In Brief
WEATHER WOES
Strong winds cause transport disruption at sea, in air Strong winds over the weekend caused disruptions in passenger ferry routes, as most vessels were forced to remain moored at ports. The winds dropped in most regions yesterday, allowing services to resume but there were problems in some areas. A ferry setting sail from the main port of Rhodes struck a pier early yesterday, though no harm came to any of the 80 passengers on board who took a different vessel later in the day. Another passenger ferry that had been en route from the port of Lavrio to Ai Stratis was forced to divert its route due to strong winds in the northern Aegean. Several scheduled flights to Santorini were also canceled due to the weather. VETERAN JOURNALIST Yiannis Voultepsis dies at 87 Prominent journalists and politicians on Saturday expressed their condolences at the news of the death, at the age of 87, of veteran journalist Yiannis Voultepsis. During his long and illustrious career, Voultepsis wrote for a variety of newspapers ranging from Eleftheros Typos and Apogevmatini to English-language daily Athens News and was the author of several works of non-fiction. He received a medal for his contribution to Greece’s resistance to German occupying forces during World War II. «Yiannis Voultepsis was not only an eminent journalist, he was first and foremost a human being – independent, unconventional, altruistic,» the Athens Union of Journalists (ESIEA) said in a statement. Voultepsis is to be buried at 2 p.m. today at the cemetery of Palaio Faliro, south of Athens. Cyprus proposal Cyprus President Dimitris Christofias yesterday presented the leaders of opposition parties with an eight-page document titled «The Federation and Cyprus,» which aims to explain the difference between a unified federation and the «bizonal, bicommunal federation» that the Cyprus leader foresees as the basis of a settlement for the divided island. Christofias has asked opposition leaders to examine the document and make any comments before a revised version is prepared and circulated to the general public. Road fatalities Two women, aged 55 and 79, were killed on Friday afternoon after a car in which they were passengers veered off course and overturned a few kilometers outside Thessaloniki. The 27-year-old woman who had been driving the car and a 22-year-old woman in the front passenger seat escaped from the crash with minor injuries, police said. The exact circumstances of the accident, which occurred on the section of the national road network connecting Thessaloniki to Petritsio, was unclear. People smugglers Police in the western port of Patra on Saturday detained two foreign nationals, aged 27 and 29, after finding three would-be migrants hidden in their car, which had been due to board a ferry to Italy. The three men had all been carrying forged identification documents, police said, without determining the migrants’ suspected countries of origin. No details were released about the nationality of the two suspected smugglers.
