NEWS

In Brief

STREET EXECUTION

Robbers gun down jewelry salesman in Thessaloniki A door-to-door jewelry salesman was shot dead in Thessaloniki early yesterday after refusing to hand over his goods to an armed assailant. According to witnesses, two gunmen approached the salesman in the district of Stavroupoli and demanded that he hand over a briefcase he had been carrying. When the victim refused, one of the men shot him at close range, fatally injuring him. There had been no sign of the assailants by late yesterday. PUPIL PROTESTS Up to 300 schools shut down Students are staging lockouts at some 300 high schools around Greece, the State High School Teachers Federation (OLME) said yesterday. OLME stated that 150 of these schools are in Athens and 100 are in Thessaloniki. These figures contradict those provided by the Education Ministry, which says that teenagers have shut down 180 schools in total. Even if the protests by the students, who are demanding better conditions and more government spending on education, come to an end soon, the school year could be thrown into complete disarray as teachers are considering going on strike over wages from December 1. They are due to vote on the issue on October 25. Hit and run A 12-year-old boy was in serious condition in the hospital yesterday after being hit by a motorist at a road junction near his school in Ilioupoli, southern Athens. The incident occurred at 2.15 p.m. as the boy had been on his way home. Police had no leads on the perpetrator by late yesterday. Landfill unrest Police yesterday used tear gas to quell a protest by around 200 residents of a village near Ioannina, northwestern Greece. The protest broke out at a site near the village of Elliniko where authorities are planning to create a landfill. Supermarket raid A group of about 15 youngsters raided a supermarket in the Athens district of Patissia yesterday, grabbing armfuls of food products before emerging to distribute their booty among citizens shopping at a nearby street market. There were no arrests. No model behavior Two women from the Czech Republic have been arrested in Athens on suspicion of working for an international prostitution ring based in Prague and Bratislava. Police said yesterday that the women were caught after officers set up dates with them using an Internet site offering rendezvous with fashion models for 260 to 1,600 euros. The women had 3,600 euros in their possession when they were taken into custody. Air gun scare Two men, aged 49 and 29, were arrested on a bus yesterday in the Aghios Panteleimonas neighborhood in central Athens for carrying weapons, police said. Passengers called authorities when they saw the older man showing his friend an air gun. He then told commuters that he was a police officer. When the actual police arrived, the two men resisted arrest. Officers found them to be in possession of air gun pellets, two knives and a small bottle of methadone.

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