In Brief
PHARMACISTS APPEASED
Health minister strikes deal over money owed by funds Pharmacists, who had shut up shop yesterday to protest outstanding debts from social insurance funds, yesterday agreed to suspend their action after Health Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos pledged that they would receive the money they are due by January. Following talks with unionists representing the country’s pharmacies, Avramopoulos said that the indebted Civil Servants’ Fund (OPAD), which subsidizes medicines for public sector workers, will be given the necessary funds to pay off its debts in due course. TEACHER ARRESTED ‘Pupils filmed in locker room’ A gym teacher has been arrested in Paeania, northeast of Athens, on suspicion of secretly filming his female students in the locker room. Police said yesterday that they have arrested the man, who was not named, after the head of the high school’s Parent Teacher Association reported that the suspect had hidden his mobile phone in the locker room to film the teenagers while they were changing. Officers confiscated the cellphone as well as a computer from the teacher’s home. Fatal robbery The owner of a gold and silver workshop in Thessaloniki was shot dead yesterday in a suspected robbery. Police said that neighbors heard shouting and then shots being fired in the seventh-floor apartment where the workshop was housed. By the time they reached the property, the man, who has not been named, was dead. It was not immediately clear what the assailants had stolen from the workshop. Fire victims Fifteen relatives of people who died during the devastating wildfires of 2007 were yesterday given jobs for life in the civil service. The Interior Ministry announced the names of those who will be taking up jobs in various areas of the public sector, including at some ministries. Metro talks Transport Minister Costis Hatzidakis yesterday had talks with metro workers, who have been staging work protests to demand better salaries and benefits, but the meeting failed to yield an agreement. Unionists representing metro workers said they would respond to the minister by next Tuesday. Card fraud Police were yesterday questioning two Romanians believed to be members of an international bank card fraud ring. The two men, age 24 and 29, were arrested at Athens International Airport earlier this week. One is alleged to have flown in from London with a batch of forged credit cards – «clones» of British bank cards – and the other had been waiting to receive them. There was no indication yesterday about how much many the alleged fraudsters have swindled out of account holders. Stray appeal Deputy Agricultural Development Minister Costas Kiltidis yesterday sent a circular to local and regional authorities across the country, reminding them that it is their duty to collect, neuter and tag stray dogs and cats. Many local authorities do not fulfill their obligations to avert the uncontrolled breeding of stray animals, the circular said.
