Metamorphosis Day School was established in Toronto and accomodates today, up to 200 children from Junior Kindergarten to 8th Grade.
During a recent conference that took place in Canada, the school board underlined that there is a need to expand the school due to the number of students that is boosted every year ( 20% per year).
Metamorphosis is one of the best schools in Canada. Students study Greek, English and French. The tuition fees are $7.500.00 per student for an academic year. It was established thanks to the President of the School board, Mrs. Toula Reppa, who paid great sums of money for its inauguration.
Subsidies for “green” hotels would reach 45%, according to an announcement by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The department stated this on the occasion of the launch of “Green Tourism” programme, which is subsidized by the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF).
The program has a total budget of 30 million euro. It aims to strengthen the existing business projects of hotels, camping and rented rooms and apartments, which have been operating before January 1st, 2009. Specifically, companies can achieve:
1. Reduction of operating costs by saving energy, water and integrated waste management
2. High quality services – Attraction of new customers
3. Ecological certification
4. Enhancement of environmental awareness
5. Strengthening of corporate social responsibility
It should be noted that the investment projects are funded by the programme “Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship” of the Ministry of Development.
Specifically, the funding supports: improvement of energy efficiency of buildings and use of Renewable Energy, development and implementation of water conservation system, integration of waste management (solid and liquid waste), integration of environmental/energy-efficient technologies and machinery, development of “green” policies and procedures, integration of environmental standards and, finally, awareness and promotion of environmental “profiles” of subsidized companies.
The total budget per project may vary from 15,000 up to 400,000 euro.
State funds a 40% of the total investment. Especially, on small islands with a population less than 3,100 residents, state’s funding can reach 45%.
Interested entrepreneurs should submit their proposing projects electronically until February 25, 2011, through the website www.ependyseis.gr/mis.
Additionally, those interested in participating in the program can obtain information from the following websites: www.visitgreece.gr, www.yppo.gr, www.espa.gr, www.ependyseis.gr, www.antagonistikotita.gr and: www.efepae.gr, and call center 801-11-36-300.
33 year-old Giorgos Kioulafas, president of the community of Vourliotes on Samos island and head of the local group of volunteer firemen, was awarded for his volunteer action and made the island of Samos popular all over the world. In a special ceremony held in the University Pontificia Urbaniana of the Vatican a few days ago, Giorgos Kioulafas was awarded the “International Giuseppe Sciacca” prize for his social action. “The volunteer offer as well as the work done by the groups of volunteers are beyond price”, said Giorgos Kioulafas.
The famous musical “Mamma Mia”, which was filmed on the island of Skopelos and made Greece popular all over the world, was broadcasted on Christmas. It was broadcasted by the public Austrian channel and by the public German channel ZDF. This is very important as Greece is promoted in many European countries, as millions of people watched this movie on the television. It is also important to know that the musical “Mamma Mia” was first played in 2008 in 21 cinemas in Vienna and made a box office record.
Bomb squad experts defused a package bomb that was delivered to the Greek Embassy in Rome on Monday, four days after similar mail bombs exploded at two other embassies, wounding two people.
Carabinieri Col. Maurizio Mezzavilla said the bomb was similar to the ones that exploded Thursday at the Chilean and Swiss embassies. An anarchist group with reported ties to Greek anarchists claimed responsibility for those blasts.
“Having been done in the same way, we can just hypothesize that there is the same hand behind it,” Greek Ambassador Michalis Kambanis said at the embassy, although he added that he knew of no specific claim of responsibility.
Greek Foreign Ministry spokesman Gregoris Delavekouras said from Athens that no one was harmed in the latest incident, in part because heightened security measures had already been put in place.
“The embassy was evacuated and the staff assembled some distance away from the building, so that everyone could be accounted for,” he told The Associated Press.
“There were already heightened security measures at the Greek and other embassies, so the procedure that had to be followed was clear.”
Police, carabinieri and firefighters massed around the building Monday while the Greek Embassy staff lingered outside. The street, in the residential Parioli neighborhood, remained open to traffic.
Ambassador Kambanis said the package, hand addressed to the embassy, was discovered at about 10:30 a.m.
On Christmas night Anna Vissi was singing live at the Athenon Arena music hall when a man from the audience threw a toilet paper roll on stage. The Greek singer stopped the program and extremely nervously, asked the man to come on stage. The following video shows what happened next.
The man got on stage and Anna asked him to admit that he was wrong. The man admits his mistake and then Anna continues the show. The reason why he threw the item at the singer is unknown, but Greeks in Greece are dealing with a lot of stress during this financial crisis. Small incidents of troubled behavior have increased lately.
[youtube]9fHLy3I2v_I&feature[/youtube] (source: oikotimes)
A moderate earthquake measuring 4.3 on the Richter scale shook today at 07:08 a.m. in the sea region between Imvros and Samothrace. There are no immediate reports of damage or casualties.
According to the official report of the Geodynamic Institute of the National Observatory in Athens, the quake’s epicenter was 320 km northeastward of Athens. At the moment the phenomenon is in progress and is being observed by specialised seismologists.
More treasures from the Greco-Roman era have been unearthed at the Dime Al-Sebaa archaeological site, two kilometres north of Qarun Lake near Fayoum.
This week the archaeological site of Soknopaiou Nesos in Fayoum was a hive of activity. Workers along with Italian and Egyptian excavators, were busy brushing the sand off a large collection of 150 Roman Ostraca (a clay fragment engraved with ancient Egyptian writings) engraved with demotic text. Each ostracon is inscribed with the name of a priest who served in the Soknopaios Temple.
“It is really a complete archive that highlights not only the names of priests who served in the temple during the Greco-Roman era but religious practices and the prosopography of Greco-Roman Egypt as well,” said Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA).
For his part, Mario Capasso, director of the Italian mission, from Università del Salento, suggests that the newly discovered ostraca were originally kept in a storeroom situated in a courtyard in front of the Soknopaios Temple, which makes him believes that it was thrown out of the temple during a clandestine excavation at the end of the 19th century.
Further studies on the newly discovered ostraca will reveal more of the site’s history and religious aspects. Soknopaiou Nesos is a very important site for the understanding of Greco-Roman society in Egypt because of its excellent state of preservation and the amount of papyri and other inscribed material found at the site.
Civilisation at the site reached its peak during the first and second century AD as it sat along a major trade route. In addition to the Ptolemaic temple of Soknopaios, the site is well known for a collection of sphinxes, as well as Roman and demotic papyri.
Former Greek Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis and former deputy Foreign Minister Mr. Valinakis, together with their wives, visited Munich. When they arrived at the airport in Munich, Greek expatriates realized their presence and attacked them verbally in a virulent way. German police had to protect them and helped them escape from the angry crowd.
The anti-Semitic statements of Metropolitan Seraphim of Piraeus caused a lot of reactions and disappointed in the Greek Orthodox community of America. In an interview on Mega TV in Greece, Metropolitan Seraphim of Piraeus blamed Jews for orchestrating the Holocaust and accused “world Zionism” of a conspiracy to enslave Greece and the Orthodox Church. The bishop also charged Jewish bankers with controlling international finance.
The Greek Archdiocese renounced the statements of the Metropolitan, as it considers them extremely offensive and completely rejectable. The Supreme President of AHEPA (American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association) Nick Karakostas, renounced the above mentioned statements and characterized them disgraceful, fanatic and unacceptable.
Metamorphosis Day School was established in Toronto and accomodates today, up to 200 children from Junior Kindergarten to 8th Grade.
