In Brief
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Afghan torches flat, hijacks car, injures four in Exarchia spree An Afghan immigrant was detained yesterday after running amok in the central Athens district of Exarchia late on Wednesday, setting fire to his apartment, hijacking a vehicle and injuring four people in the process. The outburst began at around 10 p.m. when the migrant allegedly torched his apartment before getting into his car and speeding through the neighborhood, injuring two passersby, two people on a motorcycle and damaging 10 other vehicles. When his car broke down, he allegedly threatened a female motorist at knife-point into abandoning her vehicle and continued his frenzy. He was eventually cornered by two police patrol cars. Thessaloniki arsonists Car targeted at French Institute Unidentified arsonists targeted a car with diplomatic license plates parked outside the premises of the French Institute in Thessaloniki shortly after 11 p.m. on Wednesday, damaging the vehicle but causing no injuries. Police said a container of fuel had been placed underneath the car and set alight. There had been no claim of responsibility by late yesterday. ‘Fakelaki’ conviction A Thessaloniki court yesterday passed down a suspended three-year jail sentence on a gynecologist at the city’s Ippocrateio Hospital who was found guilty of taking a 400-euro bribe from the relatives of a pregnant woman due to undergo a Cesarean section. The court heard that the doctor accepted a «fakelaki» of 400 euros to carry out the operation. The unidentified doctor, who was arrested at the hospital on Tuesday, denies accepting payment from his patient’s relatives. Corpse found A coroner in Thessaloniki yesterday was examining the corpse of a woman aged around 35 found off the coast of the Thermaic Gulf earlier in the day. Passers-by spotted the body floating near a pier at Nea Paralia and informed Port Authority officials who recovered it. The cause of the woman’s death was unclear yesterday. Suicide averted Members of Thessaloniki’s electronic crime unit said yesterday that they had managed to contact the relatives of a 35-year-old Cretan man who had expressed his intention to commit suicide in comments posted in an Internet chat room. The divorced father of one has been referred for psychological treatment, officers said. ATM ring A ring of Romanian fraudsters detained in Melbourne, Australia, on suspicion of swindling some 400,000 euros from cash-dispensing machines using special devices that copy card-holders’ PIN numbers have accomplices in Greece doing the same thing, police in Melbourne warned yesterday. Police in Melbourne were questioning five Romanian nationals after locating four PIN-copying devices from ATM machines across the city. Electrocution death Police in the northern town of Xanthi yesterday were investigating the circumstances that led to the death of a 54-year-old man whose body was found next to a high-voltage transformer in the agricultural region of Tymbano. The man, who died of electrocution, had serious burns down the left side of his body.
