Metro workers have called off the 24-hour strike they were due to stage today. In a statement, the employees said they were postponing their action to allow time for new Transport Minister Evripidis Stylianidis to deal with their objections to the contract offered to them. The metro workers believe the contract prevents them from practicing collective bargaining in the future. The employees warned that if their demands are not met, they will strike next week instead. Meanwhile, there will be no trolley bus service today between noon and 5 p.m. due to a work stoppage by employees who are also protesting their collective contract offered to them.

As many as 35 organizations have said they will take part in a rally against racism in Athens on Sunday to protest the death of a Bangladeshi man who was found lying in a ditch in Votanikos near the Aliens Bureau on Saturday. Hussein Jahankir, 30, was the second person to be found dead near the building where migrants line up every weekend to be among the few picked to submit their asylum applications. The head of the Bangladeshi community in Greece, Mohammed Golam Maola, stressed that Sunday’s protest will be peaceful.

A prosecutor in Athens began questioning witnesses yesterday in connection to the attack on cleaner and unionist Constantina Kuneva last month. Unknown assailants threw acid over Kuneva, who is still in critical condition. Up to 30 people wearing hoods stormed the offices of the Labor Inspectorate in Thessaloniki yesterday in sympathy with the Bulgarian.

Thirteen tons of medical supplies collected by the Foreign Ministry in cooperation with Parliament are to be flown to Tel Aviv today for the people of Gaza as part of the “Bridge of Hope” humanitarian campaign. Meanwhile, various organizations in Thessaloniki are working with the city’s approximately 300 Palestinian families, nearly all of whom have relatives in Gaza, to send aid to the area.

Singer Maria Dimitriadi, who achieved fame in the 1970s with songs by Yiannis Markopoulos, Manos Hadjidakis and Thanos Mikroutsikos, has died of a rare lung disease at the age of 58.

A woman who got out of her car after hitting a crash barrier and another driver who stopped to assist her were killed on the Athens-Lamia highway yesterday morning after being hit by a passing vehicle. Four other cars crashed into each other while trying to stop.

A 56-year-old Karditsa man who collapsed while skiing at the Pertouli ski center on Tuesday was declared dead on arrival at Trikala Hospital.

Some 670 contract workers at the Culture Ministry who had been dismissed over the Christmas holidays have been asked to return to work temporarily pending further negotiations, the ministry’s new general secretary, Theodoros Dravilas, announced yesterday.