Athens News Agency: News in English (PM), 99-12-27

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

NEWS IN ENGLISH

Athens, Greece, 27/12/1999 (ANA)

MAIN HEADLINES

• Most Greeks worried about Y2K
• Weak 4.6 tremor rocks Zakynthos
• Embassy car torched in overnight attack
• No elections before EMU bid - Papantoniou
• 60 illegal immigrants flee police
• Greek equities start week with a bounce
• Weather
• Foreign Exchange

NEWS IN DETAIL

More than seventy percent of Greeks believe that the millennium bug will have an adverse effect on their public utilities as computers try to change over to the year 2000, according to a poll published in Ta Nea daily on Monday. According to the poll, taken by the 'Year 2000' Working Group set up by the government, seven in 10 Greeks feared that the millennium bug would cause cuts in power, water and phone lines as 1999 ended. The respondents also believed that payment of wages and pensions would also be affected. Although the Bank of Greece announced a cut in its Lombard rate on Christmas Eve to facilitate commercial bank liquidity in the event that clients withdrew large amounts of money for fear of Y2K glitches, only 12 in 100 respondents said they would be taking their money out ahead of the New Year. Last month, Interior Minister Vasso Papandreou said Greece was fully prepared to deal with any problems caused by the millennium bug in computer and electronic systems in the public sector at the end of the year.

Weak 4.6 tremor rocks Zakynthos

A weak tremor rocked the island of Zakynthos in the Ionian sea late Sunday, but there were no reports of damages. The quake, registering 4.6 on the Richter scale, struck at 10:55 p.m. at a distance of 240 kilometres west of Athens, with its epicentre in the sea region east of Zakynthos, according to the Athens Observatory's Geophysics Institute. The tremor was also felt in Ilia prefecture.

Embassy car torched in overnight attack

A car registered with the South Korean embassy was torched early Monday in the Zografou residential district of Athens, causing extensive material damage, police said. They said unidentified persons poured gasoline over the car and set it on fire at 3:55 a.m. A group calling itself the "Anarchist Faction" claimed responsibility for the attack in an anonymous telephone call to private FLASH radio station.

No elections before EMU bid - Papantoniou

The general elections will be held after next spring and not before the country's formal application for participating in EMU in the first two weeks of March, National Economy and Finance Minister Yiannos Papantoniou said today. He declined, however, to give any possible election dates. Papantoniou was speaking to reporters after a ministry meeting which decided the securitisation of state lottery revenues.

60 illegal immigrants flee police

More than 60 Asian illegal immigrants, including several children, fled into the fields near the northern town of Xanthi when police stopped a stolen truck transporting them from the border, police said Monday. The truck's driver, Albanian national Sokol Matossi, 30, was arrested in the incident, which occurred late Sunday. He is also accused of stealing the truck in Kavala four days earlier. Two other Turkish nationals, identified as 28-year-old Ali Usta and 25-year-old Murat Mohamad, who were escorting the truck in a car, were also arrested.

Greek equities start week with a bounce

Greek stocks dramatically changed direction to end sharply up on Monday as a wave of institutional buying lifted the stock market above the 5,000 level ending a recent free fall in prices. The general index ended 4.98 percent higher at 5,040.95 points, with turnover rising to 300 billion drachmas reflecting arbitrage block trades in Hellenic Sugar, Duty Free Shops and Agricultural Insurance. Buying focused on blue chip stocks initially but gradually expanded to smaller capitalisation shares. The parallel market index for smaller capitalisation stocks soared 7.33 percent. The FTSE/ASE 20 index for blue chip and heavy traded stocks jumped 4.14 percent to 2,713.68 points, while the FTSE/ASE MID 40 index rose 7.26 percent to 842.65 points.

WEATHER

FOREIGN EXCHANGE

Monday's rates (buying)
U.S. dollar          323.799
Pound sterling       523.121
Japanese yen (100)   315.119
French franc          50.000
German mark          167.691
Italian lira (100)    16.938
Irish Punt           416.443
Belgian franc          8.130
Finnish mark          55.161
Dutch guilder        148.829
Danish kr.            44.084
Austrian sch.         23.835
Spanish peseta         1.971
Swedish kr.           38.277
Norwegian kr.         40.519
Swiss franc          204.650
Port. Escudo           1.636
Can. dollar          220.026
Aus. dollar          208.181
Cyprus pound         567.166
Euro                 327.975

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