In Brief
AIRSPACE VIOLATIONS
Turkish jets have to be chased off for the second time in a week Six formations of Turkish fighter jets yesterday entered the Athens Flight Information Region (FIR) six times and violated Greek national air space eight times in the northern and central Aegean, military sources said. The 14 Turkish jets were chased off by Greek aircraft and there were two simulated dogfights. Two of the Turkish aircraft were photo-reconnaissance Phantoms, they noted. It was the second series of violations this week. SURVEILLANCE PROTEST? Youths wreck phone exchange box on column supporting CCTV camera A group of about 25 youths yesterday vandalized a telephone exchange box at the base of a column supporting a surveillance camera on Patission Street, central Athens, police said. The youths emerged from a building at the Athens University of Economics and Business, wrecked the boxes and then fled on foot, according to witnesses. MUGGERS ARRESTED Two men pose as cops to get cash A Greek man and a foreigner, both aged 19, were arrested yesterday after stealing two mobile phones and 190 euros from two 18-year-olds in central Athens after posing as plain-clothes policemen. Going on descriptions supplied by the victims, police caught one suspect in central Omonia Square, and the other at his home. In a similar incident, two men mugged a woman after posing as policemen in central Athens last Tuesday. A 27-year-old Greek suspect was arrested but the second man escaped. US rebuffed Six NATO member states, including Greece, have refused to appoint military instructors to help the USA train Iraqi officers, a US State Department official was quoted as saying yesterday. All 26 NATO allies approved the training program and agreed to help fund it, but six – Germany, France, Belgium, Spain, Luxembourg and Greece – refused to assign officers for training the Iraqis, the spokesman said. Nafplion trains There will be no railway service between Argos and Nafplion from Monday as track maintenance work gets under way, the Hellenic Railway Organization (OSE) said yesterday. A bus service will serve the route until train services resume, OSE said, without determining when that would be. Doctor charged A Thessaloniki gynecologist charged in connection with the death two years ago of a 26-year-old woman pregnant with triplets was yesterday indicted to trial for manslaughter through neglect. The unnamed doctor failed to give Eleftheria Danga the necessary blood-thinning drugs when she was brought to Thessaloniki’s Ippokrateion Hospital with convulsions of the womb in May 2002, a misdemeanors council ruled. After one of the triplets died, Danga had a caesarian section, giving birth to two healthy infants. She died after the birth. French-speakers Greece is set to become a member of the International Organization of Francophone Countries at the body’s 10th summit which begins in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, in west Africa, next Friday. The organization currently has 51 members from all five continents. Fraud Two women yesterday faced a prosecutor on multiple forgery and fraud charges. The women allegedly used forged documents to secure bank loans and buy various goods, thus accruing debt on the citizens whose details were used. Suitcase gang A group of six Albanians netted around 16,000 euros in goods from 13 supermarket robberies carried out in different parts of Attica over the past six months, police said yesterday after arresting three suspects following an attempted raid in Ilion. Ring members targeted Carrefour supermarket branches which they visited as normal customers, collecting products from the shelves, before packing the goods into a suitcase and leaving unnoticed. Police are seeking the other three ring members.
