Thousands of Athenians were streaming into the capital yesterday evening in preparation for the return to work today following their summer vacations. The city center is expected to become significantly more congested from today as tens of thousands of motorists return to the roads. Today is the first day of the resumption of the system that restricts motorists from circulating in the city center depending on the last digit of their license plate number.

A 47-year-old Thessaloniki man faced a prosecutor over the weekend after allegedly admitting to fatally stabbing his 53-year-old friend during a brawl outside a nightclub early Saturday morning. The 47-year-old fled immediately after the incident but gave himself up to police a few hours later. The two men had been childhood friends, police were told.

A pleasure boat on which the Princess of Saudi Arabia and other members of the royal family had been travelling off Poros was evacuated by rescue workers yesterday after a fire broke out aboard the vessel. The yacht, which had been a few nautical miles off the southeast of the island when the fire broke out, sank shortly afterward. The cause of the blaze was unclear.

The magistrate probing the Siemens bribery case is to question two witnesses linked to the scandal today. Nikos Zagorianos is awaiting delivery of a file containing evidence seized by German police from the home of former Siemens official Reinhard Siekaczek. The file is expected to shed light on allegations that the company’s Greek branch paid bribes to politicians in Athens to secure contracts.

Police yesterday freed the abbot of the Esphigmenou Monastery on Mount Athos and three other monks who had been trapped in a car by a group of 20 rebel monks who refuse to accept the authority of Archimandrite Chryosostomos Katsoulieris. The monks had been prevented from leaving the monastery for several hours, police said.

Dozens of left-wing protesters clashed with riot police and Port Authority officials at the port of Patras yesterday afternoon after police tried to break up a rally being organized in solidarity with dozens of illegal immigrants living at a makeshift settlement on the fringes of the port. There were no reports of injuries.

The US Embassy and its Consular Section, the US Consulate General in Thessaloniki, as well as all US government offices in Greece, will be closed today in observance of Labor Day, a national holiday.