NEWS

In Brief

Toll charges

New gates on Athens-Lamia national road and in Arcadia Motorists using the Athens-Lamia national highway will face an additional charge from today as a new set of tollgates starts operating at the Aghia Triada junction in Fthiotida. The new fees of 1.55 euros for cars and 1.10 euros for motorcycles or scooters apply as of midnight on Sunday. New tollgates also start operating today at the junction for Asea, a village in the prefecture of Arcadia. The charges there will be 1.80 euros for cars and 1.20 for motorcycles. Authorities are planning to set up new tollgates on the stretch of highway connecting Elefsina, Corinth and Patra next year. Meanwhile, many existing tollgates are issuing higher charges. Last week the fee at the tollgates at Malgara, near Thessaloniki, increased to 2.80 euros from 2 euros. Cocaine intercepted Couple had half kilo on them Police at Athens International Airport on Saturday detained two Romanians, a man and woman, aged 23 and 20, after determining that the pair were carrying more than half a kilo of cocaine between them on a flight to the Greek capital from the Brazilian city of Sao Paolo via Munich. According to drug squad officers, the woman was carrying 19 cylindrical packages plastic packages containing a total of 162 grams of cocaine in her purse. Following questioning, she and her compatriot allegedly admitted to having swallowed an even larger quantity of drugs. The pair were transferred to the hospital, the drugs removed from their stomachs and are to face a prosecutor today. Seamen convicted The captain and four Ukrainian crew of a Togo-flagged cargo ship that sank off the coast of Cephalonia last Thursday were given jail sentences yesterday after a Greek court found them guilty on charges of causing a shipwreck through neglect and provoking marine pollution. The captain of the Christine, whose nationality was not revealed, was given a five-year jail sentence while each of his crew members got four-year jail terms. More trash The mounds of trash accumulating around dumpsters in Attica following Friday’s strike by municipal garbage collectors are set to get worse after the workers’ union called a 48-hour strike starting this morning. The workers are demanding better pay and job security. False claims? Claims by an Afghan national that he was beaten by several police officers for two hours last Tuesday at the precinct in Peristeri, western Athens, have yet to be substantiated, according to police, who said they launched an internal investigation following the allegations. According to the probe, the 49-year-old was not taken to the Peristeri precinct on Tuesday, as he had claimed, but to the precinct in nearby Ilion. A witness who had been at the Ilion precinct reportedly has testified that the man was not only not abused but given food by police. The migrant was picked up by police on Tuesday outside a supermarket where he is alleged to have been begging with his child. US Embassy The US Embassy’s consular section in Athens will be closed on Wednesday for internal administrative reasons, as is normal on the third Wednesday of every month.

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