Only 60 percent of blood available for transfusion in this country is examined using an improved testing system designed to better detect viruses, experts said yesterday after a 60-year-old patient was infected with Hepatitis B following surgery. In April, the Health Ministry announced an international tender for the procurement of the special equipment needed so that nucleic acid testing (NAT) can be extended to all hospitals and clinics. Health Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos said yesterday that the procurement process had been delayed due to recent general elections but that it was still on course.

Municipal street cleaners in Neo Iraklion, a northern suburb of Athens, yesterday returned to work after nearly three weeks of strike action that had caused huge piles of trash to build up along local roads. The employees decided to end their action after municipal authorities agreed to satisfy their pay demands.

Archbishop Christodoulos visited Athens’s Aretaion Hospital yesterday for a checkup following reports that he has suffered side effects due to his cancer therapy. Christodoulos, 68, underwent some X-rays before returning to his private residence, his doctors said. The archbishop spent more than two months in Miami, Florida, where he was due to undergo a liver transplant that was called off because his cancer had spread.

Police on Crete yesterday said they expected the results of forensic tests to shed light on the death of a 59-year-old farmer found dead in his farmhouse in the Cretan prefecture of Iraklion. Costas Kounalis, found by his nephew, had been hit on the head with a chair, according to police. Forensic experts are analyzing cigarette butts found at the scene of the crime and a piece of broken chair, believed to be the murder weapon.

Coast guard officials on Wednesday detained six illegal immigrants who had tried to board an Italy-bound ferry from Patras, the Merchant Marine Ministry said. Two suspected smugglers were arrested. Meanwhile, authorities at the northwestern port of Igoumenitsa intercepted another three immigrants trying to board a ship bound for western Europe.

Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat warned yesterday that time was running out to resolve the protracted row over Cyprus’s ethnic division as his breakaway state marked its 24th anniversary. “Time is working against a solution on Cyprus,” which has been divided for 33 years between Turkish and Greek sides, Talat told a ceremony in the Turkish sector of Nicosia in the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. (AFP)

A 43-year-old man has been charged with five counts of burglary in Thessaloniki, police said yesterday. The man allegedly broke into apartments in central Thessaloniki between July and September last year and stole jewelry and electrical appliances to the value of 7,700 euros.

An armed man held up a post office in Thessaloniki yesterday and made away with about 1,500 euros in cash, police said yesterday. The holdup took place at around 12.30 p.m. and the assailant escaped the scene on foot, police added.

More than 450 tons of imported food and animal feed has been confiscated by the Agricultural Ministry since the start of October after being found to be unfit for consumption.