In Brief

RESIDENCE PERMITS

Dearth of employees at aliens bureaus leading to backlog The processing of residence applications has been severely hit by the new measures that do not allow public sector workers to have their temporary contracts renewed, Kathimerini has learned. The new steps, which seek to reduce the number of people employed in the civil service, mean that another wave of employees departed the aliens bureaus at regional authorities on Friday, when their contracts expired. As a result, there are just 130 permanent employees processing applications in Athens and 20 in Thessaloniki, which are the two busiest offices in Greece. It is estimated that there are some 600,000 applications still pending. UK TOURIST FALL Woman dies in Ioannina A 24-year-old British woman who was hospitalized Sunday night after falling from a fourth-floor hotel balcony in Ioannina died yesterday. Although it had been thought initially that the woman, who was not named, fell from the balcony, police said they are investigating the possibility that she committed suicide. Turkish violation Just 10 days before Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is due to visit Athens, Turkish fighter jets violated Greek air space over the Aegean as the navy was conducting an exercise. According to the Greek armed forces, the six aircraft flew over parts of Halkidiki, Lemnos, Lesvos and Chios as an exercise involving 15 vessels and two submarines was taking place. Insurance forgery The president of the Aspis Pronia life insurance firm, Pavlos Psomiadis, and his assistant Andreas Loizos are to face charges of supplying the company’s Greek creditors with a false 550-million-euro letter of guarantee from a British bank in order to keep Psomiadis’s business afloat. A council of judges decided yesterday that the document was a forgery. Psomiadis was released from custody on 100,000 euros’ bail last November. Grigoropoulos trial A session in the Amfissa court where two policemen are on trial for the killing of Alexis Grigoropoulos in December 2008 came to an end abruptly yesterday when lawyer Alexis Kougias, who is defending Epaminondas Korkoneas, the special guard who shot dead the teenager, walked out in protest at the questions the prosecutor put to the suspect’s wife. Earlier, Korkoneas’s wife had told the court that the policeman called her on the night of the incident and said that he had fired twice into the air after being surrounded. Piraeus garbage Residents of Piraeus were yesterday asked to avoid putting their trash in dumpsters until Friday because strikes by local authority workers mean that Attica’s main landfill will remain closed.