Police from Attica’s illegal antiquities unit were yesterday questioning a 72-year-old woman following the discovery of dozens of ancient Egyptian artifacts in her sons’ homes in the central town of Lamia. Officers said they were seeking the two sons, aged 42 and 45, who live in London. The artifact haul included an alabaster chamber pot with a cap in the form of the Egyptian hawk god Horus, several necklaces with precious stones, an inscribed scarab stone and a church incensory. The woman said she had inherited the artifacts from her father who grew up in Egypt. Meanwhile yesterday, two men, aged 28 and 68, faced a Thessaloniki prosecutor on charges of illegal antiquities trading after allegedly trying to sell two undercover policemen three artifacts for 30,000 euros. Officers confiscated a Roman-era bust of a woman and two statuettes.

An 89-year-old woman is believed to have been raped early yesterday by a 25-year-old man in Iraklion, Crete, while she was sleeping in her home, police said. In her report to police, the victim said the assailant entered her home through an unlocked door. The man is then believed to have covered the victim’s mouth in order to stop her cries for help from being heard. Police said that the woman has been hospitalized and that forensic tests confirmed the rape.

Athens prosecutor Panayiotis Poulios has ordered a probe into Athens’s illegally run nightspots to determine whether they are placing the lives of customers or employees at risk. On Wednesday, Athens prefecture inspection teams said they came across 11 nightspots operating without a license, including some the city’s better-known clubs. Prefect Yiannis Sgouros handed over the file on the illegal clubs to the prosecutor yesterday.

Olympic Airlines pilots called off yesterday two planned three-hour work stoppages for today and Monday. The pilots had called the strike action to protest delays by the airline in expanding its fleet for the summer period. Flights will continue as normal, company sources said without providing further information.

Customs officials in Thessaloniki intercepted yesterday 350,000 packets of cigarettes that had been hidden in a large transport container. Authorities said that the illegal tobacco products, smuggled from China, are subject to taxes in excess of a million euros. Authorities detected another large haul of cigarettes that had been brought into Greece illegally from China a few days ago.