Increased cross-border cooperation for the effective tackling of terrorism and organized crime is to be the key focus of an international meeting on Corfu today. It is to be attended by public order and interior ministers from the member states of the EU-backed Adriatic and Ionian Seas Initiative — Greece, Italy, Albania, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Yugoslav Federation. The ministers will seek to adopt a common stance for dealing with terrorism, with an emphasis on exchanging information and technological know-how.

Convicted bank robber Giorgos Angelopoulos was sentenced to a further four months in prison yesterday after being found guilty by a Thessaloniki court of escaping from prison because he refused to return at the end of a five-day furlough on April 22. His fiancee, an Athenian lawyer who was arrested on Monday with him, concucted a marathon address to a Thessaloniki court that began at 2 p.m. on Tuesday and ended with sentencing at 3 a.m. yesterday. Lawyer Aida Tzavella repeatedly demanded that the court recuse itself because of alleged bias in favor of the police. She was acquitted of harboring a fugitive. It was not clear what term Angelopoulos was serving originally.

An undersea quake measuring 4.8 on the Richter scale occurred off the coast of the southern seaside town of Monemvasia — about 160 kilometers southeast of Athens — just before 5 a.m. yesterday. No injuries or damage were reported.

Greek students who graduated as mouth specialists from the University of Sofia’s medical school in 1999 have worthless degrees, the school’s former dean told the Bulgarian daily Trud yesterday. The diplomas are null and void as they bear the signature of the then-dean, Boris Idzov, whose election was subsequently annulled, said Nikola Athanasov. Students must contact the university to reconfirm their degrees, say lawyers quoted in Trud.

Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, is due to leave Mount Athos today following a five-day visit to the northern monastic community just as Bulgarian Premier Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha arrives for a day trip to the Zografou monastery, which is home to many Bulgarian monks. The Bulgarian premier dined with Minister for Macedonia and Thrace Giorgos Paschalidis in Thessaloniki yesterday.

Members of the Cypriot Holy Synod yesterday approved Wednesday’s decision by a Nicosia medical council to send Archbishop Chrysostomos abroad for medical treatment nearly two weeks after the cleric fractured his head and vertebrae after a fall on the archbishopric steps. The Archbishop will probably be sent to London, sources said yesterday, after two British doctors arrived in Nicosia to examine Chrysostomos.

A 62-year-old civil servant, Andreas Panayiotou, was yesterday appointed Cypriot Interior Minister in the first cabinet change in three years by Cypriot President Glafcos Clerides. The appointment was prompted by last week’s naming of Panayiotou’s predecessor, Christodoulos Christodoulou, as the governor of Cyprus’s central bank. Clerides said there would be no further reshuffles ahead of presidential elections in February 2003.

A conscript who has been in a Thessaloniki hospital since sustaining serious burns following a car crash at the end of last month at the military base of Tyrnavos, near Larissa, is to be treated with a special US-made biopsy machine which arrived at the Papanikolaou hospital yesterday. The machine should help restore the burnt skin of Constantinos Papatheoharis. French burns specialist, Herve le Bever, arrived in Thessaloniki on Tuesday to treat Papatheoharis after a request by the latter’s family was approved by the Defense Ministry.