In a comment aimed at Turkey, Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis said yesterday that Bulgaria and Romania’s imminent membership in the European Union is a “positive message” to all the countries which want to join the bloc that if they meet their commitments, they will be rewarded. “The inclusion of these two countries helps stability in our region,” said Karamanlis as he arrived at the two-day EU leaders’ summit in Brussels. (Page 2)

EU talk tougher on enlargement...

A group of some 15 people on motorcycles threw Molotov cocktails yesterday evening at a police station in Papagou, northeast Athens. Police said that two patrol cars, a motorcycle and another parked car were damaged in the attack but nobody was injured. No arrests were made after the attack on the station, which is on Pindou Street.

Commuters can now buy annual passes for public transport at the Syntagma, Ethniki Amyna and Omonia stations and Doukissis Plakentias and Larissis suburban railway stations, the Athens Urban Transport Organization (OASA) said yesterday. There are two types of passes available: one for –175, which offers unlimited use of buses, trolleys and the tram, and another for –380, offering unlimited access to all modes of public transport in Attica.

Twenty doctors are to be recruited to serve on passenger ferries serving routes in excess of 120 nautical miles, it was revealed yesterday. The doctors will staff ferries serving the islands of Santorini, Paros, Naxos, Lesvos, Myconos and Crete, according to a joint decision by the Merchant Marine and Health ministries.

About 21,000 new passports remain at police stations across the country waiting for their owners to collect them, Greek Police Chief Anastassios Dimoschakis said yesterday. The police chief called on citizens who have applied for new passports to visit their local police stations to collect them, stressing that the backlog is causing administrative problems.

Assailants placed explosive devices made of camping gas canisters outside a municipal building and a Citizens’ Information and Service Center (KEP) in Thessaloniki early yesterday, causing damage but no injuries, police said. Nobody was arrested.

Police in Thessaloniki said they are looking for four Albanian men who may have fled Greece after allegedly stabbing to death one of their countrymen last August. Thessaloniki Police Chief Stergios Apostolidis said that the men, who he did not name, are cousins and uncles of Kastriot Mouka, a 30-year-old man who was found dead near a museum in Thessaloniki on August 30, 2005. Apostolidis said the four suspects killed Mouka because the victim had an affair with the wife of one of their cousins.

A Carrefour-Marinopoulos supermarket in Rendi, southern Athens, was yesterday fined –200,000 for displaying misleading prices. The specific store has been fined for the same offense in the past and Piraeus Prefect Yiannis Michas said that there are two to three complaints a day from consumers about the store.

A 26-year-old Polish man has been arrested in Thessaloniki on suspicion of conning nine people out of some –50,000 in an online scam. Police said that the unnamed suspect conned eight Germans and one Swiss by either accepting money for cars he advertised for sale on the Internet but did not own or by buying vehicles using dud checks.

A 33-year-old man was arrested in Athens yesterday in connection to the –1.6 million heist of an armored car transporting cash on behalf from the Mount Parnes Casino in September. The suspect, an employee at the security firm robbed, is believed to have offered the gang of eight thieves information about the vehicle’s movement, helping them to plan their robbery.