In Brief
TRAGIC ACCIDENT
Refuse collector crushed to death during collection in Hania A municipal sanitation worker was killed yesterday in Hania, Crete, while trying to dislodge a piece of trash that had blocked the operation of a garbage truck’s compacting mechanism, local police said. The man, who was not identified, died after the truck’s rear door crushed his head. The truck driver and another municipal worker who had also been there at the time were transferred to the local hospital in a state of shock. SANTOS ERA Greece coach changes formation The Greek national soccer team’s new coach, Fernando Santos, said yesterday that he will ditch the formation preferred for many years by his predecessor Otto Rehhagel but will retain some of the German’s defensive philosophy. Speaking ahead of his first game in charge, a friendly against Serbia in Belgrade on August 11, the Portuguese manager said he will experiment with a 4-4-2 formation rather than Rehaggel’s favored 4-3-2. «Mr Rehhagel’s tenure was a success but we have to move on now with my philosophy,» said Santos, who has called up three uncapped youngsters to his squad: Stergos Marinos of Panathinaikos, Savvas Gentzoglou of AEK and Olympiakos’s Yiannis Papadopoulos. New stations Two new stations are to open on the Proastiakos suburban railway on Sunday, it has been announced. The stations will be located in the northern suburbs of Aghioi Anargyroi and Metamorphosi. The latter station has been ready for several years but a bureaucratic complication, caused by it having been built before a construction permit was issued, meant that it could not be connected to the electricity grid. Armed robber A 37-year-old man who fired a shotgun three times while robbing a convenience store in the Kalamaria suburb of Thessaloniki on Monday evening was arrested later the same day, police said yesterday. According to authorities, the suspect, who also struck the mother of the storeowner with the butt of his gun, was caught by members of the motorcycle-riding DIAS squad. Cafe raids Police in Thessaloniki detained a 32-year-old Albanian man believed to have been involved in four armed raids on Internet cafes in the northern port city, all on the same day last October. Officers said they were also seeking a 22-year-old suspect, believed to have been an accomplice in the robberies on October 3. According to police, the 32-year-old netted around 10,000 euros in 10 raids on stores between September 2007 and July 2009. Bomb hoax A telephone call warning that a bomb had been planted on a passenger ferry due to leave the port of Rafina for Andros, Tinos and Myconos resulted in the Superferry 2’s departure being delayed for three-and-a-half hours yesterday so that police could search the vessel. No suspect device was found. Skull identified A human skull found in a ditch near Polydendri in the prefecture of Imathia in Macedonia on Monday is believed to be that of a 42-year-old man missing since May 2006, police forensic experts have said. The skull was found in front of an abandoned car, according to police who believe the man was probably killed after his car fell into a ditch.
