In Brief
Garbage appeal
Citizens asked to hold on to trash during 5-day strike Athens City Hall yesterday appealed to citizens to keep their household trash on their balconies for the third week in a row as employees of Attica’s main landfill are to resume strike action today and continue through Monday. Last week, trash was overflowing from dumpsters onto the streets of the capital after landfill workers, who are demanding the payment of outstanding wages, walked off the job for three straight days. Nonprescribed beating Patient’s son ‘struck’ doctor A doctor from the northern city of Serres who claims to have been beaten by the son of an elderly patient after she failed to prescribe the latter with sedatives yesterday took legal action against the alleged assailant. According to the doctor, the son of the patient visited her surgery on Tuesday afternoon after the elderly woman had left. An argument ensued that allegedly ended with the son punching the doctor in the head several times. There had been no sign of the alleged assailant by late yesterday. Violent raid Five armed robbers broke into a branch of Hellenic Postbank in Glyka Nera, eastern Attica, yesterday, using a sledgehammer and an ax. The robbers fled with an undetermined sum using two motorcycles and a car. During their getaway, two of the assailants on a motorcycle stopped a car and forced the driver to take them to Menidi, western Athens. On arriving there they let her go and she informed police. Vessel moored A Greek-owned supertanker hijacked by Somalian pirates earlier this week as it was sailing with a cargo of oil has docked close to the known pirate haven of Hobyo, the European Union’s naval force Atalanta said yesterday. The Maran Centaurus, with a capacity of 300,000 tons, is one of the largest vessels to be seized in the Indian Ocean. There was no update on the fate of the 28-member crew, which includes nine Greeks and who were said to be safe late on Monday. Hot smokes Authorities in Thessaloniki yesterday announced that 9 million contraband cigarettes had been seized from a cargo ship that docked at the northern port over the weekend. According to Finance Ministry inspectors who raided the vessel, the smuggled cigarettes would have represented a loss in state revenue of some 1.3 million euros. Meanwhile in the northwestern port of Igoumenitsa, a customs official was detained on suspicion of trading in illicit goods after 1,218 packets of contraband cigarettes were found in a storeroom at his home. School fire A fire that broke out in the computer room of a primary school in Kalamata, in the Peloponnese, late on Monday, caused serious damage but no injuries. The local fire brigade extinguished the blaze, the cause of which remained unclear yesterday, before it could spread to other parts of the school.
