Athens News Agency: News in English, 01-02-10

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From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>

CONTENTS

[01] TELETEXT ENGLISH

[01] TELETEXT ENGLISH

@1b

NEWS HEADLINES

Powell on 2004 Games

Salomon: Spata airport expensive

Preveza tunnel to open in August

Industry growth outpaces EU average

No rush over Piraeus port sale

Ideal, Intrasoft to launch venture

Cyprus antiquities museum in Athens

Robert Wilson's stage designs

@2b

Powell on 2004 Games

New US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Friday said he was confident Greek authorities would ensure that the Athens 2004 Olympic Games would be conducted in a ?safe manner?. ?I am confident that the authorities will do everything to make sure that the Games go off in a safe manner. And anything we can do to assist them with the experience that we have from the past or any other assistance we can give will be made available to the government,? Powell said, responding to a relevant question during a press conference.

@3b

Salomon: Spata airport expensive

A new international airport for Athens, which is due to open in March, will be the third most expensive in Europe, Salomon Smith Barney said on Friday. The international investment house noted in a market report to customers that due to high costs, the Eleftherios Venizelos airport was unlikely to become a hub for Middle Eastern air traffic, as originally planned. The report added that airlines would have to up their fares to meet the costs, hurting tourism to Greece.

@4b

Preveza tunnel to open in August

A long-awaited undersea tunnel connecting Preveza with the Aktion peninsula will open in August, the government promised in Parliament on Friday. A deputy minister said the total cost of the project has reached 28 billion drachmas. He also said delays in the tunnels opening were due to the bankruptcy of one of the companies in the construction consortium. On their part, several ND deputies charged severe delays in the project, while warning of the danger of flooding in the tunnel and a downgrading of the surrounding environment.

@5b

Industry growth outpaces EU average

The Greek industry's growth rates significantly exceed the EU's average, a fact underlining Greek businesses' dynamism in a highly competitive environment, data from Eurostat and Greece's National Statistics Service showed on Friday. The data, published by the Greek Union of Listed Companies, said that Greek industries recorded faster growth rates compared with their eurozone and EU-15 counterparts in November, a development likely to have a positive impact on listed companies' results.

@6b

No rush over Piraeus port sale

The government said on Friday that a part-privatisation the government is planning for the Piraeus Port Authority should be accomplished correctly, and should not be rushed.

@7b

Ideal, Intrasoft to launch venture

Ideal is to launch an electronic department store on a website to be named myShops.gr, using software by Intrasoft, a member of the infotech and telecoms Intracom Group, Ideal said in a statement on Friday. The move, which will allow small and medium sized enterprises to sell their wares through the internet at low cost, is part of an alliance between the two Athens-quoted firms that began in summer 2000, the statement said.

@8b

Cyprus antiquities museum in Athens

President Kostis Stephanopoulos on Monday will inaugurate an exhibition of antiquities from Cyprus, belonging to the Greek-Cypriot antiquities collector Dimitris Pierides. Pierides established the first Museum of Ancient Cypriot Art in Greece at the Athinaes art centre in Votanikos, Athens, exhibiting 153 terracotta, stone and pottery pieces of his vast collection.

@9b

Robert Wilson's stage designs

Robert Wilson, a noted US theatre innovator, is exhibiting sketches and sculptured furniture from stage designs, including "Swan Dog", "Parsifal", "Alcestis", "Death, Destruction and Detroit II", and "Life and Times of Sigmund Freud" through February 10 at the Bernier/Eliades Gallery, 11 Eptachalkou street in Athens.

@10b

FOREIGN NEWS

TOKYO - Rescuers scoured the seas off Hawaii for nine Japanese, including four 17-year-old high school fisheries students, lost at sea after a U.S. nuclear submarine struck and sank their fishing trawler in minutes.

