In Brief
CABLE-CAR HITCH
Mount Parnitha staff, gamblers stuck Gamblers and employees of the Mount Parnitha casino were trapped in cable cars for hours early yesterday morning after the service connecting the casino with the ground broke down just after midnight on Saturday. People in the cars used their mobile phones to call for help. They were released around 4 a.m. Vrilissia park Public Works Minister Vasso Papandreou yesterday opened a park over the Attiki Odos underpass in Vrilissia, northern Athens, built following appeals by citizens and municipal authorities. The park covers a total surface area of 4.5 hectares, and cost 53 million euros to create, Papandreou said. Salonika blasts Arsonists planted homemade gas canister bombs outside a car showroom and a storeroom formerly serving as PASOK’s offices in Thessaloniki’s Toumba district early yesterday morning. The attacks caused no injuries but resulted in minor damages. It was the eighth arson attack in the northern city this year. Kidnappers caught Two men have been arrested for allegedly kidnapping an ex-broker from outside a nightclub in Nikaia, southwestern Athens, early on Saturday. The suspects, aged 43 and 48, drove the man to a remote spot in Glyfada and threatened to shoot him if he did not hand over 45,000 euros, police said. Excluded A local newspaper has been ordered to pay 11,739 euros in compensation to a man who ran for Parliament on the New Democracy ticket in the 2000 elections, after being found guilty of intentionally excluding him from its coverage of ND’s candidates for the general elections in 2000. According to a Supreme Court ruling made public on Saturday, the paper – whose name was not made public – failed to mention Athanassios Kontaxis in two reports which featured the names and photographs of all the other ND candidates. Kontaxis failed to be elected. Negligence The Attica Child Psychiatric Hospital must pay the mother of a 20-year-old patient 80,000 euros after the youth, who was mentally retarded and epileptic, drowned during an excursion to Schinias, northern Attica, with hospital staff in the summer of 1993, according to a Council of State ruling made public on Saturday. The court ruled that the patient’s death had been due to the negligence of the two supervisors.
