The government is considering introducing a new health and pension card that would simplify any dealings that citizens have with the National Health System and pension funds. The measure was discussed at yesterday’s meeting between Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, Health Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos and Employment Minister Fani Palli-Petralia. The electronic card will display the holder’s social security number but will also contain his or her medical history, which only doctors will be able to access with a specific code.

A new law that would allow cremation to take place in Greece has been submitted to the Council of State, Greece’s highest administrative court, for approval, it emerged yesterday. According to the presidential decree, families can cremate their dead by obtaining a permit from the local mayor or community leader 60 hours after the death of their relative. The law stipulates that the deceased has to leave a written request asking to be cremated, otherwise a relative up to the fourth degree must confirm that this was the person’s choice. The Church of Greece opposes cremation for its faithful.

A Supreme Court prosecutor yesterday dismissed as groundless a legal suit by journalist and television presenter Themos Anastassiadis against magistrate Dimitris Economou who is probing the journalist’s alleged involvement in the blackmail of former Culture Ministry general secretary Christos Zachopoulos. The prosecutor, Efterpi Koutzamani, dismissed as groundless Anastassiadis’s claims that Economou is guilty of abuse of power. One cannot accuse a magistrate of abuse of power before he has issued his verdict, Koutzamani said. Anastassiadis is charged with breaking privacy laws after allegedly viewing a video showing Zachopoulos having sex with his assistant Evi Tsekou.

Police in Kilkis, northern Greece, yesterday were questioning a Bulgarian couple who allegedly tried to sell their 3-month-old child to two undercover policeman for 32,000 euros. The 51-year-old man and his wife, 38, were arrested after accepting the cash in pre-marked bills from the two officers who had turned up for a meeting on a junction of the national highway outside Thessaloniki posing as a couple interested in adopting the child. The infant was being looked after at a Kilkis hospital.

A group of self-styled anarchists hurled homemade firebombs at the eighth-floor offices of a far-right weekly newspaper in central Athens yesterday afternoon, according to police. The extent of the damage to the offices of Stochos (meaning “target”) was unclear.

Municipal workers yesterday said they had disinfected the area around Fokionos Negri Square, north of the center of Athens, where unidentified individuals had scattered poison, causing the deaths of several pet dogs and pigeons. Mayor Nikitas Kaklamanis yesterday condemned the poisoning of animals and highlighted the risk to public health of spreading poison in central squares.