In Brief
Strike disruption
Flight upheaval on Thursday, metro may be suspended today A strike by the civil servants’ union ADEDY, planned for Thursday, when legislative provisions affecting the pensions of civil servants are to be voted on in Parliament, will disrupt public services. Flights will be suspended between 8 a.m. and noon as air-traffic controllers walk off the job. Tax offices and schools will be closed and hospitals will be operating on emergency staff. There might be a suspended service on the Athens metro today after employees said they would proceed with a 24-hour strike deemed illegal and abusive by an Athens court. Teen killer Officer changes testimony Epaminondas Korkoneas, the policeman charged with the murder of teenager Alexis Grigoropoulos in December 2008, yesterday told a court in Amfissa, central Greece, that he fired his service gun while looking at a crowd of youths that had earlier attacked him and his partner – a contradiction of previous testimony. «I fired while looking at the crowd – it was as if my mind went blank,» Korkoneas said. In earlier testimony, he claimed to have fired his gun while running away. Mantelis in court Former Transport Minister Tasos Mantelis is due to appear before investigating magistrate Maria Nikolakea tomorrow as part of a judicial probe into his admission that he accepted money from Siemens Hellas. Mantelis insists that the cash was a campaign donation and not a bribe. The money was deposited in a Swiss bank account that had been opened by Giorgos Tsougranis, the godfather of Mantelis’s child. Kozani fault line Engineers in Kozani, northern Greece, yesterday inspected a 300-meter-long fault line that has opened up in the ground near the village of Mavropigi and which residents are blaming on the activities of the Public Power Corporation, which operates coal-fired electricity plants and mines in the area. The crack, which was discovered by local residents last week, is 1.5-meters deep and half a meter wide, according to Spyros Mytrou, community leader of Mavropigi. Shooting deaths Forensic police officers in northern Greece were yesterday examining a car discovered in Sidirokastro, near Serres, on Sunday with two bodies in the driver’s and passenger’s seats. Both men had been shot in the head at close range. The man in the passenger seat, believed to be the owner of the vehicle, was identified as a 40-year-old Russian national who acquired Greek citizenship a few years ago and had been living in Thessaloniki with his family. The identity of the second victim, found in the driver’s seat, remained unclear. Police believe the double killing to have been a settling of accounts. Pedestrians struck A retired policeman ran over 10 people late on Saturday night when he lost control of his car on a pedestrianized street on the island of Thasos, authorities said yesterday. The 62-year-old was involved in the incident after arguing with an acquaintance, police said. He struck seven Greeks and four foreigners aged between 34 and 58. Three were hospitalized. Officers said the retired policeman was breathalyzed but was not found to have been drinking.
