Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis yesterday sent a letter of congratulations to German Christian Democrat leader Angela Merkel who was named as Germany's first female chancellor on Monday. Karamanlis stressed the excellent relations between the two countries and called for even closer cooperation.

Port authorities found a large body part belonging to a young child on a beach close to Volos, central Greece. The find, a body from the waist down, belongs to a child aged between 4 and 8 years old, authorities said. The news comes after officials earlier this week found the dismembered body of a child in Halkidiki, northern Greece.

Police were yesterday investigating what caused the death of a 48-year-old laborer whose dismembered corpse was discovered scattered across the building site he had been working on in Avlona, some 50 kilometers north of Athens. An unidentified part of Sotiris Karakyris's body was discovered in a cement mixer, according to police, who did not clarify where the other body parts were found.

Police seized almost 2.5 kilos of heroin in two separate raids on the outskirts of Thessaloniki yesterday, officers said. Some 900 grams of the drug were found by police who stopped and searched a minivan on a country road near Kalohori. The 45-year-old Bulgarian driver was arrested. Two Albanian nationals were caught in Dendropotamo after officers found them to be in possession of some 1.5 kilos of heroin.

Striking agriculturalists in northern Greece are causing exporters major problems, according to the Exporters' Association of Northern Greece (SEVE), which asked yesterday for the prosecutor to intervene in the 10-day strike. The agriculturalists, employed at two customs offices in the Evros area, have created a backlog of 15 trucks that need the green light from the striking staff members before they can cross the Greek border.

A 46-year-old antique collector was yesterday charged by a Patras prosecutor with illegally trading in antiquities after state inspectors confiscated dozens of ancient coins from his antique store in the city center. Among the items seized were 20 coins dating to the Byzantine and Roman eras, 17 Venetian coins and 44 coins bearing Arab script and dating to the Ottoman era. Another 13 coins could not be identified. Officials were not able to determine the value of the coins.

A welder works in front of a building that collapsed in Piraeus yesterday, destroying two parked cars but causing no injuries. The road on which the house is located, Omiridou Skilitsi, hosts a street market on Sunday but was relatively quiet yesterday. It was unclear yesterday who owns the building which was declared a protected building in 1989 and classified as a dangerous and unstable structure in 2003.

A 39-year-old man used his computer store in Salamina as a base for producing bootleg CDs, police said yesterday after confiscating thousands of illegal CDs. The unnamed trader was arrested after officers seized 4,667 bootleg CDs and seven computers he had allegedly used to make the copies. Police believe the man had been employing foreigners to sell on the bootleg wares. Five street traders have been arrested.