Traffic police squads will be stationed in 17 key spots across Attica to conduct breathalyzer tests and monitor driving speeds from today as part of a campaign to crack down on speeding and drunken driving following a sharp increase in traffic accidents last month. Road blocks will be concentrated on coastal roads, Kifissias, Mesogeion and Katehaki avenues in Athens and roads in the northern suburbs, Piraeus, Glyfada, Vouliagmeni and Vari. Many of the roadblocks will be set up near nightclubs. Checks will be intensified at weekends when more accidents tend to occur.

Police yesterday arrested two men they suspect were involved in last month’s murder of Giorgos Sidiropoulos after raiding a seaside hotel where the pair were staying. The men, identified as A.M. 33, and K.T., 30, both work at a nightclub in Nea Iraklitsa, near Kavala, where Sidiropoulos, 35, also worked. Two 9mm pistols and several bullets, found in A.M.’s car which was parked outside the hotel, have been sent to ballistic experts in Thessaloniki. Police believe Sidiropoulos, was abducted from his home in Kavala by three or four people on July 27, before being beaten, half-strangled and then shot six times.

A group of 94 severely dehydrated immigrants were yesterday recovering, three of them in hospital, after Turkish coast guard officials from the western port of Kusadasi took them off a Turkish-flagged boat heading for Greece. Many of the migrants, mostly Iraqis and Afghans and including 13 children, had lost consciousness following a 20-day trip from Iraq during which they had run out of food and water, officials said. The migrants had expected to be taken to Greece. Also yesterday, port authorities on Lesvos detained four Afghan illegal immigrants who had arrived on the Aegean island in an inflatable dinghy.

Dozens of firefighters yesterday morning finally extinguished this year’s most destructive forest fire in the region of Hania, northern Crete, which destroyed 1,000 hectares of olive trees, vineyards and farmland. The municipality of Kerameia, which had been put on a state of alert on Wednesday, was the worst-hit. Local authorities yesterday started assessing compensation for farmers whose crops have been ravaged by the blaze. They are due to receive an initial payment of 600 euros each. Meanwhile, last night 120 firefighters were using 40 fire engines to battle another large blaze which had been ravaging the region of Kryoneri in Laconia since 1 p.m.

A Cypriot MP has sought the intervention of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II to stop the construction of a controversial giant radio antenna on the island’s British air force base at Akrotiri. The antenna, intended to serve as a strategic regional listening post, has strained relations between Cyprus and Britain. Protesters are concerned that the device is a health risk and will damage the area’s unique wetland ecosystem.

A Turkish-Cypriot court yesterday handed down six-month jail sentences to two editors of the northern community’s opposition daily Afrika for insulting Turkish-Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash, Agence France-Presse reported. The conviction originated in an article published in Afrika (formerly Avrupa — Turkish for Europe) in July 1999 titled “Who is the number one traitor?” which was critical of Denktash, AFP said. Afrika’s editor in chief, Sener Levant, and the editor who wrote the article, Memduh Ener, are due to begin their sentences today. The daily will face a 30,000-euro fine if it reoffends over the next two years.

Hundreds of British tourists, stranded in the Cypriot town of Paphos after the aircraft due to carry them home hit an electricity pylon on Wednesday evening, were flown back to Britain yesterday after a thorough check of the aircraft. The pilot of the Airbus 310 — owned by British operator My Travel — had been “slightly off course” while tailing a “Follow Me” vehicle to its reserved parking spot on Wednesday, aviation officials said. Cypriot Communications Minister Averof Neophytou has called for a full report into the incident.