In Brief
MIDDLE EAST
Palestinians protest Yassin’s death Dozens of Palestinians staged a demonstration outside the Israeli Embassy in Athens on Saturday over the killing of Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin. The demonstrators, pushing a wheelchair bearing a photograph of Yassin, shouted «Death to Sharon – Freedom for Palestine.» Paralympic protest Greece’s Paralympic athletes have protested at the Greek Olympic Committee’s failure to invite them to the flame-lighting ceremony in Ancient Olympia last Thursday. Athlete Simos Paltsanitidis said the oversight was «a great impropriety.» Greek Olympic Committee President Lambis Nikolaou admitted on SKAI radio that it had been a mistake not to invite Greece’s Paralympic champions. Another Athos fire Fire destroyed the bell tower of the Church of the Protaton in the village of Karyes, on Mt Athos, on Friday night. Monks and visitors managed to extinguish the blaze before it spread to the rest of the church, the oldest on Mt Athos. An investigation has been ordered into the cause of the fire. Earlier this month, a blaze severely damaged the Helandari monastery on Mt Athos. Halkidiki quake A tremor measuring 4.7 on the Richter scale shook the Halkidiki peninsula in northern Greece shortly after noon on Saturday. The epicenter was 10 kilometers north of Arnaia. No damages were reported. End of an era The death of Amalia Karvela on Saturday, the 79-year-old publisher of a daily newspaper founded on the island of Lesvos in 1959, marks the end of the Lesvos Herald, which was still being printed on a hand press. Karvela left no heirs, and the newspaper was reportedly in serious financial trouble.
