NEWS

In Brief

N17 CONVICTS

Minister says restrictions will remain; Yotopoulos on 31st day of hunger strike Justice Minister Anastassios Papaligouras said yesterday that restrictions banning November 17 terror group convicts from contact with other prison inmates would not be lifted. N17 convicts have been protesting against detention conditions in Korydallos Prison where they are kept in isolation and segregated from other inmates during exercise hours. N17’s convicted mastermind, Alexandros Yotopoulos, was yesterday in critical condition in Nikaia General Hospital where he was transferred on Sunday. He has been on hunger strike since October 16 in protest at jail conditions. AIRPORT TRAVEL Suburban railway, metro fares drop The cost of traveling to the airport on Athens’s new suburban railway dropped to 6 euros from 8 euros yesterday, and the fare for a metro ticket to the airport will also drop to 6 euros later this week. Airport buses cost 2.90 euros. From the middle of next month, a 1-euro ticket will be issued, offering passengers access to all forms of Athens public transport (with the exception of the suburban and metro trains to the airport) for up to an hour and a half. Migrants hospitalized A group of 117 illegal immigrants, who had been packed together on a 45-meter vessel which was spotted off the western Peloponnese on Sunday, were yesterday treated for exhaustion in Pirgos Hospital. The ship began its journey from the Egyptian port of Alexandria about 10 days ago but it is unclear where it was headed, officials said. A navy vessel escorted it to the port of Katakolo yesterday morning. The migrants were mostly Palestinians, Iraqis and Egyptians. Bus lanes One week after the launch of a crackdown on Athens motorists illegally using bus lanes, traffic police said that around 500 cars, 113 taxis and 11 trucks had been caught using the lanes. Of these, only those who used bus lanes during rush hour were fined the 83-euro penalty, police said. But they added that offenders will be more strictly dealt with henceforth. Files disappear Unidentified robbers who broke into the Thessaloniki office of New Democracy MP Costas Giulekas made off with confidential files belonging to the investigative committee probing the purchase of air defense missile systems by the previous PASOK government, police said yesterday. ‘Spiked’ water An Athens prosecutor yesterday brought charges against all responsible parties on completion of a preliminary investigation into claims that players from the first-division Iraklis soccer team were given bottles of spiked water before an away match against Akratitos last April. The unidentified culprits are charged with deliberately inflicting serious bodily harm. Last June, the state food authority (EFET) confirmed that the bottled water in question had been spiked with a drug called Kloperidol. Cretan lady back One of the most seminal works of ancient Greek sculpture, a stone statue of a woman known as the «Lady of Auxerre,» will be loaned to Greece from the Louvre Museum in Paris for an Athens exhibition next month, it was announced yesterday. The 640 BC work will form part of a display, at the Cycladic Art Museum, of finds from the ancient city of Eleftherna on Crete. The statue, which has never left the Louvre, is believed to have been made in Crete. The exhibition opens on December 1. ESR probe Athens chief prosecutor Dimitris Papangelopoulos yesterday ordered the launch of a preliminary investigation into the procedures followed by the National Broadcasting Council (ESR) in issuing «certificates of transparency» – documents confirming that a public contractor is in line with laws withholding state contracts from media barons. This followed press claims of irregularities in the process. Salonica landfill Residents of three eastern Thessaloniki municipalities are to block the Tagarades landfill today ahead of tomorrow’s hearing of appeals against the construction of a new dump near Langadas.

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