In Brief
Tilos – Hunting banned on island after widespread protests A ban on hunting on the Dodecanese island of Tilos was signed yesterday by Agriculture Undersecretary Fotis Hatzimihalis for the seventh year in a row. The original decision was taken by the local municipality in conjunction with the inhabitants of the island, which is a halting point for migrating birds, many of them endangered. The majority of residents are against hunting and had staged several protests over the past few days demanding a ban. The Panhellenic Network of Ecological Organizations also had petitioned Hatzimihalis, saying that Tilos had a sensitive ecosystem and that the island was dependent on developing environmental tourism. Obesity Greece third in world in terms of percentage Greece is third on the list of countries with the largest percentage of obese people, following South Africa and Kuwait, according to data presented in Athens yesterday to mark the beginning of Obesity Week. According to the president of the Greek Medical Association against Obesity, Dr. Ioannis Kaklamanos, over one third of European Union citizens are overweight and one in 10 is obese. Kaklamanos said the frequency of obesity cases in Europe had increased by 10-40 percent over the past 10 years and if this trend continues, by 2030 up to 70 percent of the European population will be overweight and 40-50 percent obese. Lesperoglou Prosecutor ill, trial postponed The trial of alleged terrorist Avraam Lesperoglou for the murder of prosecutor Georgios Theofanopoulos and other crimes was recessed yesterday after prosecutor Aikaterini Pistoli was taken ill. The trial is to resume tomorrow with the testimony of further witnesses. The court has heard from a number of witnesses that they do not recognize Lesperoglou, who is charged with involvement in crimes attributed to the Anti-State Struggle group. New universities. The Education Ministry has recommended the founding of two new universities, in Western Macedonia and Eastern Sterea (central Greece), rejecting applications from another 300 parliamentary deputies, prefectural and municipal officials, and various associations for tertiary institutions in their areas. The criterion used was the maximum number of students that is considered feasible for a community, which in this case is 200 students per 1,000 inhabitants. Hunger strike. Veteran leftist politician Manolis Glezos has written to Interior Minister Vasso Papandreou asking her to take pity on the villagers of Vrahasi, on the island of Crete, who are on a hunger strike in protest against the incorporation of their municipality with the neighboring one of Neapoli. If the concept of self-determination… is foreign to those in power… I hope that human feelings are not, he wrote. Drug deaths. A total of 54 people have died of drug overdoses in Thessaloniki this year, the Macedonian News Agency reported yesterday. The latest death was that of a 25-year-old man whose body was found by his father in his home in Ano Poli. Saving Koroneia. Nearly 1 billion drachmas from the European Union’s Cohesion Fund is to go to restoring Lake Koroneia, in northern Greece, which is at risk of completely drying up. Approval for the funds was announced yesterday at a briefing at the Thessaloniki prefecture. Head of coordination for the project, Giorgos Kouyiamis, said that 985 million drachmas had been approved for a environmental study, a preliminary study on the transfer of water from the Aliakmonas River, another on industrial waste processing and disposal, and a study on partially diverting the Lagadikia and Scholari watercourses. Youth sentenced. A court in Tripolis, in the Peloponnese, yesterday sentenced 18-year-old Marinos Mitsopoulos to life imprisonment. Mitsopoulos, from Arfara, Messinia, was convicted of the murder of his grandfather, Athanasios Polychronis, in November last year. Traffic education. Photographs of traffic on Greece’s roads since 1927, a time when there were still more donkeys than motor vehicles, are currently on show at the 1st Traffic Exhibition currently running at the Piraeus Municipal Theater (10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 6-8 p.m.), aimed at instilling younger people in particular with a better road sense.
