Lawyers representing sailors whom the government placed under martial law in order to force them to end a four-day strike on June 21, yesterday appealed to the Council of State to annul the civil mobilization action. The government was defying the Constitution, EC law and several international treaties by using civil mobilization as a means to force employees to work and punish them for participating in strike action, according to legal representatives of the Panhellenic Seamen’s Federation. The civil mobilization means that anyone disobeying the order to return to work will be courtmartialled.

A 48-year-old farmer who tried to stop an argument between his younger brother and sister-in-law at the couple’s home in the village of Trilofia, in the northern prefecture of Imathia, late on Wednesday night was fatally stabbed by his drunken sibling, police said yesterday. Antonis Paraschos, who lived next door to his brother Stavros, 46, rushed to the neighboring house on hearing raised voices but was stabbed in the heart with a kitchen knife when he tried to mediate.

Athens 2004 Organizing Committee President Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki is to brief Prime Minister Costas Simitis today on the conclusions drawn by IOC Coordinating Committee chief Denis Oswald during his inspection visit to Athens at the end of last month.

A controversial new charter granting the US Greek Orthodox Church greater independence from its mother church in Istanbul was approved by delegates of the US church on Wednesday, reports said yesterday. The new charter, which needs approval by the Istanbul Patriarchate, would allow Greek Orthodox clerics in the USA to elect bishops to the American church and to submit three nominees for future archbishops to the Patriarchate.

Workers from the private and public sectors yesterday evening staged a protest in central Athens, demanding the implementation of an EU directive transforming short-term fixed contracts into open-ended ones. The government is discussing the directive which only applies to private workers, Labor Minister Dimitris Reppas said on Wednesday.

Thousands of Greeks and foreigners are expected to join immigrant and human rights groups for a three-day anti-racism festival starting today at Athens’s Ilissia Park. The event — featuring debates, music and exhibitions — is the seventh to be staged by the Social Support Network for Refugees and Immigrants. The aim of the event is to stress that “immigrants do not cause problems, they have problems,” the organizers said.

A group of around 16 activists from the environmental group Greenpeace yesterday occupied a Greek-registered oil tanker as it approached the Bosporus Strait from the Black Sea. The activists, who say the oil industry wrecks the environment, asked the captain of the Crude Dio to anchor and Turkish authorities to block its approach. They said they would continue their protest until their physical removal.

An Athens magistrate yesterday released publisher Michalis Androulidakis, subject to a 50,000-euro bail payment and on the condition he does not leave the country. Androulidakis faces charges of fraud and embezzlement after a business partner lodged a suit against him. The wife, sister and three colleagues of Androulidakis — who owns the Tempo television channel and Planet radio station — were released unconditionally yesterday after answering to the same charges. Athanasios Vildirides has accused Androulidakis of embezzling 733,675 euros from the Maxline and Clever Hellas firms they run together and investing the money. The firms publish the newspapers Ependytis and Sportime.