In Brief
OSE STRIKES
Industrial action to stop trains for four days as of Monday There will be no train services anywhere in Greece on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday as railway workers resume strike action in protest at the government’s privatization plans. However, trains will be running on Thursday, which is a national holiday. Workers on the Proastiakos Suburban Railway will also be participating in the strike, while there will be no metro service to the airport, as the line will stop instead at Doukissis Plakentias station. The strike was called by the union representing workers at the Hellenic Railways Organization (OSE). FRENCHWOMAN MISSING Search on at Mt Olympus A massive search-and-rescue operation was launched yesterday on Mount Olympus, northern Greece, after a French environmental researcher, who was not named, was reported missing. Police authorities in Larissa were informed on Wednesday night that the 37-year-old scientist, who has been conducting research in the region since early October, had set off two weeks ago from the village of Karya and has not been seen since. Researchers reported that the weather on the mountain has been windy and rainy for some days, and that there has even been some snowfall at higher altitudes. Director stable Filmmaker Nikos Koundouros, who was the victim of a brutal attack late on Thursday in his home, is out of danger, according to doctors at Athens General Hospital. The award-winning director was being treated in the intensive-care unit of the hospital after suffering a minor heart attack as the result of an assault by a group of robbers in his home in the central Athens suburb of Mets. Deceased academic The body of Nikos Legakis, a 70-year-old retired Athens University Medical School professor and mayoral candidate for Piraeus who died of postoperative complications in London yesterday, will be brought to Athens today so that funeral arrangements can be made. Alavanos attacked Alekos Alavanos, former leader of the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) party and a candidate for Athens prefect, was attacked while on a campaign tour in downtown Athens yesterday. The Free Attica candidate was speaking to voters in Aghios Panteleimonas Square, the site of frequent clashes between migrants and anti-migrant groups in recent years, when members of an extreme-right group began throwing rocks and pots of yogurt at him. Alavanos, who accused the police of not intervening fast enough, was not injured in the attack, though one of his aides was hit by a rock and suffered broken teeth. Siemens probe Antonia Markou, a tax office official who held a Swiss bank account allegedly used to transfer slush funds from the Greek branch of German electronics and engineering giant Siemens, was released yesterday after testifying before a magistrate probing the cash-for-contracts scandal. Markou, who has been charged with complicity in money laundering, insists that the ex-vice president of an exports firm, Dimitris Negris, had asked her to open an account in Geneva in 1993 and to allow then Siemens Hellas general manager Ilias Georgiou access to it. The equivalent of 2.4 million euros was transferred through the account until 2003.
