In Brief
LANDFILL OPENS
Salonica mayors stop blockade after minister backs building new dump The mayors of three eastern Thessaloniki municipalities yesterday suspended a blockade of the Tagarades landfill after Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos said he supported the construction of a new dump close to Mavromachi, which is some 40 kilometers north of the city and near the town of Langadas. Pavlopoulos stressed, however, that the final decision would depend on a court ruling on appeals against the Mavromachi dump by residents of nearby Langadas. FYROM VISIT FM to discuss name, trade ties Foreign Minister Petros Molyviatis arrived in Skopje yesterday for a two-day visit during which he is to have talks with his counterpart from the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Ilinka Mitreva, as well as FYROM’s Prime Minister, Hari Kostov, and President Branko Crvenkovski. The talks are to resume the debate about FYROM’s official name, bilateral relations (especially in respect to trade) and the situation in Kosovo. In Bucharest yesterday, Molyviatis (l, with his counterpart for Serbia-Montenegro, Vuk Draskovic) attended a meeting of the South-Eastern European Cooperative Process. Pedestrian death A 35-year-old army officer, in critical condition since he was struck on the head by a slab of marble that fell from the facade of a bank on Ermou Street earlier this month, died yesterday. Giorgos Lambas was walking by the neoclassical building that houses a branch of the National Bank of Greece on October 10 when the marble came loose from the third floor and fell upon him. Store hours Stores will be open until 8 p.m. daily and until 6 p.m. on Saturdays as of November 1 when they switch to winter hours. Winter hours apply until March 31 when Daylight Saving Time ends. Violent robbery Four people were hospitalized yesterday afternoon following an armed robbery at a tobacconist in the Athenian district of Aghios Pandeleimonas. The three thieves violently beat three people and one of them shot a fourth person in the foot before the trio fled with an undisclosed sum. The extent of the victims’ injuries was yesterday unclear. Fueling discord Deputy Finance Minister Petros Doukas yesterday advocated a more spartan lifestyle as a way of coping with high heating fuel prices. Responding to a question in Parliament on whether the government proposed to hand out special fuel subsidies to help low income-earners pay their heating oil bills this winter, Doukas said: «The rise in petrol prices affords people the opportunity to reduce consumption.» He later said he had been quoted out of context. Marathon Avenue There will be disruptions on certain sections of Marathon Ave until the end of this month due to roadworks, traffic police said yesterday. Traffic will be restricted to one lane in either direction on the stretch between the 17th and 20th kilometer and from the 24th and 25th kilometer of the road from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., they said. TV games A retired construction worker has lodged a suit with a Thessaloniki court for 12,000 euros after a two-hour wait on the telephone to a television game show cost him dear, court sources said yesterday. The man said he made a total of 13 calls to the show on a high-charge line between February and March last year and that a two-hour wait cost him 160 euros.
