A 38-year-old truckdriver was killed yesterday when his vehicle was struck by a passenger train near Kilkis in northern Greece, the Hellenic Railways Organization (OSE) said. None of the 12 passengers aboard the Thessaloniki-to-Sofia train were injured despite the derailment caused by the accident. The engine driver was slightly injured. They continued their journey to Bulgaria by bus. The truckdriver had ignored warnings to stop at the crossing, OSE said.

Labor Minister Panos Panayiotopoulos said yesterday that the government did not intend to change the official age for retirement during its current term in office. He was reacting to a newspaper story that suggested the EU was pressuring Greece to make the pensionable age for men and women civil sevants the same. Men currently retire at 65, while women can draw their pensions at 60.

A 32-year-old groom was killed in Crete yesterday after being shot by the brother of the woman he had married just hours earlier, police said. The couple — married on Saturday night — was staying at a hotel in Rethymnon when the 28-year-old bride called her brother after quarreling with her husband early yesterday. Her brother rushed to the hotel and shot the groom five times with a handgun. The exact reasons of the dispute have not been released by authorities. Police are conducting a manhunt for the gunman.

Two Albanian nationals were yesterday charged by an Attica prosecutor with stealing some 120 liters of fuel from a building site, leading police to also question them in connection with the forest fire in eastern Attica last Thursday. The two men, aged 33 and 22, were arrested on Sunday night in Pikermi, east of Athens. Officers found five jerry cans containing some 120 liters of diesel in the boot of their car. After questioning, police said they were satisfied that the pair were not arsonists, as they claimed they had stolen the fuel to take it to Albania.

One of the two parking lots at the Doukissis Plakentias metro station will be closed from this morning until Thursday at the latest so that parking bays can be marked, the operating company said.

Hundreds of blank driving licenses were stolen from a Transport Ministry office in Trikala, central Greece, over the weekend, authorities said yesterday. Some 3,200 euros in cash was also stolen from the third-floor office. The local prefect said that an alarm system would soon be installed in the office.

Two men, armed with a pistol, held up a branch of Eurobank in the southern Athenian suburb of Kalamaki and made off with some 15,000 euros, police said. The pair sped off on a stolen motorbike, according to officers.

The Labor Ministry and truck owners took a step closer to ending a strike by truck owners, which began yesterday and that could cut supplies to some of the country’s islands at the peak of the tourism season. Labor Minister Panos Panayiotopoulos said yesterday that the two sides to set up a joint commission to decide on safety measures in the industry. Truck owners are scheduled to meet today to decide whether they will continue their action in protest at the current system, which monitors the number of hours logged by drivers.

A prosecutor charged two 20-year-old Chinese nationals yesterday with last month’s raid on 12 stores in Athens owned by their countrymen and stealing an unspecified amount of cash, jewelry, computers and other valuables.