In Brief
WEATHER TO DETERIORATE
Snow, wind, rain forecast for today, tomorrow, Christmas Civil defense officials have asked local authorities to take special measures to prepare for a wave of bad weather expected to hit Greece today and last through Christmas. Rainstorms and snow are forecast, as well as winds of up to 10 on the Beaufort scale. Temperatures will drop across the country. The weather will improve from Friday. COURT JOBS EU citizens will be able to work as judicial employees Citizens of any EU member state will be eligible for appointment to most employee positions in the Greek judiciary, under a presidential decree presented to the Council of State for vetting yesterday. Only Greek citizens will be able to serve as general directors of departments and court secretaries. HOLOCAUST DAY Greece’s Jews remembered The Interior Ministry yesterday presented an amendment to Parliament establishing January 27 as «a day of remembrance of the Greek Jewish martyrs and heroes of the Holocaust.» The date commemorates the day in 1945 when the Red Army arrived at the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps. Missiles The Defense Ministry said yesterday it has signed a deal worth up to about 220.5 million euros with MBDA France for 100 Mica air-to-air missiles, 50 Mica launchers and 34 Scalp air-to-surface missiles. Fire death A young Romanian man died yesterday morning, probably of smoke inhalation, when a Piraeus hotel caught fire. The Delfini Hotel’s other 51 guests were safely evacuated. An Albanian man was treated with breathing problems. Officials suspected the fire was caused by a candle in a guest’s room. Reverse gear A man arrested in Patras last Wednesday for driving a stolen car turned out to be an escaped double murderer serving a life sentence, police said yesterday. Panayiotis Baharidis was the most dangerous of five prisoners who filed through the bars of a police transfer facility in Thessaloniki on October 10. Interchange From midnight tonight, Kifissia-bound traffic on Kifissias Avenue will be using the underground part of a new interchange at Pharos, in Psychico, which is expected to be completed on March 31. Athens-bound traffic will be diverted. Welch Today is the 28th anniversary of the murder of CIA station chief Richard Welch in the November 17 terrorist group’s first attack. Welch’s children Tim, Molly and Nick, who were in Athens last week for the trial of 15 N17 members, said yesterday that they planted a fig tree outside the Psychico house where he was shot in 1975. They dedicated a plaque in honor of Welch. Pardon me Cyprus’s attorney general, Solon Nikitas, and his deputy, Petros Clerides, disagreed over the pardon of 131 prisoners because the former did not consult the latter, the Athens News Agency reported from Nicosia yesterday. Following a Christmas tradition, President Tassos Papadopoulos pardoned 81 people serving short terms. Makarios A statue of Archbishop Makarios, the first president of an independent Cyprus, is to be set up outside Cuba’s first Orthodox Church which opened recently in Havana’s harbor area. The Cuban ambassador to Cyprus, Antonio Rodriguez Vidal, said he has proposed that a statue of Cuba’s national hero, poet Jose Martti, be set up in Nicosia. Border visit Defense Minister Yiannos Papantoniou yesterday visited guard posts on the Greek-Turkish border to wish them a merry Christmas. He also visited the army’s 536 Mechanized Battalion to award non-commissioned officer Paraskevi Pappa, who is the mother of 12 children. Methadone The Hellenic Railways Organization has granted the OKANA detoxification center a piece of property in Thessaloniki’s harbor area for it to establish a methadone clinic for 12 years. Locals had prevented the center from being established in other parts of the city.
