General News
Meropi Kyriacou Honored as TNH Educator of the Year
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
A parasite of unknown origins is destroying the giant pinna clams of the Aegean Sea, where it has spread from other parts of the Mediterranean. The problem first appeared in 2016 in Spain, where it decimated the population of this endemic Mediterranean shellfish species (Pinna nobilis), which resembles a large mussel. Since that time, the disease has spread to the seas of France and Italy, before reaching the Greek archipelago last summer.
Following repeated reports about dead pinna in several parts of the Aegean, a team of research scientists from the University of Mytilene (Oceanography and Sea Bioscience Dept), the University of Thessaly (Veterinary Department), and the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research examined pinna populations in 13 different sites in the seas around the island of Lesvos, finding mass mortality rates that exceeded 93 pct.
“We reached the conclusion that the mass mortality was caused by a protozoan, a small organism that harms only the pinnas. We do not know how it came here. We suppose that it was carried in the ballast water of ships,” marine ecology scientist Stelios Katsanevakis, who works in the University of Mytilene Oceanography Department, told the Athens-Macedonian News Agency.
Scientists stressed their concern, noting that a fully endemic and iconic Mediterranean species, which can reach up to a meter in length, may be facing the threat of extinction. The Spanish have already classed the pinna as a “critically endangered species” and scientists have focused their efforts on the protection of the existing populations.
Katsanevakis explained that it is not possible to try to kill a parasite in the sea because of the risks that the extermination process poses for other marine organisms. What can be done, he said, is to locate healthy pinna populations and study the environmental conditions, such as combinations of temperature and salinity, that best deter the parasite. Scientists can then try to duplicate these conditions for selected populations of the species, in order to protect them from infection by the parasite and consequently from extinction.
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza (AP) — An international team of doctors visiting a hospital in central Gaza was prepared for the worst.
NICOSIA - A meeting between the ministers of energy for Cyprus and Israel - George Papanastasiou and Eli Cohen - led to an agreement that the countries would make an underwater electric cable link a top priority, linking them to Europe.
LONDON (AP) — The British Museum on Thursday appointed National Portrait Gallery chief Nicholas Cullinan as its new director, as the 265-year-old institution grapples with the apparent theft of hundreds of artifacts and growing international scrutiny of its collection.
ATHENS - The European Union needs to get involved in the case of the two-year jail sentence given ethnic Greek Fredi Beleri who was elected Mayor of the seaside town of Himare and said the trial was a farce to get him and protect Prime Minister Edi Rama’s business friends.
Brace yourself for what could be another scorching summer in Greece as scientists are anxious that a warm winter - the warmest January recorded - and climate change will continue to bring weather anomalies.