In Brief
Christos Lambrakis
Newspaper publisher, owner of large media group dies at 75 The publisher of To Vima and Ta Nea newspapers and head of Greece’s largest media group Lambrakis Press (DOL), Christos Lambrakis, died yesterday at the age of 75. Lambrakis inherited the media group from his father in 1957. He went on to expand DOL to include more than 20 newspaper and magazine titles. It also owns 22 percent of Teletypos, which runs Mega TV channel. «Christos Lambrakis was a very important member of the country’s public life… who made a great contribution to the arts and to education,» said Prime Minister George Papandreou of Lambrakis, who led the collection of private donors in 1991 who created the Athens Concert Hall. «His loss leaves a huge gap and marks the end of an era,» said Papandreou. Lambrakis died of multiple organ failure. His funeral is due to take place tomorrow at Athens’s First Cemetery. PROPYLAEA PROJECT Acropolis gateway restored A seven-year project to extend the roof over the gateway to the Acropolis, the Propylaea, has been completed, the Culture Ministry said in a statement yesterday. As part of the project, 255 marble blocks were taken down from the monument so that metal clamps that were installed by previous restorers but which caused cracking could be removed. Tempe rockfall Experts from Thessaloniki’s Aristotle University said yesterday that tectonic activity may have been responsible for the rockfall at the Vale of Tempe which killed an engineer last week and has forced the closure of a section of the Athens-Thessaloniki highway. «It is well known that there are geological faults in the area,» said geology professor Spyros Pavlidis during a visit to the site. «Herodotus had even mentioned that the Tempe valley was formed by an earthquake.» The Infrastructure Ministry has appointed a committee of experts to examine the cause of the rockfall. Cemetery robbed Two men carried out an armed robbery at a cemetery in Zografou, eastern Athens, early yesterday. The robbers threatened the night guard with a gun and then hit him on the head with a blunt object. They then used an angle grinder to open the cemetery’s safe and made off with an unspecified amount. There was also a robber at a gas station in Ilion, western Athens, early yesterday. Two armed robbers made off with 1,000 euros after firing at the ground twice and forcing an employee to hand over the cash. Prison overcrowding The head of the prison officers’ union in Nafplio, Nikos Kostopoulos, claimed yesterday that more than 100 inmates at the prison in Nafplio are sleeping on the floor because of a lack of beds. He also claimed that 10 to 12 prisoners are being held in cells built for just five people at Tripoli jail, also in the Peloponnese. Burning oil A 40-year-old man was being treated for serious burns in an intensive-care unit on Crete yesterday after an explosion at an olive oil press in Iraklio on Sunday night. It is not clear what caused the blast, which occurred when six employees were in the building. Nobody else was injured.
