Nicosia yesterday welcomed a suggestion by Turkish-Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat that he could meet with Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos “within days.” But Cypriot government spokesman Giorgos Lillikas insisted that the two men would only discuss the issue of missing persons. Lillikas said that this was the agenda that had been agreed to during a meeting between Papadopoulos and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in Paris on February 28. The whereabouts of some 2,000 Greek and Turkish Cypriots have yet to be discussed by the two sides and the meeting is seen as the necessary first step toward reunification talks.

Five people were arrested in Iraklion, Crete, yesterday in connection to alleged cases of baby-selling, police said. Two undercover police officers, posing as a couple wanting to buy a child, offered a 21-year-old Bulgarian woman 18,000 euros for a baby that she had given birth to a few days ago. Police also arrested her sister, aged 24, who was present at the deal. In a separate incident, police arrested a pregnant woman, a Bulgarian national, in Timpaki, Crete, for allegedly agreeing to sell her unborn child for 17,000 euros.

Files containing details of Greece’s cultural agenda for the next two years were wiped off the computers at the Culture Ministry yesterday, sources told Kathimerini. It is not clear how the files disappeared but technicians were unable to retrieve them. The ministry is expected to make a statement today.

Greece’s Culture Ministry announced yesterday the discovery in downtown Athens of substantial remains from what appears to be a previously unknown, Doric-style temple which has lain buried for over two millennia under several meters of soil. Pillars and capitals from the temple, dated approximately to the fourth century BC, or about a century after the city’s famed Parthenon, were located by archaeologists adjacent to the eastern wing of the Presidential Mansion near the National Gardens. The find will likely force a temporary move of residence by the country’s president, Karolos Papoulias.

The National Intelligence Agency (EYP) does not have a mobile unit that can eavesdrop on phone calls, Public Order Minister Vyron Polydoras said yesterday. He denied reports that EYP had purchased technology which allowed agents to tap phone calls while roving around in a vehicle. Polydoras insisted that the agency only used technology that allowed it to listen in on conversations over land-line phones.

A total of 102 people were killed on the country’s roads in January this year, the National Statistics Service said yesterday, down from 117 in the same period a year earlier. The number of people seriously injured in traffic accidents in January reached 122 while 1,179 people reported suffering mild injuries.

A 13-year-old boy was killed in a schoolyard in Larissa, central Greece, yesterday after attempting to swing on a goal used for handball. Authorities said that the crossbar gave way under the teenager’s weight and fell on top of him, killing the boy.

Five people were arrested in Thessaloniki yesterday after allegedly dealing in heroin, police said. A 20-year-old man and his 19-year-old wife were arrested along with his two sisters after a police raid of his home uncovered 146 grams of heroin. A fifth man, an Albanian national, was also arrested in connection to the drugs.

The Athens Prefecture said yesterday that it had confiscated some 1,300 kilos of shrimp from the port of Piraeus after detecting high levels of cadmium. Prefectural officials also gave a warning to the Grecotel Athens Imperial Hotel in Karaiskaki Square, as its bar and cafeteria were operating without a license.