NEWS

In Brief

STOCK BUBBLE

Judges indict 67 suspects over alleged share manipulation A council of appeals court judges decided late on Monday that 67 people should stand trial for alleged involvement in the manipulation of share prices on the Athens Stock Exchange in 1999. At the time, the bourse was experiencing a bubble, which later burst, meaning that thousands of investors lost money. The initial investigation into possible offenses started in 2000. Now, the judges’ council has decided that several businessmen, financial advisers and bank employees must stand trial for offenses including fraud, embezzlement and money laundering. The suspects have not been named. BAKOYANNIS BETTER FM leaves hospital after illness Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis was discharged yesterday from Athens’s Henri Dunant Hospital where she was admitted last Friday for treatment for a pulmonary infection. Bakoyannis, who last week tested negative for swine flu, intends to fly to New York on Friday as scheduled for the United Nations General Assembly and to meet with her counterpart US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Vatopedi trial Two senior monks from the Vatopedi Monastery, which is implicated in a land-swap deal with the state, yesterday faced an appeals court on charges of being moral accomplices to a breach of duty. Ephraim, the monastery’s chief monk, and Arsenios, its financial manager, have consistently denied any wrongdoing in the land-swap affair believed to have cost taxpayers some 100 million euros. Maria Psalti, the former judge of a first instance court in Rhodope, northern Greece, where tracts of land involved in the swap are located, faced the court yesterday on the same charges. Drowned bear A female brown bear, aged around 20, was found drowned in a water tank in Trikoukia near the northern town of Grevena, conservationists said yesterday. According to the Callisto group, which monitors protected wildlife in Greece, the bear probably fell into the tank while trying to drink water. The scratch marks on the inside walls of the tank are believed to have been made by the bear in its attempt to climb out of the tank. Representatives of Callisto noted that bears and other animals often fall into tanks and called for them to be covered with barbed wire. Burglars caught Two Georgian nationals, believed to have netted more than 160,000 euros in raids on 29 homes and stores over the past few months, faced a prosecutor in Crete yesterday. The suspects, both aged 31, were caught by officers yesterday after they stumbled upon an elderly man after burgling a house in Hania. The man contacted police, who found the suspects emerging from a jewelry store they had just robbed. The suspects both resisted arrest, according to officers, who described the two men as swarthy and exceptionally cocky. Zakynthos muggers A 19-year-old man from Zakynthos and a 14-year-old ethnic Greek from Albania, believed to have mugged several tourists on the Ionian island over the summer, yesterday faced a prosecutor on multiple robbery charges. The pair are alleged to have cornered tourists in remote spots on the island and to have threatened them at knifepoint to hand over their valuables.

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