Category: GREEK DIASPORA

News about Greeks around the world

Martin Luther King’s Great Greek Friend and Supporter

Archbishop Iakovos is known in the U.S. as the committed and caring pastor who put the Greek Orthodox Faith on the map for Americans and beyond. He is also known as the first Greek Archbishop in 350 years to officially confer with a pope, leaving behind a tremendous body of work as the primate of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in North and South America for 37 years.

However, Iakovos was also a champion of civil and human rights who showed his support to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. not only with his words, but also with his actions. He was one of the first powerful people to embrace the ideas of Dr. King and march hand in hand with him in 1965 in Selma, Ala.

“He had received threats if he would dare to walk with Dr. King, but he never thought twice of his decision,” says a close aid and friend of the Archbishop.

This historic moment for America was captured on the cover of LIFE Magazine on March 26, 1965. (The entire magazine is online and can be read here.)

The New York Times reported, “The striking cover of Time magazine that showed Dr. King side by side with the black-garbed Archbishop Iakovos marked a new presence of Greek Americans and the Greek Orthodox church in American life.”

Iakovos vigorously supported the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights legislation, exclaiming when the first bill was passed:

GLORY TO THE MOST HIGH! MAY THIS MARK THE BEGINNING OF A NEW AGE FOR ALL HUMANKIND, AN ERA WHEN THE WORD OF GOD CHARTS AND GUIDES OUR LIVES.”

Known throughout the world as a dynamic participant in the contemporary ecumenical movement for Christian Unity, Archbishop Iakovos served for nine years as president of the World Council of Churches, established dialogues with Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Southern Baptists and Black Church leaders and initiated Orthodox Dialogue with Judaism. In a successful effort to promote closer ties among Orthodox jurisdictions, he founded the Standing conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas (SCOBA) in 1960. He was the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Nation’s highest civilian honor, bestowed by President Jimmy Carter on June 9, 1980.

Iakovos’ decision to support Dr. King, and the publicity his action received, brought Greek-Americans and African-Americans much closer, resulting in a friendship that the two communities celebrate until this day!

(usa.greekreporter.com)

January 24, 2016
Greece Among Countries With Most Citizens Living Overseas

OECD ranked its country members based on the number of people living overseas. Ireland came first, with the highest number of citizens living in countries overseas, even though the country is quickly recovering from the devastating impact of an economic crisis.

There are approximately 35,300 Irish migrants living overseas. These people fled the country between April 2014 and April 2015.

A graph published by Forbes shows the top ten countries in the list, including New Zealand, Portugal, Mexico, Luxembourg and Iceland.

Greece was ranked 11th, with 6.6% of the native-born population living abroad in 2014.

Countries with large populations, such as Brazil, Japan, the US and China are among the countries with the smaller number of native born people living overseas.

(greece.greekreporter.com)

January 24, 2016
First MS treatment to bear Greek signature

The release of the first Greek-patented therapy against multiple sclerosis (MS) is only a matter of time.

A long-term and costly venture by a group of four medical researchers, in collaboration with the University of Patras and VIANEX SA, the largest Greek pharmaceutical company in Greece and founded by the Giannakopoulos family, seems to be bearing fruit.

Yiannis Matsoukas, professor of chemistry at the University of Patras, and his team obtained the first world patent for a ground-breaking therapeutic, which could treat hundreds of thousands of people suffering from MS.

MS is an autoimmune, demyelinating disease of the central nervous system, for which numerous treatment options have been made available to patients; however, these options need to be improved as they remained elusive and limited.

Dr Matsoukas, along with Maria Katsara, George Deraos and acclaimed Greek Australian researcher Vasso Apostolopoulos, have reviewed the current drugs and therapeutic approaches available to MS patients, pre-clinical trial interventions and recent animal model studies.

The team have confirmed the discovery of a ‘trigger’, as well as possible blockers, in order to develop a new MS treatment that will stop the disease from progressing.

“My collaboration with Professor Matsoukas has been ongoing since 1999,” Melbourne-based medical researcher Vasso Apostolopoulos tells Neos Kosmos.

“Dr Matsoukas was interested in working on MS by using the same method I developed for cancer vaccination; something I have been working on for over 20 years. So the chemists have created a formula based on it.”

Professor Apostolopoulos stresses that this new patent for MS is not a vaccine, but an immunotherapeutic method.

“Vaccines are meant to prevent disease. This method basically stops it from progressing,” she explains.

“All the evidence we’ve had so far in animal models and pre-clinical studies have shown that it intercepts Multiple Sclerosis.”

Meanwhile, the research, will move to Melbourne, under the guidance of Professor Apostolopoulos, where the formula is being modified to be made suitable for humans.

“The funding has been secured. We are finally reaching a point where we can recruit patients to get tested once we get approved by ethics and get all the paperwork out of the way,” the professor says.

“We are hoping to do so in approximately nine months, thanks to VIANEX.”

Dimitris Giannakopoulos, Vice President and deputy CEO of VIANEX SA has confirmed that the promising treatment will be made available to patients as soon as the human testing study is complete.

“We wouldn’t have progressed so far with our project if it wasn’t for the Giannakopoulos family’s support,” Apostolopoulos adds.

“The fact that this research started from Greece, that there’s a Greek company involved and innovative things are happening during these hard times for our country is of great importance.”

(neoskosmos.com)

January 24, 2016
Ted Sarandos Talks Netflix Boom and Greek Heritage

We caught up with Netflix’s content mastermind, Ted Sarandos, to discuss the online network’s rapid expansion as well as his company’s nine Golden Globe nominations.

Ted Sarandos, a Greek-American whose family hails from the Greek island of Samos, has been credited as the visionary executive who reshaped how, when, and where we watch entertainment.

Sarandos’ strategy for Netflix over the past years included a push to create original content on the streaming service, which has since led to many critically and commercially successful shows as well as expand the company’s presence around the globe.

The Greek-American has been in charge of Netflix’s content acquisition since 2000.

(hollywood.greekreporter.com)

January 24, 2016