JERUSALEM - Firefights flared in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and Palestinians vowed revenge as they buried a teenager shot dead by Israeli troops. A spokesman for Israel's forceful new leader Ariel Sharon confirmed that he had offered the defence portfolio to outgoing PM Ehud Barak in a bid to lure his defeated Labour rivals into a unity coalition with his rightwing Likud party.

JERUSALEM - A U.N. team was starting an investigation into human rights violations in the occupied territories during the Palestinian uprising in a move already rejected by the Israeli government.

KISSIDOUGOU, Guinea - United Nations aid workers are struggling to rescue tens of thousands of terrified refugees caught in a fresh wave of fighting in southern Guinea. The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR estimated that 5-10,000 people who fled a refugee camp in panic on Friday had formed a human column several km long on the road to Kissidougou, where UNHCR operations are based.

LOS POZOS, Colombia - The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) will return to formal peace talks, the country's largest rebel force said on Friday after two days of meetings between its leader and President Andres Pastrana.

TEHRAN - Security forces beat up anti-government demonstrators and arrested more than 50 people in a second day of unrest in the Iranian capital, witnesses said.

WASHINGTON - The United States has told the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan to close their office in New York in compliance with U.N. sanctions. At the initiative of the United States and Russia, the U.N. Security Council tightened the sanctions in December after the Taliban failed to meet demands that it hand over Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden.

HARARE - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's ruling party called on two Supreme Court judges to quit a week after forcing the country's white chief justice to take early retirement, newspapers reported.

SRINAGAR, India - Police in Indian-ruled Kashmir's summer capital said their main control centre in the state was back in their control after a bloody attack by separatist guerrillas

PRAGUE - Czech Television workers ended their six-week-long strike after parliament chose an interim director for the public station.

@12b

WEATHER

Scattered cloud is forecast throughout most of Greece on Sunday, with rain showers possible but mostly clearing by the afternoon. Winds north-northeasterly, moderate to strong. In the north, temperatures will range from 2C to 1C; in the Ionian and remaining mainland from 5C to 15C; and in the Aegean islands from 10C to 17C. Cloud and showers in Athens, with temperatures between 9C and 14C. Chance of light rain in Thessaloniki, 4C to 10C.

@13b

Temperatures-Greece

Athens 17

Thessaloniki 13

Alexandroupoli 15

Kavala -

Larissa 14

Ioannina 15

Patra 14

Kalamata 18

Irakleio 18

Rhodes 17

Corfu 17

@14b

Temperatures-Europe

Berlin 04

Brussels 12

Budapest 12

Geneva -

Larnaca 19

London -

Madrid 10

Moscow 02

Paris 08

Rome -

Stockholm -01

Vienna 08

@18b

NBA Results

Results of Thursday's NBA games (Home team in CAPS):

TORONTO 99 Denver 92

CHARLOTTE 101 Atlanta 84

Houston 103 DETROIT 90

NEW JERSEY 99 San Antonio 97

@20b

FOREIGN EXCHANGE

Monday's buying rates

U.S. dollar 366.358

German mark 172.829

French franc 051.531

Pound sterling 529.649

Irish punt 429.202

Belgian franc 008.379

Luxembourg franc 008.379

Dutch guilder 153.389

Italian lira (100) 017.457

Austrian schilling 024.565

Danish kroner 45.304

Swedish kroner 37.931

Finnish mark 056.852

Spanish peseta 002.032

Portuguese escudo 001.686

Japanese yen (100) 312.127

Swiss franc 220.236

Norwegian kroner 41.295

Cyprus pound 583.296

Canadian dollar 242.647

Australian dollar 196.874

@21b

ATHENS STOCK EXCHANGE

Equity prices ended the week mixed to higher on the Athens Stock Exchange on Friday, as buying interest for medium capitalisation stocks counterbalanced selling pressure on bank shares. The general index ended 0.39 percent higher at 3,169.71 points, off the day's highs of 3,185.07, with turnover an improved 128.52 million euros, or 43.79 billion drachmas.

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