Athens News Agency: News in English, 02-09-15

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

CONTENTS

[01] Consumer groups call for fruit, vegetables boycott this week

[02] Culture minister arrives in Istanbul for UNESCO conference

[03] Weather Monday - Cloudy, rain

[01] Consumer groups call for fruit, vegetables boycott this week

Greeces best-known consumer advocacy groups reiterated their call over the weekend to consumers for a boycott of fruits and vegetables between Monday and Thursday, part of a growing grassroots dissatisfaction with the countrys cost-of-living index of late.

The Consumers Institute (IN.KA) and the General Federation of Greek Consumers are promoting the new action in the wake of a successful Sept. 3 nationwide boycott of stores and markets. People were also asked to symbolically turn off their homes main power switch for a couple of minutes in the evening and refrain from making calls, actions aimed at the state-affiliated power and telephone utilities.

In a press release, IN.KA called on consumers to ?exert, with their absence from the fruit and vegetable markets, the necessary pressure for a rationalisation of prices in the food sector.?

The consumer group has long charged that fruit and vegetable merchants retailers, wholesalers and open market vendors have increased prices since the introduction of the euro on Jan. 1 at a higher rate than any other category of foodstuffs, including processed items.

IN.KA also decried what it calls the great disparity between prices paid to local producers and the final price consumers pay at the supermarket counter or at the green grocer.

[02] Culture minister arrives in Istanbul for UNESCO conference

ISTANBUL (ANA - A.Kourkoulas) -- Greek Culture Minister Evangelos Venizelos arrived here on Sunday to participate in the 3rd 'Round Table' of UNESCO member-states' culture ministers, which begins on Monday.

Venizelos will address the conference on the theme of "Humanity's Spiritual and Cultural Inheritance and the Search for a Culture of Cultures". On Tuesday he will be received by Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomeos and hold separate talks with Turkish soccer federation officials.

[03] Weather Monday - Cloudy, rain

Rain and thunderstorms are forecast for most of Greece on Monday, with conditions slowly clearing up heading into the late afternoon. Southerly winds, strong to gusty, in the Aegean, switching to the northwest later in the day. Temperatures between 13C to 23C in the north; 15C to 27C in the mainland and 19C to 28C on the islands.

Morning showers in Athens, clearing up later in the day, 18C to 27C. Cloudy in Thessaloniki, 15C to 23C.

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