There will be no trash collections in Thessaloniki before January 2 due to a protest outside the Mavrorachi landfill, the city’s Mayor Vassilis Papageorgopoulos said yesterday. The Municipality of Assyros and some of its residents are due to end a 48-hour blockade of the dump today but the mayor said that would not allow enough time for rubbish to be collected. “Even if the landfill opens, the collection will take place on January 2 or 3,” said Papageorgopoulos. “It is shameful that the New Year will start with trash on the streets of Thessaloniki.” Protesters want authorities to compensate the municipality for the operation of the new landfill in the area and are demanding better plans for waste management.

A bus carrying 12 passengers was fired upon late on Monday night in Thessaloniki. Nobody on board the No 38 bus that was traveling between Efkarpia and the New Railway Station was injured when one of the windows was smashed by what was probably an air gun pellet. The incident comes only a few days after a Proastiakos suburban railway train was shot at in Athens.

Some 200 people protested yesterday outside the Piraeus offices of the firm that employs cleaner Constantina Kuneva who was the subject of an acid attack last week. Protesters scuffled with police outside the offices of the company, which provides cleaners for Athens trains. Kuneva is in a serious but stable condition following the attack. The 44-year-old is also the general secretary of a union representing cleaners and domestic staff. The head of Bulgaria’s largest trade union, Zhelyazko Hristov, wrote to President Karolos Papoulias yesterday to ask for the attack to be investigated. He claimed that Kuneva had received death threats because of her involvement in the union. According to Hristov, 80,000 of the 200,000 Bulgarians living in Greece work without social insurance.

Anyone applying for a new driving license or extending an existing one will have to also submit a passport photograph with all their other documents, it was announced yesterday. The new measure will be in force from January 19.

A 36-year-old man from Serres was being treated yesterday in a critical condition in a hospital on Rhodes after being stabbed three times in the back by an unknown assailant. The victim had just bought some souvlaki and was about to get on his motorbike when he was attacked, police said.