidis.
Earlier in April Greece pledged financial support for the Greek island of Gavdos and its larger neighbor Crete after a recent increase in migrant arrivals.
The tiny island of Gavdos, which has a population of just 70 people, lies south-west of Crete on a migrant route from Libya towards Europe. Since January this year, more than 1,180 migrants have arrived on both islands. The Libyan port of Tobruk is located around 200 kilometers away.
In contrast to the spike in southern Greece, Kairidis said that the situation is much better in the eastern Aegean and the border with Turkey at Evros.
“The situation in the eastern Aegean is very good as we are down more than 75 percent from the highs of last September and in the last few days, we have had almost no flow. At Evros, the flow has been reduced to zero,” the minister said.
Greece adopts tough policy on migration
Greece has adopted a tougher policy on illegal immigration during the reign of the conservative government.
PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis recently noted that “a fair migration policy does not mean open or non-existent borders, but rules.”
He pointed out that a European solution to the migration problem is needed and emphasized that the management of the problem will judge the credibility of the EU, adding that it must be proven in practice whether the EU knows how to translate its declarations into an effective policy.
He stressed that guarding its borders is non-negotiable for Greece. “An opponent of the state is anyone who is illegal,” Mitsotakis said, adding that illegal migrant flows in 2023 were much smaller than in previous years, and the government managed the problem much better than other European countries.
