In Brief
SNOW AHEAD
Rain and low temperatures mark a change for the worse The start of the three-day holiday today will be marked by a sharp drop in temperatures, rain, strong winds and even snow across the country, the National Meteorological Service said yesterday. There will be rain in Attica, where temperatures will not exceed 15 degrees Celsius, said snow might fall on Mount Parnitha. The rest of the country will be worse off, with rainstorms and likely snow in the north, where temperatures will drop to 6 degrees Celsius. Ships were banned from sailing yesterday, as winds are expected to reach 9 on the Beaufort scale in the Aegean. PARADES Independence Day celebrations to disrupt central Athens traffic Traffic in central Athens will be disrupted tomorrow and on Monday due to scheduled Independence Day parades – by schoolchildren tomorrow and the armed forces on Monday – which will cause congestion in the city center, it was announced yesterday. Traffic police will be periodically stopping vehicles between 9.30 a.m. and 1 p.m. tomorrow and 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Monday. The roads which will be affected by the parades include Amalias, Vassilisis Sofias, Vassileos Georgiou, Panepistimiou, as well as the area around Omonia Square. NO NEWS Tempo goes recreational News bulletins are to be dropped from the programming schedule of Tempo, which has decided to retarget its broadcasting toward a younger audience, the private television channel said yesterday. The novelty of Tempo’s new «youthful and recreational» schedule – which begins next Sunday, March 31 – is the absence of news reports, said channel representatives, who added that viewers have enough news to choose from already. Leak probe An Athens prosecutor yesterday ordered a preliminary investigation into the alleged leak to the satirical weekly To Pontiki of findings by the prosecutor probing the case of businessman Socrates Kokkalis, who faces charges of espionage and corruption. The order follows the publication of Thursday’s edition of the newspaper which includes explicit reference to prosecutor Dimitris Papangelopoulos’s findings. Last week, the newspaper was sued for libel to the tune of 300,000 euros by the honorary chairman of the opposition New Democracy party, Constantine Mitsotakis. Meat destroyed More than eight tons of tinned German beef imported to Greece at the end of last month was sent back to Germany a few days later, food testing officials in Thessaloniki said yesterday. The beef was returned because the German laboratory where it had been tested was not officially recognized by the EC. Security failure An armed assailant yesterday made off with 90,000 euros which he took from a security guard who was about to get into a car, in the commercial harbor of Ikonio, near Piraeus, with a bag of cash he had just collected from the Piraeus Port Authority offices. The unidentified robber fled with the bag, disappearing amid the ship containers scattered across the port. Bouboulina’s arrival Greece’s new Dutch-built frigate Bouboulina will arrive on Wednesday, April 3, at the Aegean island of Spetses, the birthplace of the Independence War heroine after which it was named, the navy said yesterday. Olympic flights Thessaloniki businessmen yesterday protested against recent disruptions to Olympic Airways flights linking Thessaloniki with EU capital cities and Aegean islands, demanding government intervention to ensure the reinstatement of canceled routes. The cutbacks in flights to and from the country’s second-largest city by Olympic, whose staff is protesting against plans to restructure the state carrier, will have a significantly negative economic impact on the city scheduled to host the 2003 EU Summit, the Thessaloniki Business Chamber said.
