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FRONT PAGE NEWS |
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 Final stretch to elections begins today |
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| Party politics resume as normal today, as the leaders of both major political parties return from their holidays preparing for what is generally considered as the final stretch toward national elections.
How long that final stretch could last depends entirely on Prime Minister Costas Simitis, who arrived back from Sifnos yesterday. National elections do not have to be held until early May 2004, at the latest, but the PM could advance the date by invoking «serious issues of national importance» according to the constitution.
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| Bactrian hoard safe in Kabul |
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| KABUL (AFP) - Afghanistan is taking stock of its legendary 2,000-year-old Tillya Tepe Bactrian gold hoard that lay safely hidden in a bank vault for the past 14 years, Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani said yesterday.
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| Thasos abduction solved? |
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| A butcher from northern Greece was charged yesterday with last week's kidnapping of a livestock breeder on the island of Thasos.
Athanassios Makedos, a 26-year-old father of two, was abducted at gunpoint on Thursday from his sheepfold near Limenaria on the northern Aegean island. Shortly afterward, his family received a 500,000-euro ransom demand over the phone.
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| Death contract kills wrong man |
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| An Athens betting shop owner was shot dead on Saturday, in what police believe may have been a botched contract killing intended for another man who ran a similar business further down the street.
Giorgos Lyritis, 57, was shot twice in the head and the chest by a young man in his shop on 67 Ilia Iliou Street in Neos Cosmos, after unsuccessfully begging for his life.
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| Cyprus to eject tourists for bid to travel north |
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| NICOSIA (AFP) - Cyprus is to deport 14 Israeli tourists for trying to cross over to the Turkish-occupied north, the state CNA news agency said on Saturday. The Israelis, who arrived on Thursday, tried to cross into the north...
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Traffic police...
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EDITORIAL |
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Quake protection
Every time an earthquake strikes in some part of Greece, everyone starts asking seismologists for predictions and our insatiable television channels seek out the most pessimistic and sinister forecasts in the belief that provoking terror among the public is a profitable business. The experts - in general, but not all of them all of the time - make it clear that they are not clairvoyants and that despite progress in recent decades, they cannot predict seismic activity. Seismology is a science that, perhaps more than any other, tries to draw conclusions by observing the phenomenon in the long term, and by collecting various statistical data. |
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COMMENTARY |
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Empty rhetoric resumes
On their return to the capital, Premier Costas Simitis and his aides are not likely to address themselves to their duties with a new bounce inspired by their seaside holidays. Rather, they will probably project a feeling of dullness welling from their machinations over the coming elections, or else a false sense of dynamism over how to implement their political vision.
The annual spectacle of a prime minister returning from summer recess, typically saying that «it's time for work,» inevitably repulses anyone listening. This is even more the case given that Simitis's efforts will be spent on propping up a government that displays clear signs of fatigue, instead of striving to attain genuine progress. |
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