Passenger ferries are to remain moored today and tomorrow after sailors called a second 48-hour strike just a few hours before the first ended. Apart from disrupting coastal shipping, the strike is expected to upset the supply of basic goods to islands and will also affect some mainland imports, mostly from Crete. Unionists claimed Merchant Marine Minister Manolis Kefaloyiannis had backtracked from supporting their demands for improved social security benefits.

The National Pharmaceutical Association (EOF) yesterday fined a female pharmacist 2.15 million euros for allegedly gathering thousands of special stickers from medicines that should only be removed by pharmacists to recoup the cost of subsidized medicines issued to insured patients. The pharmacist supplied Athens hospitals with large quantities of medicines, according to EOF, which said it had confiscated 24,000 stickers worth 413,000 euros. She has been suspended for three months.

More than 100,000 tons of sludge that has accumulated on the site of the waste processing plant at Psyttaleia must be transferred to the Ano Liosia landfill, the Council of State ruled yesterday. The court deemed that the waste would pose a more serious environmental risk on the islet.

PASOK leader George Papandreou is expected to call for major changes within his party and to Greek politics in general, at the party's seventh congress which opens today at the Tae Kwon Do Olympic venue in Faliron. It is the opposition party's first congress since it lost to New Democracy last March.

New reforms mean the use of corporal punishment to discipline students is illegal in secondary schools as well as at primary schools, the Education Ministry said yesterday. Originally, Greek legislation banned the use of corporal punishment in primary schools without stipulating the same for secondary schools. The law was amended following a warning from the European Council.

A total of 7.8 tons of Worcester sauce, 1.1 tons of Dijon mustard and 50 kilos of seafood sauce - products containing an illegal food dye believed to be cancerous - have been withdrawn from the market, the Hellenic Food Authority (EFET) said yesterday. Meanwhile, authorities in Piraeus seized from an illegal warehouse 3 tons of meat whose sell-by date had expired.

The Thessaloniki premiere of a movie based on the June 1999 hijacking of a Greek bus by an Albanian - who lost his life along with a Greek passenger - was yesterday disrupted by the father of the Greek victim. The father of Giorgos Koulouris accused director Constantinos Giannaris of casting the hijacker as a hero rather than his son.

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis yesterday backed Croatia's bid to join the European Union, following talks with his Croatian counterpart Ivo Sanader in Zagreb. He then flew to Belgrade where he met with Serbian President Boris Tadic. Karamanlis is to continue his Balkan tour in Pristina, Kosovo, today.

Three people were slightly injured after two Albanians tried to rob a post office in Avlonas, northern Attica, early yesterday. Also yesterday, a cashier was slightly injured in the robbery of a supermarket in the Athenian district of Aegaleo.