Athens News Agency: News in English, 11-06-28

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From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>

CONTENTS

[01] Mid-Term fiscal programme vote on Wed.

[02] Special Olympics event

[03] More fossil finds on Lesvos

[01] Mid-Term fiscal programme vote on Wed.

A heated three-day debate opened on Monday on the plan, ratification of which has been set out by the Eurozone and IMF as a condition for the continued financing of Greece, goes before the Parliament plenary.

The programme will be put to vote in Parliament on Wednesday amidst reactions by the opposition and trade unions and a 48-hour strike in protest of austerity measures and the Medium-Term programme, as well as planned privatisations of certain state utilities and organisations that was launched on Tuesday.

Discussion of the enabling law opens in Parliament's standing committee on economic affairs on Tuesday morning, to be completed the same day, while debate on the law will begin on Wednesday afternoon and completed at noon Thursday with a vote. (ANA-MPA)

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[02] Special Olympics event

"Despite the crisis, Greece is present," Greek prime minister George Papandreou said, adding that the country welcomes the efforts of the young people.

"We have a common Odyssey, but with a clear destination, which is a better and juster society," the premier said, welcoming in parliament the 250 members of the Session for Young Participants.

The special session was also addressed by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, who is in Athens for the Special Olympics. "In these Games, everyone is an a priori winner in self-esteem and self-confidence," he said.

Parliament president Filippos Petsalnikos welcomed the guests "to the land that gave birth to democracy and the Olympic Ideal".

The special session was also attended by Special Olympics Hellas organising committee president Joanna Despotopoulou, Special Olympics chairman and CEO Dr. Timothy Shriver, and former prime ministers. (ANA-MPA)

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[03] More fossil finds on Lesvos

More than 20 million years ago, the massive lake in what is now the northwestern part of the island of Lesvos and the surrounding area, with its subtropical climate, was covered by layers of lava and became petrified. Today's visitors to the area of Sigri, but also Antissa and Eressos, enjoy a tranquil natural environment and the singular geopark of western Lesvos with its unique petrified trees.(ANA-MPA)

Visitors to the Petrified Forest have justifiably been wondering about the apparent lack of animal life or, rather, fossils. The answer to their questions came a few years ago when excavations by scientists from the Sigri Petrified Forest Museum of Natural History brought to light, in the region of Gavathas, Antissa, the first indications of the existence of a large mammal. The first find, a fossilised lower jaw of a prehistoric form of a trunked animal, a proboscidean, was later identified by researchers as a representative of the Bavarian prodeinothere (species Prodeinotherium bavaricum). Although similar to today's elephants, the prodeinothere had downward curving tusks located in the lower jawbone. It is one of the lowest fossils of a vertebrate animal found in Greece to date and comes from one of the first trunked animals that migrated from Africa to Europe.(ANA-MPA)

And then...nothing. At least up until a few days ago, at the 9th congress of the European Association of Vertebrate Paleontologists (EAVP) organised by the Crete Museum of Natural History in Irakleio, where geologist/paleontologist Katerina Vassiliadou, researcher at the Sigri Museum of Natural History, unveiled an incredible world of inhabitants that once lived among the fossilized trees in the Petrified Forest of Lesvos: snails, lake fish, reptiles and even prehistoric crocodiles, as well as small mammals, living creatures that walked the earth in this small part of the world millions of years before the advent of man.(ANA-MPA)

The conclusions of the Lesvos Museum of Natural History's recent research activities in the Antissa area and discovery of a small layer of lake sediment rich in fossils of small animals were presented at the 9th EAVP annual meeting in Irakleio, Crete.(ANA-MPA)

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