Athens News Agency: News in English, 09-09-03

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

CONTENTS

[01] PM Karamanlis announces snap general elections

[02] The wondrous world of the deep at the Corfu Shell Museum

[01] PM Karamanlis announces snap general elections

In prefacing the announcement, he underlined the need for immediate and significant reforms and measures to deal with the repercussions of the global financial crisis and what he called decades-old problems in the domestic economy and public sector.

Among others, Karamanlis said strict fiscal discipline, a "war" on tax evasion -- a severe problem in the east Mediterranean nation -- and long-sought structural reforms are imperative, reforms, however, he said necessitate a stable political system.

Along those lines, he said the main opposition party's decision to force early elections next March by utilising Parliament's vote for a new President of the Republic led to his decision.

Karamanlis said he has already briefed President Karolos Papoulias over his decision and will visit the latter on Thursday to formally request early elections.

[02] The wondrous world of the deep at the Corfu Shell Museum

The Museum is the realisation of a life's dream for diver and collector Napoleon Sagias, who lived for more than 20 years in Australia and used to travel with his team to the Indian and Pacific Ocean for diving excursions and his hobby of shell collecting. In 1989 he moved back with his family to Greece, to his hometown of Corfu, where he established the Corfu Shell Museum.

"After many years of dangerous expeditions, through cyclones, tides, heat, poisonous snakes, crocodiles and shark-infested waters of the Tropical seas and islands, my family and I managed to collect many specimens from the beautiful world of the deep," says Sagias.

The Museum contains many thousands of impressive and rare species from most seas of the planet and possesses one of the largest and most complete shell collections in Europe.

On display are shells, fossils, sponges, corals, stuffed fish, sharks and shark teeth, lobsters, crabs, sea urchins, snakes and more from the Indian and the Pacific Ocean, as well as from the Mediterranean Sea, including a unique exhibit of the Cypraea Fultoni shell, one of the rarest shells in the world.

The exhibits are mainly from the personal collection of Napoleon Sagias, but also from donations made to the Museum.

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