Culture Minister Giorgos Voulgarakis yesterday announced that a site in Menidi, where sections of an ancient theater were discovered last week, would be expropriated from its owners. “This significant monument broadens the archaeological map of Athens,” Voulgarakis said, following a tour of the site. The director of the ministry’s artifacts’ division, Vivi Vassilopoulou, said it was too early to confirm whether the 4th century BC structure was the fabled theater of Acharnes but said there were strong indications that that was the case.

Traffic accidents during the Clean Monday three-day weekend were down by 20 percent this year compared to last year, police said yesterday. The number of people killed in car crashes during this period was also down by 45 percent. There were a total of 133 traffic accidents in Greece between Friday and Clean Monday in which 13 people died, 22 people were seriously injured and 144 suffered slight injuries.

Campaigners for disabled people in Greece said yesterday that up to 180,000 people have been excluded from the education process or have not been enrolled in the appropriate program. Representatives of disabled groups met with Education Minister Marietta Giannakou to demand better access to schools.

A 23-year-old PAOK fan was sentenced to 17 months in jail yesterday after a court in Thessaloniki found him guilty of carrying a weapon and causing damage to property. The unnamed supporter was arrested on Monday after a group of some 50 PAOK fans attacked Aris supporters after a volleyball match.

Guards at the new prison in Trikala, central Greece, said yesterday that they had confiscated several makeshift knives following Sunday’s brawl between two cellmates which resulted in one of them being injured. A search of the cell shared by the two Albanian inmates, aged 34 and 35, unearthed a homemade knife. A subsequent inspection of the rest of the prison revealed another two such knives, made using pieces of iron removed from the window frames of cells.

Two earthquakes, measuring 4 and 4.5 on the Richter scale, struck the northern prefecture of Pieria early yesterday but caused neither injuries nor damage. The first quake occurred at 3.40 a.m. and the second at 4.05 a.m., according to seismologists, who described the tremors as “isolated occurrences... which do not prompt concern.” The epicenter of the quakes was 50 kilometers southwest of Thessaloniki, between Kolindros and Vergina.