A German and a Romanian, both known criminals in their countries, yesterday admitted to carrying out more than 100 burglaries of villas in Attica, police said yesterday. The pair is alleged to have been armed when entered the homes during the night and taken jewelry and other valuables that were subsequently pawned in Athens. They are also believed to have installed micro cameras on bank ATMs to record credit card numbers, which they then used to make purchases. The German had served 16 years for manslaughter in his homeland before coming to Greece and the Romanian had been sentenced to eight years in his country for theft.

All the land registry offices in Greece will be open between 8.30 a.m. and 3.30 p.m. every Saturday, starting next week, it was announced yesterday. The offices will also be open until 8 p.m. every Wednesday. The deadline for hundreds of thousands of property owners to submit their land register applications was recently extended until October 31 due to the large number of properties that have yet to be registered in the cadaster.

Self-styled anarchists raided a supermarket in Thessaloniki yesterday before distributing the stolen goods to shoppers, imitating a spate of similar robberies on Athens stores during the summer. About 20 masked robbers, none of whom were armed, loaded up trolleys with goods – chiefly pasta and milk – and stormed out of the store without paying, shouting out slogans against recent price hikes.

A legislative amendment securing civil servant positions for the spouses and children of the seven Greek dockworkers killed in an explosion on a tanker in Perama in July was tabled in Parliament yesterday.

An electric railway service will connect Thessaloniki and Larissa as of this Sunday for a cheaper fare than Intercity and coach alternatives and with less of an environmental impact, Transport Minister Costis Hatzidakis said yesterday. The journey will take between 69 and 93 minutes, depending on how many stops are made at the 10 stations in between, said Hatzidakis, adding that the route would be served by 24 itineraries daily.

A 26-year-old foreign national was in detention in Glyfada yesterday after trying to elude police following an alleged burglary attempt in the affluent coastal suburb on Wednesday. Following a tip-off to the police, coast guard officers in the district of Palaia Fokaia boarded patrol vessels and found the suspect in the sea a short distance from the coast.

Coast guard officials on Samos yesterday detained 50 illegal immigrants believed to have arrived on the island from neighboring Turkey. Another 20 migrants were detained on Lesvos yesterday.