In Brief
ROAD HOGS
State service vehicles using bus lanes to incur same penalties as other cars Drivers of state service vehicles will henceforth face the same penalties as all other motorists for bus lane violation, according to a circular signed yesterday by Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos. Drivers of cars belonging to government, local and regional offices «will no longer be able to demand special treatment because of the office they serve or the official they are transporting,» the circular said. Drivers of the cars of cabinet ministers, deputies and heads of public services would face similar treatment, it added. AILING POPE Vartholomaios sends his best wishes Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomaios yesterday expressed his best wishes for Pope John Paul II’s speedy recovery in a telegram sent to the Vatican yesterday. «During these difficult days, your Holiness, we are at your side with all our heart and all our prayers,» the telegram said. «We ask God, the doctor of our souls and our bodies, to grant you a speedy recovery and give you the courage to continue your holy mission,» it continued. The 84-year-old pontiff underwent throat surgery last week. Truck death A 60-year-old man was killed after being struck by a municipal garbage truck in central Athens, police said on Saturday. The driver of the truck was being detained for questioning, they said. The circumstances of the incident were unclear. Block fire A 31-year-old man died and his 54-year-old mother suffered serious burns after a fire broke out in their apartment in Patras late on Saturday, firemen said yesterday. Panayiotis Depountis was killed instantly after jumping from the third-floor flat while his mother, Vassiliki, was transferred to Athens’s Georgios Gennimatas Hospital for treatment. It was unclear how the fire started. Well corpse A 37-year-old Bangladeshi whose corpse was found on Friday at the bottom of a seven-meter well near the village of Lappa in Achaia prefecture had died of a head wound, police said on Saturday. Police started searching for the Bangladeshi after a local strawberry farmer reported him missing since last Thursday. Police found some of the 37-year-old’s possessions in the area of Kalogeri before discovering his corpse in a nearby well.
