In Brief
ARSON ATTACKS
Assailants target police station, car dealership in Athens Unidentified arsonists attacked a police station and car dealership in Athens early yesterday, causing damage but no injuries. Arsonists planted homemade bombs comprising gas canisters outside a police station in the western suburb of Aghia Varvara but the bomb failed to detonate. Another attack on a car dealership in Halandri, northeastern Athens, caused widespread damage, destroying 14 cars. Again the assailants used gas canister bombs. A police station was also targeted in the northern town of Kozani by arsonists wielding Molotov cocktails but the bombs missed their target and no damage or injuries were caused. Coalition Tspiras says no to PASOK The leader of the Synaspismos left coalition Alexis Tsipras appeared yesterday to rule out any possibility of his party and PASOK cooperating in a coalition government in the future. «There is no point in finding ourselves in power without having any chance of changing things,» he said during an interview with City radio yesterday. Tsipras highlighted «structural» problems in PASOK and differing points of view on key issues as the main obstacles to any cooperation. Monks’ trial The trial of the former chief monk at the Vatopedi Monastery, Ephraim, was postponed until March 31 yesterday, as one of his co-defendants was too ill to appear in court. Ephraim and another monk, Arsenios, who was in charge of the Mount Athos monastery’s finances, are being tried in connection with the property exchange between Vatopedi and the state, which is alleged to have cost taxpayers millions. A judge, Maria Psalti, is also due to stand trial. She was unable to appear in court yesterday due to illness. Missing person A 48-year-old man who disappeared from his home in Kozani, northern Greece, on Sunday was found dead in a storeroom in nearby Neapoli, police said. The cause of the unnamed man’s death was not immediately clear. A coroner was examining the body last night. Cyprus talks Cyprus President Dimitris Christofias and Turkish-Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat yesterday discussed the thorny issue of property during their 18th face-to-face meeting in the latest round of peace talks. United Nations officials, who are mediating the talks, referred to «a good round of negotiations.» Ward thefts Police in Thessaloniki yesterday were questioning a 26-year-old man found lurking in the wards of the northern city’s AHEPA university hospital with four stolen cell phones in his possession. The suspect is believed to have stolen the phones from patients’ bedsides. The hospital management has advised patients and visitors not to leave valuables on bedside tables or chairs. Cafe raid Five armed robbers who held up an Internet cafe in Thessaloniki early yesterday made off with 500 euros and several customers’ cell phones, according to police, who were seeking the perpetrators. One customer who resisted when told to hand over his cell phone was stabbed in the leg by one of the assailants. He was not seriously injured.
