In Brief
HAITI RESCUE
Greeks aid in pulling man from rubble 11 days after earthquake A Greek rescue team has helped pull a Haitian man out of the ruins of a Port-au-Prince building 11 days after a deadly earthquake struck the Caribbean island. Wismond Exantus had been buried under the remains of a demolished grocer’s shop until Saturday, when he was rescued just after authorities had said there was no more hope of finding survivors. Exantus’s relatives informed the small Greek rescue team on Haiti that they could hear his cries coming from the rubble of the building and with the help of experts from France and the USA, they managed to pull the 25-year-old from the rubble. «I feel good,» he told the Agence France-Presse. «I survived by drinking Coca-Cola every day and eating some small, tiny things.» ETZ HAYYIM Gov’t pledges to help synagogue The government intends to help renovate the historic Etz Hayyim synagogue in Hania, Crete, after it was damaged during two arson attacks, Defense Minister Evangelos Venizelos told members of the Jewish community in Thessaloniki yesterday. «We accept the responsibility… not only to repair the damage but also to protect this monument, and all the Jewish monuments in the country,» he said. Venizelos added that Greece was in a position to play a more active diplomatic role in securing peace in the Middle East. PASOK targeted A group of assailants threw petrol bombs at PASOK’s central headquarters on Ippocratous Street in downtown Athens early yesterday. Police said that four firebombs were thrown as officers stood guard outside the building at 1.40 a.m. Nobody was injured and no arrests were made. Apartment fire Firefighters rescued a family of four from their apartment in Kato Patissia near central Athens yesterday morning after a blaze broke out at the property. Twenty firemen took part in the operation to rescue a couple, their one-year old baby and a 23-year-old relative. The child was taken to the hospital for precautionary reasons but none of the others required treatment. The cause of the fire was not immediately clear. Fatal crash One person was killed and another seriously injured when a car and a taxi collided on Vassilissis Sofias Avenue in central Athens early yesterday. The 30-year-old passenger in the car was killed and the driver was taken to the hospital. Traffic police did not indicate how the crash occurred. Officer hurt A policeman who was attending the scene of a car crash on Kifissos Avenue in western Athens was seriously injured after a pick-up truck ran into the back of his vehicle on Saturday morning. The officer, who was not named, was taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries. KTEL ablaze A KTEL intercity bus traveling from Athens to Thessaloniki via Rio-Antirio in western Greece caught fire in Kiato, west of Athens, on Saturday morning. The bus was following a longer route because of the farmers’ roadblocks, when it caught fire almost 100 kilometers from Athens. The driver and all 32 passengers were able to make it off the vehicle safely. The cause of the fire was not immediately known.
