The return of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece from the British Museum is still a “main target” for the government, Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis said on Saturday after viewing a set of recently returned 5th century cups that have been put on display at the Ancient Agora in central Athens. “I am sure that the construction of the New Acropolis Museum, which is now being built at a rapid pace, will provide a new, powerful argument to this effort [to bring back the Marbles],” Karamanlis said. Visitors are likely to be allowed into the museum some time next year.

Robbers who attempted to steal an ATM from a bank on Crete early on Saturday morning were thwarted by the police who arrived on the scene within minutes but were not able to arrest any of the suspects. The gang of thieves tried to steal the cash machine from a branch of Alpha Bank in the village of Stomio, near Ierapetra, but officers said they arrived at the building within seven minutes of the alarm sounding. The ATM contained –70,000 and the robbers had also stolen a truck to load the machine onto after removing it from the bank.

Police arrested three men at a cafe in Thessaloniki on Saturday as they had allegedly been helping customers place illegal bets on soccer matches via the Internet. The unnamed men were allegedly placing the bets using a specialized program that had been installed on a computer found on the premises. It is not clear if the men were also charging customers a commission to place the bets. State betting company OPAP has recently asked authorities to clamp down on punters who use foreign websites to place bets as OPAP has a monopoly on sports betting in Greece.