SETimes.comScience and technology: Greece to focus on "green" education
07/01/2008
The education ministry in Greece plans to offer more environmental lessons in schools. Also in news this week: Serbia's environment fines will increase nearly 20 times and BiH lags behind in e-banking.
Greece's Education Ministry announced plans on Thursday (January 3rd) to prioritise environmental education in schools, in which currently only 15% of students participate. In junior high, environmental lessons are offered on a voluntary basis after school, while in primary schools two hours per week are allotted to the topic.
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Serbia's Environment Minister Sasa Dragin said on December 28th that his ministry has drafted a new law that would hike fines for environmental polluters by nearly 20 times. Officials are betting it would be cheaper for industrial companies to buy purification equipment and use environmentally friendly technologies rather than pay heavy fines.
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Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) still lags behind its neighbours in e-banking, the head of the BiH Electronic Banking Bureau (EBB), Seadeta Ceric, said at a conference in Sarajevo last month. Presently, 16 banks are members of the EBB and provide e-banking services.
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About 70% of Macedonians have mobile phones, while 75% have a fixed-line connection, A1 TV said on December 28th citing data by the national statistics office. Only 20% of the population -- or 400,000 people -- use the internet, but this is a dramatic increase from the 30,000 users in 2000.
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BirdLife Cyprus, a conservation group, announced in a recent report that an estimated 500,000 songbirds were killed in Cyprus in 2007 despite a local ban on the practice. The birds, mainly warblers and robins, end up served in local restaurants fried or pickled as a specialty called "ampelopoulia".
(Various sources – 31/12/07-07/01/08)