In Brief
OLIVE OIL
Nearly a tenth on market does not conform to quality standards Nearly a tenth of virgin olive oil on the Greek market does not meet quality standards, Deputy Development Minister Yiannis Papathanassiou said yesterday. Inspections conducted on 400 olive oil samples by Hellenic Food Authority (EFET) officials revealed that 91 percent conformed to existing quality standards, the minister said. The fewest cases of non-comformity were found during tests on samples of extra virgin olive oil (8.3 percent). The most cases in which the oil did not meet standards were during tests on virgin olive oil (22.1 percent). TOXIC MUSHROOMS Boy improving after transplant A 4-year-old boy from Florina in northern Greece who had a liver transplant in Italy earlier this week is in stable condition and will be able to go home in three weeks if there are no complications, Italian doctors said yesterday. The unnamed boy had to have surgery after eating poisonous mushrooms, which his father picked near the family home. Attica floods A motorcyclist on an Athens road braves the heavy rain that flooded parts of Attica yesterday. The fire service was bombarded with more than 250 calls from citizens whose homes had flooded following several hours of rainfall. Worst hit was the coastal suburb of Glyfada. Traffic along coastal roads was disrupted for several hours but no serious accidents were reported. Olympic Airlines was forced to cancel flights to 11 islands because of the bad weather Rhodes search A massive search, involving dozens of soldiers, firemen and rescue workers, began on Rhodes yesterday morning following the disappearance of a 43-year-old lawyer who is also a member of the island’s municipal council. Manolis Kostios was last seen in the bay of Petaloudes on Wednesday afternoon. Car bomb A hand grenade was thrown at a parked car in Neos Cosmos, central Athens, early yesterday, causing damage to the vehicle and the front of the apartment building near where it was parked, police said. No one was hurt in the incident. Police were conducting an investigation into the attack on the car, which belongs to a pensioner. They believe the attacker may have been intending to bomb another car. Immigrant ring Police in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) yesterday arrested eight people suspected of attempting to smuggle 16 Albanian immigrants into Greece. Police said that the Albanians were hidden in a truck bound for Greece, each paying between 1,000 to 1,500 euros for the transfer. Six of the men arrested were imprisoned while the other two were released on special terms. Kosovo trip Foreign Minister Petros Molyviatis will take part in a visit to Pristina and Belgrade on December 6 and 7 with his counterparts from Romania and Croatia for discussions about the future of Kosovo, the Greek Foreign Ministry said yesterday. The trip will take place under the auspices of the South East European Cooperation Process (SEECP), of which Greece is a member. Fake money Police arrested three people on the island of Rhodes yesterday after the trio, whose ages range from 20 to 25, were suspected of printing counterfeit banknotes. Authorities were tipped off when local shopkeepers reported receiving fake 20-euro notes. One of the three arrested printed the fake money using a color printer, while the other two were responsible for distributing the cash into the market, police said.
