In Brief
Schoolchild hurt
Girl, 11, becomes third child in two days to be hit on road An 11-year-old schoolgirl was hospitalized with serious injuries yesterday after being hit by a truck in the northwestern suburb of Aghioi Anargyroi. The exact circumstances of the accident were unclear. It came just one day after two sisters, aged 15 and 11, were hospitalized with serious injuries after being hit by a car on Kifissias Avenue at the Aghia Varvara junction. The injuries suffered by all three girls were said to be serious but not life-threatening. Bomb hoax Call causes alarm in Kolonaki Police cordoned off a section of the central Athens district of Kolonaki yesterday after an unidentified caller warned private television channel Alpha that a bomb had been planted on a scooter parked on Kanari Street. Bomb disposal experts cleared the area but failed to find any suspect devices and so the roads were reopened. Yesterday’s hoax came just a day after two anonymous telephone calls to a different private television channel, Alter, warned that a bomb was due to explode in central Syntagma Square. Cyprus visit Prime Minister George Papandreou is to visit Cyprus on October 19 for a briefing on the progress of United Nations-mediated peace talks aimed at reunifying the island, government officials in Athens said yesterday. The trip will be Papandreou’s first official tvisit abroad as Greece’s prime minister. A planned meeting yesterday between Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias and Turkish-Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat was called off as Christofias was reportedly suffering from neck muscle spasms. Papandreou is to visit Istanbul today for an informal meeting of Balkan foreign policy chiefs, sources said. Worker appeased Port workers at Piraeus yesterday managed to talk down a 46-year-old colleague who had climbed onto the central mast of a ship moored at the port and had been threatening to jump onto the concrete below unless the shipping firm he has been working for gave him unpaid wages. The company reportedly claimed that it only owed the worker last month’s salary and that it would pay up. ISAP disruption Ongoing engineering work on the Kifissia-Piraeus electric railway (ISAP) will disrupt services between Kallithea and Irini stations over the weekend, ISAP managers announced yesterday. Commuters will be able to use their tickets on the X12 bus that will service the stations on the affected section tomorrow and Sunday. Services are due to return to normal on Monday. Commuters can telephone ISAP’s customer information line 185 for more details. US Embassy The US Embassy in Athens and its Consular Section, the US Consulate in Thessaloniki, as well as all US government offices across the country will be closed on Monday, October 12, in observance of Columbus Day, a US national holiday.
