Athens taxi drivers are to stage an eight-hour taxi strike next Saturday, not today, as was erroneously reported yesterday in the press. Cabbies are demanding access to bus lanes. Tomorrow, the capital’s suburban railway will suspend services between central Athens and Nerantziotissa for an hour from 1.30 p.m.

State hospitals in Attica will begin implementing a new duty rosters system on Monday. The system, devised by the Health Ministry to reduce overcrowding, will mean most hospitals will be able to handle emergency cases for at least a few hours every day. It is to be tested for three months as a pilot scheme. Also on Monday, doctors at state hospitals in Athens and Piraeus are to stage a 24-hour strike against the new system, demanding more pay and hirings.

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and his wife Natassa, on a state visit to Egypt, yesterday met with Alexandria’s Orthodox Patriarch Theodoros at the Egyptian port city. Karamanlis said he would discuss the matter of Alexandria’s dwindling Greek community with his Egyptian counterpart Ahmed Nazif in Cairo today. Many Greeks moved to Alexandria in the 19th century and set up a thriving community, but most left in the 1950s when a nationalist government came to power. It is the first official visit to Egypt by a Greek premier since 1986.

A 42-year-old Albanian yesterday used a pair of scissors to fatally wound his 39-year-old sister and to seriously injure his 34-year-old wife, police in Piraeus said. The man attacked his sister in her Drapetsona home in the belief that she had been covering up an extramarital affair his wife was allegedly having, police said. The man’s wife was in a critical condition in hospital.

Residents and local authority officials from Ano Liosia and Fyli are to stage a demonstration tomorrow at the Zofria bridge in Ano Liosia, protesting at the operation of the local landfill and against the creation of a waste recycling site at Fyli. Municipal street cleaners yesterday called a strike for December 9 and 10.

Opposition PASOK leader George Papandreou yesterday pledged to support the efforts of Palestinians to reach a settlement in the Middle East following a visit to the grave of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Ramallah. He also met the Fatah faction’s official candidate to succeed Arafat, PLO Chief Mahmoud Abbas.

A homemade explosive device, comprising three gas canisters tied together, caused serious damage to a bank ATM in Thessaloniki’s Evosmos district when it detonated in the early hours of yesterday. The explosion caused around 10,000 euros in damage.