In Brief
FLIGHT DISRUPTIONS
Delays today and tomorrow after air traffic controllers call strike Air passengers traveling to and from Greece will face flight delays and cancellations today and tomorrow after yesterday’s decision by the country’s air traffic controllers to strike on both days. Olympic Airways yesterday announced it was canceling 12 flights today and postponing 28 others. No other airlines have announced cancellations but will probably have to reschedule flights, a spokesman for Athens’s Eleftherios Venizelos Airport said yesterday. British Airways said yesterday that it plans to operate its London to Athens service. Strike action, from midday to 4 p.m. on both days, will not affect planes flying through Greece to other destinations. OA passengers can call 010.966.6666 for flight information. SEAMEN STAND AT EASE Minister calls off civil mobilization, raises pensions to 70 pct of salaries A state of civil mobilization imposed in June on ferry crews to forestall threatened strike action during the high tourist season has been lifted, Merchant Marine Minister Giorgos Anomeritis said yesterday, adding that seamen’s pensions would rise to 70 percent of active salaries from the 60 percent that they are today. The decision to suspend the order was approved by Prime Minister Costas Simitis and the chief of the National Defense Council following negotiations over pensions with Panhellenic Seamen’s Federation representatives, Anomeritis added. UNREGISTERED VOTERS Today is deadline for declaring address Citizens who are not registered on any of the existing electoral lists must visit their municipal offices today and declare their address to ensure they will be able to vote in the October 13 local elections. Turk remanded A Turkish citizen charged with espionage, Murat Mehmet Pekinel, was remanded in custody by a prosecutor and investigating judge on the island of Lesvos late on Tuesday. The 54-year-old man was found with 57 rolls of film on him when he was arrested on Lemnos on Friday. Two rolls turned out to contain photographs of military installations on Lemnos. Pekinel claimed he was innocent. Iraq US Ambassador Thomas Miller yesterday handed Foreign Minister George Papandreou a US report into the alleged production of weapons of mass destruction by Iraq during a visit to Papandreou’s office. The two discussed Iraq and the latest developments in the Middle East. Fishing death A 24-year-old man who had gone fishing with two friends on Tuesday drowned just a few meters from the bank of Thessaloniki’s Lake Volvi, police said yesterday. Dimitris Lioukas, a factory worker, had waded into the water to release a fishing hook that had stuck in the riverbed when he disappeared underwater, the victim’s friends told police. Lioukas’s relatives said he had become trapped in an old fishing net. Bank blast No responsibility had been claimed by last night for a firebomb attack that caused minor damage to a bank in the Athenian district of Lambrini early yesterday morning. The attack damaged the bank’s ATM but caused no injuries. Child porn A prosecutor at a Xanthi military court yesterday referred to a magistrate the case of a 29-year-old non-commissioned army officer alleged to have promoted incestuous sex with children over the Internet. Giorgos Petris paid 4,000 euros bail to secure his release pending trial. Petris was not remanded in custody as the charges he faces – facilitating debauchery and publishing indecent material – are misdemeanors. He was arrested on Monday in Alexandroupolis for allegedly setting up in July an Internet site promoting child pornography. Albanian aid The army yesterday delivered a second donation of humanitarian aid to Tirana, including 66 tons of food and hundreds of blankets, following widespread damage and losses wrought across Albania by recent harsh weather. The first delivery, using a C-130 military transport aircraft, was made on Tuesday. Bank heist Two armed men stole 19,500 euros from a bank in the Athens district of Kypseli yesterday.
