The Supreme Court’s disciplinary panel yesterday cleared the head of the Prosecutors’ Union Sotiris Bayias for comments he made earlier this year criticizing the judiciary and questioning the promotion of some judges. Supreme Court prosecutor Giorgos Sanidas had brought the disciplinary action against Bayias. “It is a landmark ruling that could signal a new beginning for many issues concerning the justice system,” said Bayias after being cleared by the seven-member panel.

No politicians will face charges in connection with a longstanding investigation into the purchase of 21 Russian TOR-M1 missile systems by Greece between 1998 and 2000 for some $473 million. Sources said yesterday that Swiss authorities had informed prosecutor Panayiotis Athanassiou that three bank accounts which had been examined belonged to businessmen and not politicians. Prosecutors and a committee of MPs have investigated the deal over the last few years amid claims that many of the missiles are defective and that Greece missed out on offset benefits of some $63 million. Former defense ministers Akis Tsochadzopoulos and Yiannos Papantoniou have denied any wrongdoing.

Microbiologists from Thessaloniki’s Aristotle University and the Agriculture Ministry, who have been looking into the unusual death of a Komotini woman bitten by a tick earlier this month, have started cooperating with experts in 12 prefectures bordering countries which have also seen outbreaks of the tick-borne disease. Some 840 samples from goats, sheep and cows are to be examined over the next few days for traces of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever that killed the 49-year-old Komotini woman.

Services on the Piraeus-Kifissia urban electric railway (ISAP) will only run as far as Eirini station today and tomorrow due to works between Eirini and Kifissia, ISAP said yesterday. A free bus service will be available for commuters.

Responding to reports by Piraeus prefectural authorities earlier this week regarding a ban on imports of products that reportedly contain traces of toxic sunflower oil of Ukrainian origin, the Ukrainian Embassy in Athens has stressed that all Ukrainian firms exporting oil conform to international safety standards. After tests in April confirmed that quantities of tainted Ukrainian sunflower oil had entered the European Union, Ukrainian authorities implemented all necessary measures, the embassy said in a letter to Kathimerini English Edition.

The head of the parliamentary group of the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), Alekos Alavanos, wrote to Parliament Speaker Dimitris Sioufas yesterday suggesting that the House’s legal advisers look at the law governing the accountability of ministers who may be suspected of having committed offenses.