Egnatia

A 31-year-old migrant smuggler was arrested on Saturday after a car chase near the village of Limni outside Thessaloniki in northern Greece.

A high-speed chase began on the Egnatia highway after he ignored a request by police to pull over. However, his car, with 10 migrants inside, veered off the road into a field. He ran off but police soon caught up with him. 

Egnatia Odos SA, the state company that is meant to see to the privatization of the homonymous highway across northern Greece, has made one last effort to stall the concession process, as the European Commission's third post-program report revealed on Wednesday.

The Hellenic Railways Organization's operating arm Trainose is to boost services on the Athens-Thessaloniki route between Thursday and Tuesday, May 28, in a bid to help those traveling to their constituencies to vote in Sunday's local authority and European Parliament elections.

A 36-year-old man was arrested on Wednesday after police found 12 migrants squeezed in a car he was driving in northern Greece, state-run news agency ANA-MPA reported.
Officers who saw the vehicle on a section of the Egnatia highway north of Thessaloniki, signaled to the driver to stop but the man sped up to avoid the inspection.

The new, revised program for TAIPED privatizations, published on Friday, contains no references as to when the long-delayed development of the old Athens airport plot at Elliniko in southern Athens might finally start. The other major issue for the state sell-off fund is highway maintenance company Egnatia Odos SA, which is currently mired in red tape.

Foreign investment companies and Greek market sources are worried that the privatizations program and its anticipated revenues could go off track, as the country's de facto entry into an election period of unspecified duration, combined with the government's marginal parliamentary majority, will likely lead to a selective tabling of bills.

Police in Thessaloniki arrested on Friday a 21-year-old Syrian who was caught transporting 17 irregular migrants in a car in northern Greece.

The suspect was apprehended after a police chase which ended at the road junction of Profitis Thessalonikis, on Egnatia highway.

After a hugely successful run in Athens last season, "Van Gogh Alive - The Experience" has opened at the Helexpo exhibition center in Thessaloniki, where it will remain through January 20.

The mayor of Samos, Michalis Angelopoulos, has written to Migration Minister Dimitris Vitsas calling for the immediate transfer of migrants from the island's identification and processing center, or hotspot, to the mainland due to overcrowding.

The facility on the island is currently hosting 5,000 migrants and refugees - much more than the 648 it was designed to hold.

A woman was killed and nine people were injured in northern Greece on Tuesday when the minivan they were traveling in veered off course and crashed on a side road of the Egnatia Odos highway near Analipsi.