ATHENS, Greece (AP) — A man accused of killing a Scottish aid worker in Athens and hiding her body in a suitcase has been jailed pending his trial for murder.
The 26-year-old Afghan suspect appeared Thursday before an investigative magistrate at a central Athens courthouse, escorted by police officers wearing face coverings.
The hearing lasted nearly three hours, after which he was ordered jailed pending trial on murder charges connected to the death of the 38-year-old woman, whose decomposing body was found inside a suitcase in the downtown Kypseli district.
The body of the victim, identified in Scotland as Elisabeth Jane Ross, was discovered at an abandoned building on July 18 during a heat wave. Authorities are awaiting tissue‑analysis results to confirm whether suffocation caused her death.
Greek data protection laws bar authorities from naming criminal suspects without consent, but officials have confirmed that he is a migrant from Afghanistan.
“He entered Greece in 2016. And when he arrived, he was an unaccompanied minor,” Migration Minister Thanos Plevris told private Antenna television Thursday.
“He was granted international protection status in 2018, having no criminal past. And up until this crime, he had no criminal past,” Plevris said.
Police initially detained the suspect after examining nearby security footage where the body was found.
Originally held on weapons charges, the man is now also charged with premeditated homicide and for allegedly stealing over 10,000 euros ($11,500) from the victim's accounts.
A car carrying an Afghan man accused of killing Scottish woman Elisabeth Jane Ross enters the courthouse for a court appearance in Athens, Greece, Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)
The abandoned building where the body of Scottish woman Elisabeth Jane Ross was found inside a suitcase is seen in Athens, Greece, Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)
A woman walks past the abandoned building where the body of Scottish woman Elisabeth Jane Ross was found inside a suitcase in Athens, Greece, Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)
The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose last week but layoffs remain in the historically healthy range of the past few years.
U.S. filings for jobless aid in the week ending August 1 rose by 1,000 to 199,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The previous week’s figure was revised up by 1,000 to 198,000.
Weekly filings for unemployment benefits are considered representative of layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the U.S. job market.
Last week, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation metric, PCE, came in at 3.7% for June, still well above the U.S. central bank’s 2% target. If inflation remains elevated, Fed officials say they are ready to raise interest rates to combat higher prices, raising costs for businesses and making them less likely to hire.
Last month, the government reported that employers pulled back on hiring in June, adding only 57,000 jobs. That’s less than half the previous month’s total and a sign that companies remain cautious about adding to their head counts. The unemployment rate dropped to 4.2% from 4.3% in May, though that decline is mostly because many out-of-work people gave up looking for jobs and were no longer counted as unemployed.
June’s tepid hiring comes after a relative surge in job gains the previous three months, countering concerns that the conflict in Iran could trip up an already wobbly labor market. The government’s July jobs report is due out Friday.
Weekly jobless aid applications have stabilized in a range mostly between 200,000 and 250,000 since the U.S. economy emerged from the pandemic recession. However, hiring began slowing about two years ago and tapered further in 2025 due to President Donald Trump’s tariffs, his purge of the federal workforce and the lingering effects of high interest rates meant to control inflation.
Among the companies that have trimmed their workforce recently are Verizon, UPS, Amazon, Disney, Starbucks, Walmart and Microsoft.
The Labor Department’s report Thursday also showed that the four-week moving average of weekly jobless claims, which balances out some of the weekly volatility, fell by 4,500 to 198,750.
The total number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits for the previous week ending July 25 was 1.8 million, an increase of 24,000 from the week before.
FILE - A now hiring sign is seen in front of an auto body shop in Chicago, June 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, file)
