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.
SANTORINI – After Greek-American rock star Tommy Lee complained about animal cruelty in the use of donkeys on the popular island of Santorini that are used to carry tourists up hundreds of cliffside stairs, the government said overweight tourists riding them could be fined.
That would be as much as 30,000 euros ($33,402.60) Greek Agriculture Minister Makis Voridis said, according to the British newspaper The Sun in a report on the growing outcry from animal rights groups with donkey owners reacting furiously in opposition.
Animal rights charities in 2018 revealed that heavy and obese tourists were being carried up steep and narrow stairways on the island with the donkeys being a lucrative trade for owners although many of the animals had open wounds and were exhausted working long hours in often brutal heat with little shade or water.
A video revealed some of them being whipped and hit by their owners as they carried people across the island and showed the owners attacking peaceful animal rights activists carrying signs in protest.
The Greek government introduced legislation last year that made it illegal for the donkeys to carry anything or anyone weighing more than 15 stone (210 lbs.) or “one-fifth of their body weight,” but it wasn’t said whether the owners could be fined for animal abuse.
Lee, born to an American father of the same name and mother, Vassilikki “Voula” Papadimitriou, a Greek beauty queen who died in 2012, wrote an open letter to Greek authorities asking them to crack down on the “sicking abuse” of the strained donkeys.
It wasn’t said how the fines would be enforced on an island where the donkeys bring in a lot of money from tourists on one of the world’s most popular vacation spots or how it would be determined whether someone is overweight.
A spokesman for Help the Santorini Donkeys charity also claims that animals should carry “no more than 20 percent of their own body weight,” the paper said, adding that: “The obese and overweight tourists, combined with the lack of shade and water as well as the sheer heat and 568 cobbled steps, is what is causing such a problem.
“There should be a weight restriction. With donkeys it is should be no more than eight stone (112 pounds,) but how would that be imposed and who would be there to make sure that happened?”
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.