Metro workers are due to stage a 24-hour strike tomorrow, which would result in there being no service for commuters. The employees said yesterday that they are protesting the contents of the collective work contract offered by management. Meanwhile, the civil servants’ union ADEDY said yesterday that it is organizing a work stoppage to start at noon on Friday. The union is encouraging civil servants to walk off the job in support of students and teachers who will be protesting on the same day.

The owner of a fast-food store in Serres, northern Greece, was kidnapped yesterday by two armed robbers who returned to the businessman’s home to force his wife to hand over 1,500 euros in cash and 15,000 euros’ worth of jewelry. Police said that the two men grabbed the restaurateur as he arrived home at about 3 a.m. and took him to a church some 10 kilometers away. They took 2,000 euros in cash from the victim and then bound and gagged him before returning to his house. The businessman was able to free himself and walk home, from where he notified police who were last night searching for the two suspects.

Taxi drivers should no longer claim their 1 euro holiday season tip as of today. The period during which passengers were required to pay an extra euro for their journey ended yesterday. As a result, the minimum fare for taking a taxi is now 3.80 euros.

Two masked, armed men beat up and robbed a restaurant owner in the village of Melenikitsi, Serres, northern Greece, polic said. The attackers burst into the restaurant on Monday night, tied up the owner and his employee and stole 650 euros in cash and gold worth 150 euros from the restaurant and the owner’s home, which is located above it.

A police patrol in Retziki, Thessaloniki, surprised an undisclosed number of robbers who had just removed an ATM machine from an Alpha Bank branch and loaded it onto a van in the early hours yesterday morning. After a chase, the robbers abandoned the van (and the ATM) on a bridge over the Gallikos River on the Athens-Thessaloniki highway and escaped in another vehicle.

Narcotics police have found 162 kilos of unprocessed cannabis in a house in the village of Derviziana, Ioannina, and have arrested an Albanian who was allegedly involved in the drug trade. On Christmas Eve, another haul of 167 kilos of cannabis had been found in the Ioannina area.

Two masked men made off with 11,500 euros from a branch of ATEbank in the village of Alistrati in Serres, northern Greece, on Monday morning. They escaped in a car that police later found destroyed by fire in farmland in the Drama area.