NEWS

In Brief

FREE TRAVEL

No charge for commuters due to European Transport Week Commuters can travel on all modes of public transport for free today, an initiative aimed at encouraging citizens to leave their cars at home and organized within the context of European Transport Week. On the metro, free travel applies up to Koropi station and on the suburban railway on the Koropi-Magoula-Piraeus route. VIOLENT BURGLARY Mother, daughter threatened Three burglars who broke into a ground-floor home in central Athens early yesterday tied a young female resident to a chair and forced her mother at gunpoint to hand over some 3,000 euros in cash and other valuables before fleeing. The three burglars were all foreign nationals, according to the accounts of the victims, who said that only one of the intruders had his face covered. The burglars broke the kitchen window to access the home, which belongs to Kleanthis Tsironis, head of Athens’s central Varvakeio meat market. Tsironis, away on business when the break-in occurred, was due back in Athens yesterday. Migrant smuggling Police in Nikaia, near Piraeus, yesterday were questioning a 23-year-old Afghan and eight Pakistanis believed to have been smuggling illegal immigrants into the country from Turkey. According to police, the ring members would collect the migrants from Evia and drive them to an apartment in Nikaia where they would beat them and force them to telephone their relatives and arrange payments for their release. A group of eight would-be migrants, from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, were also detained. Bomb hoax Police cordoned off the area around the premises of the Economy and Finance Ministry off Syntagma Square at around 2 p.m. yesterday after an anonymous caller warned that a bomb had been planted there. Bomb disposal experts were called in but failed to find any suspect devices. It was the third bomb hoax in central Athens in the past week. Road deaths A 35-year-old motorcyclist was killed following a collision with another motorcyclist on the national road linking Isthmia with Epidaurus. It was unclear what caused the collision, which left the other motorcyclist with serious injuries. Another crash, on a country road outside Halastra, near Thessaloniki, early yesterday caused the death of a 37-year-old truck driver. Bakoyannis better Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis has been responding well to treatment for a pulmonary infection and is likely to be discharged from the hospital in the coming days, doctors at Athens’s Henri Dunant Hospital said yesterday. Bakoyannis, who last week tested negative for swine flu, does not have a fever, doctors said. Failed suicide A 45-year-old man was in the hospital with severe burns and other other injuries yesterday after setting fire to himself and driving off the edge off a cliff in Schisto, western Attica, police said. Rescue workers removed the 45-year-old from the wreck of his car, which got wedged between some trees about 15 meters from the bottom of the ravine. It was unclear yesterday what had driven the 45-year-old to attempt suicide.

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