Local residents demanding that Iraklion's airport be moved yesterday forced it to shut for two hours by raising 10 huge balloons some 50 meters into the air, directly in the flight line of airplanes. Protesters complained about the noise from Nikos Kazantzakis Airport and demanded that it be moved further away from their homes due to fears for safety.

Postal workers around the country will go on a 24-hour strike next Thursday, representatives of the Panhellenic Federation of Postal Unions said yesterday. Union leaders criticized the government for not intervening to solve problems in the Hellenic Post (ELTA), such as staff shortages and the alleged politically motivated transfer of personnel.

As floodwaters in the northeastern prefecture of Evros receded slightly yesterday, authorities admitted that some land mines in the area may have shifted, though they ruled out the possibility that any may have been swept away by the overflowing river. Some minefields between Soufli and Didimoteicho have been flooded but experts told Kathimerini that it is likely that only a few land mines have been slightly displaced as a result.

Foreign Minister Petros Molyviatis will meet with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington on March 24, the ministry said yesterday. Molyviatis will also hold talks with National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley on the same day, before meeting with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on March 28.

Two robbers yesterday smashed the window of a branch of Emporiki Bank in the northern Athens suburb of Halandri with a sledgehammer in broad daylight and then made off with an unknown amount of cash as two tellers and dozens of witnesses watched. The thieves sped off along busy Pentelis Avenue on a high-powered motorbike.

A Thessaloniki court yesterday handed down a 15-month suspended jail sentence to a local state hospital surgeon for accepting a 300-euro bribe to speed up a patient's operation. The unnamed doctor was caught red-handed after the patient's family tipped off the police.

Some 500 pupils from three schools on the island of Lesvos skipped lessons for the third day in a row yesterday in protest over the presence of a mobile telephony mast near their schools. The mast is located between 18 and 80 meters from the three schools and authorities yesterday cut off its power after discovering that it was illegally drawing electricity. However, the pupils said they will not return to school until the mast is removed completely.

Foreign Minister Petros Molyviatis yesterday received a letter from Kofi Annan in which the UN secretary-general expressed his gratitude to Greece for the $12,742,000 it raised for the victims of the Boxing Day tsunami in southeastern Asia.

Deputy Defense Minister Yiannis Lambropoulos is in Cyprus where he is due today to receive the remains of two Greek commandos killed during the Turkish invasion of the island in 1974. The bodies of Stephanos Kostopoulos and Spyridon Nobelis were identified recently through DNA testing.