In Brief
STUDENT PROTEST
Sit-ins at Thessaloniki universities as opposition to reforms increase Students in Thessaloniki said on Saturday that they were staging long-term sit-in protests at 34 departments of the city’s Aristotle University to show their opposition to the government’s plans to reform higher education. They are particularly opposed to plans for private universities to operate in Greece. Students said that they had also taken over 21 departments of Thessaloniki’s technical college. There are similar sit-ins taking part in other parts of the country, but the ruling conservatives have said they will not be deterred by the protests. ON COURSE Minister wants golfers in Greece Attracting more golfers to Greece will be one of the country’s chief tourism targets over the coming years, Tourism Minister Fani Palli-Petralia said yesterday. She was visiting the island of Crete, which is hosting Greece’s first international golf tournament. «Crete is an ideal destination for all those people who play golf,» she said. The minister said that the government is preparing a draft law to help develop the game in Greece. «We have to create golf courses over the next few years because there is great interest and investment opportunities,» Palli-Petralia added. Environment day President Karolos Papoulias yesterday called on politicians and citizens to make a greater effort to curb widespread pollution ahead of today’s World Environment Day. «Environmental destruction is being provoked in the name of so-called development programs without end,» Papoulias said. «We need a radical change in mentality and behavior, we need to face our responsibilities as environmental disaster is the consequence of our daily habits,» he added. Organ donations The organs of a 26-year-old man clinically dead after a road accident were flown to hospitals in three different cities on Saturday after the victim’s parents approved the donations. The lungs, heart and kidneys of Giorgos Kokkinidis were sent to transplant patients in Vienna, Athens and Thessaloniki respectively. River drowning A 42-year-old man was found drowned in the Almopeos River in northern Greece on Saturday, some 24 hours after he had gone missing, authorities said. Rescue workers had tried to find the unnamed man. His body was eventually found near the village of Exoplatano in Pella. Authorities did not describe the circumstances in which the man disappeared.
