NEWS

In Brief

Railway security- Police to guard stations from Victoria to Piraeus Seven stations on the Athens electric railway from Piraeus to Kifissia will be guarded by police on a permanent, daily basis, the government said yesterday. In response to a question in Parliament by opposition New Democracy, Deputy Public Order Minister Evangelos Malesios said the stations from Victoria to Piraeus would be policed from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., while foot patrols will be stepped up outside stations on days of sports events. he did not clarify when this would start. Last Sunday, football hooligans threw petrol bombs through the windows of a train at the Faliron station. IKA Doctors start five-day strike for tenure Doctors at the Social Security Foundation (IKA) start a five-day strike today demanding that some 5,500 of their colleagues working on contracts should be hired on a permanent basis. They held a long strike for the same reason in the summer, but according to the IKA doctors’ union president, Eleftherios Athanassopoulos, the government failed to honor its promises to meet their demands. Soccer Ace Best gets better British former soccer star George Best, was released yesterday from a private clinic in the Cypriot city of Limassol, four days after suffering from an infection and high temperature. Mr. Best was released from the clinic this morning and seemed happy and cheerful when he was released and returned to his hotel, Dr. Andreas Stylianides told the Agence France-Presse. The cause of the 55-year-old former Manchester United and Northern Ireland ace’s ailment was unknown, but the doctor said Best was more susceptible to illness because of his background of alcoholism. Stylianides ruled out the illness being directly related to alcohol abuse but said that Best’s liver condition weakened his immune system. Best is to return home today. His manager said these past 12 months he has enjoyed a completely clean life, entirely free of alcohol or drugs. Back to go. A group of 47 Kurdish illegal immigrants arrested in Italy on Sunday inside a Greek truck loaded with peanuts and almonds were returned to the port of Patras yesterday. The Greek truck driver, Theodoros Kazantzidis, 48, is being held at the port of Ancona, where the truck drove off from the Olympia Champion ferry that had sailed from Patras. Meanwhile, yesterday Greek Foreign Ministry spokesman Panos Beglitis attacked as silly a claim last week by Italian Deputy Interior Minister Alfredo Mantovano to the effect that Greece and Cyprus must do more to fight organized crime and smuggling. Salonica murder. A Thessaloniki transvestite was found murdered early yesterday in the city center. Isidoros Katsis, 35, had been shot in the chest. According to the coroner’s report, he was killed around 1 a.m. in his car, by someone sitting in the passenger seat. Omonia shooting. Two Kurdish refugees were injured yesterday evening during a shootout on Zinonos Street, near Omonia in central Athens, according to initial reports. Camp murder. A pensioner was found shot dead yesterday in Menidi, outside the caravan he shared with his wife in a camp for people rendered homeless by the September 1999 earthquake. Petros Parthenis, 68, was killed with a single bullet in the forehead. Costakos trial. The trial began yesterday in Piraeus of a naval ensign accused of dereliction of duty in the 1996 collision of a navy torpedo boat with a ferry off Samos, which caused the deaths of four navy personnel. Ensign Michalis Dimoulkas was on night bridge duty during the accident, in which the Samaina ferry hit the Costakos torpedo boat which had its lights off as part of an exercise. School inspection. New Democracy leader Costas Karamanlis yesterday unexpectedly visited a state secondary school in Exarchia, central Athens. He later criticized the government because the building, which was damaged in the 1999 earthquake, lacked a sufficient number of classrooms and had no computers. The government accused him of selecting a school which he knew was in a bad state. The last two minutes of the game saw Ethnikos Asteras narrowing the difference with Giorgos Kontopoulos, before Olympiakos’s winger Stelios Yiannakopoulos made the final 4-2.

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