A police officer who had been on duty at the Kallithea police precinct in southern Athens on Monday morning when an Albanian national escaped faced a prosecutor yesterday on charges of dereliction of duty. The officer allegedly forgot to lock the cell in which the 40-year-old Albanian was being held on charges of stealing a truck. The detainee was still at large late last night.

The state broadcasting watchdog National Television and Radio Council (ESR) yesterday imposed a fine of 30,000 euros on private channel Antenna for a program showcasing the talent of aspiring mentalists called “The Successor of Uri Geller” for “displaying unusual tools or practices capable of provoking pain or risk.” Two other private channels, Alter and Star, were also fined 15,000 euros each for broadcasting excerpts from the show.

Firefighters rescued two people from their third-floor apartment in Thessaloniki early yesterday but the blaze destroyed the elderly couple’s home. The firemen extinguished the fire before it could spread to adjacent apartments. The couple suffered minor respiratory problems.

Ballistics experts yesterday were examining a gun found on the seabed off the southeastern coast Zakynthos where the body of the island’s police chief was discovered on Monday. Police said they believe the gun, whose chamber was missing one bullet, was used by Vassilis Patsouris on himself.

Police in Sparta, in the Peloponnese, yesterday were questioning two men believed to have beaten up an off-duty police officer with another three locals on Monday afternoon. According to the victim, the five suspects started abusing him verbally before punching him, leaving him with minor injuries. It was unclear what triggered the attack.

Veteran leftist Leonidas Kyrkos was taken to the hospital late on Monday night. Kyrkos felt unwell during a dinner he had organized for political and cultural personalities at Zappeio Hall in Athens. Doctors said that Kyrkos, 85, was admitted to the hospital for precautionary reasons.

The Technical University of Crete in Hania has been taken over by a group of people who are not students and are demanding that the institution stop renovation work on a building in the old part of the city and instead allow it to be used for various events by student groups. The heads of the technical university assigned a contractor over the holidays to renovate the Papadopetrou building, which for the previous two-and-a-half years had been used without permission by student groups. Rector Ioakim Gryspolakis said he had been locked out of his office by protesters.

Two gunmen netted 82,000 euros yesterday after stopping a car being driven by the employee of a technical firm in Thessaloniki. Police said the perpetrators cornered the employee and forced him to hand over the cash which he had been transporting to the firm’s offices.