In Brief
SCOUTS HURT
Motorist loses control on Crete, injures 14 children Three members of a boy scouts group were in an Iraklio hospital yesterday with serious injuries after a motorist lost control of his car and drove into them at a bus stop in Ierapetra. Another 11 of the children, who are aged between 10 to 15, sustained minor injuries, while two in the group emerged unscathed. According to witnesses, the accident occurred when the motorist swerved to avoid an oncoming motorcyclist who was not in his lane. NATO CHIEF Visit to focus on Cyprus NATO’s new Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said yesterday that he will visit Greece and Turkey as soon as possible in a push to break the deadlock on the divided island of Cyprus and improve NATO cooperation with the European Union. «It is a priority for me to get rid of these obstacles [caused by the Cyprus conflict]… It is an issue that I will discuss with Turkish and Greek leaders when I pay early introductory visits later this month,» the former Danish prime minister said. H1N1 A 30-year-old man, the latest victim in Greece of swine flu, was in serious condition in Iraklio University Hospital, Crete, yesterday. Another man was recovering in the same hospital, while the condition of another two patients, a 42-year-old man and a 16-year-old British girl, was said to be stable. The Health Ministry has announced that four other hospitals, the Amalia Fleming and the Constantopouleio in Athens and the Papanikolaou and Ippocrateio in Thessaloniki, were treating patients for H1N1. Smuggler intercepted Police in northern Greece yesterday were questioning a 24-year-old foreign national believed to have smuggled seven immigrants into Greece before trying to put them onto an intercity coach in the town of Kastoria. The suspicions of police were aroused when they spotted the man buying coach tickets for the seven would-be migrants. Cyclist knifed A 71-year-old man alleged to have attacked a 36-year-old cyclist with a knife in a village near Kalambaka in Thessaly, central Greece, was in custody yesterday. The elderly man is alleged to have stabbed the cyclist in the arm and leg for reasons that were unclear. The cyclist’s injuries were not serious. Missing Czechs Two Czech tourists, both aged 28, who had gone missing in Crete’s White Mountains last Saturday were found on Sunday afternoon by a team of rescuers. The two had to be carried out of rugged gorge on the backs of rescuers, but were in good health. Postman robbed A postman driving a van transporting farmers’ pension payments was held up by two armed and masked men on the road between Ligortyno and Tefeli, in the Cretan prefecture of Iraklio yesterday morning. The robbers netted 20,000 euros. Bomb arrests A 31-year-old man and a young woman, detained after gas canisters exploded outside a police station in Astakos, western Greece, on Sunday night, allegedly confessed to setting off the makeshift bombs. A police car was destroyed in the attack.
