Nikos Konstandaras

We've heard it before, that cameras on our streets will force Greek drivers to improve their behavior, reducing the number of deaths and injuries that make our roads among the most dangerous in the European Union. In the past, though, the cameras turned out to be useless, and their handling was inadequate or nonexistent. Drivers ignored them and continued to violate the traffic code. Whether showing off, indifferent to our own and others' safety, whether accepting fatalistically that the high number of dead and injured is an unavoidable tax for an unruly nation, whether seduced by political charlatans, the result is that last year we recorded 60 deaths per million inhabitants, with the EU average at 46. Improving infrastructure and imposing better vehicle maintenance help up to a point. What is needed is coordination between state services, credible policing and the acquiescence of citizens.

It was always clear that the challenge of bringing together eminent Greeks from all over the world in one network would be a difficult but worthy effort. And this is what the nonprofit “e Komvos – e Node: Networks of Global Hellenism” is attempting, after years of preparation.

The flare-up in the Syrian war has shaken an already unsteady region. At this point, without evidence, it is impossible to know whether the Islamist rebels of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) acted on their own, seeing the weakness of the regime's allies Russia and Iran, to take a large chunk of territory that includes Aleppo, or whether foreign powers pushed them to do so. Who gains and who loses from these latest developments?

Just five days ago, the new European Commission came into office. In the six months since the European Parliament elections, France has fallen into

One is the richest man in the world, a disrupter of every sector that drew his attention, the other is the world's most powerful man, at the head of the greatest economic and military power humanity has known. They collaborated in the one's election to the United States presidency, where he will enjoy unfettered power because of the damage that he inflicted on institutions in his earlier term. Elon Musk spent some 250 million dollars, much time and boundless personal energy to get Donald Trump elected. Today, they are working together to shape a government that will further undermine the state's structure, in accordance with Trump's will. Together they are selecting the heads of agencies that are entrusted with regulating sectors in which Musk and other Trump friends are active. This leadership duo has the obvious goal of multiplying each other's power, at the expense of institutions and their competitors (in politics, business, and so on). Unlike the institution of the two consuls who ran Rome (before it developed into an empire), these two have no intention of checking each other's excesses. Rather, they want to enable each other further. This will make them even more powerful, a threat to the political, social and business life of the United States and the rest of the world. And yet, in this omnipotence lies their weakness.

The speed of the Assad regime’s fall took everyone by surprise. The only people who might have suspected how hollow it was must have been the Russians and Iranians who had been propping it up.

Kimberly Guilfoyle’s nomination as US ambassador to Athens is a high-risk challenge for Greece, which may bring significant rewards but may also cause new upheaval in the long and often turbulent US-Greece relationship.

Establishing a Truth Commission on missing persons on Cyprus is an initiative whose time may have come. It would allow the relatives of the missing to learn the circumstances of their loved ones’ deaths in the bicommunal troubles and in the Turkish invasion of Cyprus.

Donald Trump’s inauguration as 47th president of the United States is a month away. The ritual of succession, and the “serial number” of the office holder provide a sense of normalcy to the assumption of the superpower’s highest office – and Trump was indeed elected by democratic process.

When archaeologists speak of the past, present and future, they mean a lot more than we do in our daily conversations. When these archaeologists use science in their research, or are scientists involved in archaeology, then these terms take on even deeper meaning. When the subject of discussion concerns not only their research but their profession itself, then we are at a point that interests not only specialists but also anyone who cares about knowledge and humanity's march through the millennia.