The issue of the reopening of the Orthodox seminary on Halki, off Istanbul, “will be resolved within the framework of the constitution and the law,” Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said yesterday after Turkey’s Justice Minister Huseyin Celik remarked that “it is wrong for (the seminary) to stay closed.” Greece’s government spokesman Theodoros Roussopoulos was cool in his response, noting that reopening the seminary “is Turkey’s obligation, as set out in the road map (for eventual EU accession).”

The government distanced itself yesterday from comments by the head of the New Democracy unionists (DAKE), Costas Poupakis, who criticized President Karolos Papoulias for not agreeing to see him. Poupakis is vice president of the country’s largest umbrella union GSEE but only its leader, Christos Polyzogopoulos, was allowed to meet with Papoulias. The president’s office issued a statement saying GSEE had not asked for a meeting with anyone other than Polyzogopoulos.

When party cadre talk turns petty...

A 65-year-old Bulgarian woman and her two granddaughters, aged 18 and 20, have been arrested in Thessaloniki for allegedly pickpocketing more than 18,000 euros, police said yesterday. The women are responsible for at least nine thefts, officers said. They were said to have targeted elderly people who had just made large cash withdrawals from banks.

Music students beat drums outside the Education Ministry yesterday calling for the government to fill vacant teaching posts at the country’s 34 music schools. Students, parents and educators claim that the music schools are short by about 1,000 teachers, most of them positions for qualified music instructors. Deputy Education Minister Giorgos Kalos met with parents and teachers yesterday and assured them that the hirings will be completed next week.

A 28-year-old man shot and killed his brother in Drama, northern Greece, yesterday after he mistook him for game on a hunting trip, police said. The man saw some movement in a forest area where the two had gone hunting and fired some shots in that direction thinking he was aiming at a wild pig.

The operator of the suburban railway said yesterday that the link between Athens and Corinth had satisfactory passenger traffic on its first day of normal operations on Wednesday. Some 5,000 travelers used the link and the company expects the number to rise after the new stations used on the line are linked with local bus routes.

After a chase through the streets of Ioannina, northwestern Greece, police recovered two of three SUVs stolen in Athens on Monday night by a gang of Albanian nationals, officers said. The vehicles were being driven toward Albania, according to police, who were looking for two drivers of one of the SUVs they did not manage to stop.

Police arrested a Danish man on the island of Kos yesterday on charges of electronic fraud. The man, who owns an Internet cafe on the island, allegedly transferred an unknown amount of money from bank accounts belonging to Greeks and other Europeans to his own account after sending them an e-mail with a Trojan horse program, police said. It is the first such instance of this crime to have been detected in Greece.