Category Archives: Greece

North Macedonia goes to the polls amid rain and rancour

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Ethnic and political divisions may affect turnout in former Yugoslav republic’s presidential election

Voters in North Macedonia braving heavy rain have begun casting ballots in the second round of a race that will not only decide the country’s new president but could determine whether the tiny state is plunged into political turmoil.

In what has become a showdown between pro-EU and nationalist forces, much depends on turnout. Before polling stations opened, speculation was rife that voter participation could fall below the 40% needed for the election to be valid, fears compounded by the weather.

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Clashes as May Day protesters march in cities across Europe

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Worst violence occurs in Paris but trouble also flares in Berlin, Gothenburg and St Petersburg

Police and protesters have clashed, sometimes violently, in cities across Europe as tens of thousands of trade unionists, anti-capitalists and other demonstrators marched in traditional May Day rallies.

The worst confrontations were in Paris, where riot police fired teargas and stingball grenades as a 40,000-strong crowd, included gilets jaunes (yellow vests) protesters and an estimated 2,000 masked and hooded “black bloc” activists, marched from Montparnasse station to Place d’Italie.

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May Day: teargas and arrests in protests across Europe – video report

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Police and protesters have clashed in cities across Europe as tens of thousands of trade unionists, anti-capitalists and other demonstrators march in traditional May Day rallies. The worst confrontations were in Paris, where riot police fired teargas and stingball grenades as a 40,000-strong crowd marched from Montparnasse station to Place d'Italie

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Greek PM’s criticism takes shine off Weber’s push for EU’s top job

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German MEP begins campaign in Athens after Alexis Tsipras claims he is ‘anti-Greek’

Manfred Weber has launched his campaign to become president of the European commission in Athens, but faced excoriating criticism from the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, before he had even arrived in the Greek capital.

In a tweet intended to cause maximum embarrassment for the German leader of the conservative European People’s party group in the European parliament, Tsipras insinuated that Weber harboured racist and authoritarian tendencies. He said that at the height of Athens’ debt crisis, Weber had pushed for “Grexit” and thus proved himself to be “anti-Greek”.

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North Macedonia presidential election goes to runoff as name change divides

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Turnout in vote regarded as a fresh say on country’s name change too low to deliver decisive result, say officials

A presidential election in North Macedonia that gave voters another chance to express an opinion on their country’s new name will go to a runoff after turnout in the first round was too low for any candidate to win outright, election officials said.

The runoff on 5 May is inevitable because election law requires a candidate to get 50% plus one of registered voters to be elected in the first round. The state electoral commission reported the turnout on Sunday was 41.9%.

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London teachers die in buggy crash on Greek island of Santorini

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Milly and Toby Savill, both in their twenties, died when their vehicle plunged into a ravine

Tributes have been paid to a “devoted” young British couple who died while on holiday on the Greek island of Santorini when the buggy they were driving plunged 200 metres into a ravine.

Teachers Milly and Toby Savill – both in their twenties – died in the accident on Sunday afternoon, according to local media reports.

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Greek diaspora newspaper calls for departure of US ambassador to Athens

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An editorial accused envoy Geoffrey Pyatt of ‘cheerleading’ for Alexis Tsipras, the prime minister, and interfering in the country’s internal affairs

Relations between Athens and Washington have rarely been better, but neither that nor the leftist government’s unexpected love-in with America, has stopped members of the Greek diaspora from calling for the departure of the US envoy widely credited with boosting ties.

Related: US throws diplomatic support behind Macedonia name change

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Greek PM stops for selfie on goodwill trip to North Macedonia

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Alexis Tsipras arrives in Skopje on first official visit after settling decades-long dispute

The Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, has begun a historic visit to his newly named neighbour of North Macedonia two months after brokering a landmark deal to end a row that spawned almost three decades of hostility between the two countries.

In the first official trip by a Greek premier since the former Yugoslav republic proclaimed independence in 1991, Tsipras touched down in the capital, Skopje, pledging to consolidate the mutual trust that for so long has eluded the two Balkan nations. He then posed for a selfie with his North Macedonian counterpart, Zoran Zaev.

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Tourists urged to avoid riding donkeys up Santorini’s steep steps

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Greek island’s famous donkeys found to have spinal injuries, saddle sores and exhaustion

Put yourself in their hooves: that is the message holidaymakers will be asked to consider before deciding to ascend the 600 steps that zigzag up the cliffs of Santorini on the back of a donkey.

After several summers of the fabled isle’s equine population being forced to bear the brunt of overweight tourists, activists, in collaboration with the cruise-line industry, have finally taken action. The result is an unprecedented initiative to sensitise travellers to the stress placed on the animals when compelled to make the vertiginous climb with perilously heavy human cargo.

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Europe’s south and east worry more about emigration than immigration – poll

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Exclusive: Survey of 14 countries show some Europeans now favour “emigration controls”

Southern and eastern European countries are more concerned about emigration than immigration, according to a wide-ranging survey of attitudes in 14 EU countries.

In Spain, Italy, Greece, Poland, Hungary and Romania, six countries where population levels are either flatlining or falling sharply, more citizens said emigration was a worry than immigration, according to the poll by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

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‘More plastic than fish’: Greek fishermen battle to clean a cruel sea

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In a new scheme, fishermen are paid €200 a month to recycle waste found in nets rather than dump it in polluted waters

The fish market at Keratsini comes alive at night. Under floodlights, crews in rubber waders and boots wash down the decks of boats moored in the harbour, repair nets dangling from cranes, and put on ice the shrimp, calamari, mullet and hake that are their latest pickings.

Recently other things – objects that might never have been pulled from the sea – have also supplemented hauls. “We’re talking about lots of waste, lots of garbage,” says Dimitris Dalianis. “We’re finding it almost everywhere.”

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Christchurch suspect: Europe investigates possible far-right links

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Officials in Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria examine Brenton Tarrant’s travels before attack

Authorities in Europe are working to establish whether the man suspected of carrying out the most deadly terrorist attack in New Zealand’s history had any links to far-right groups on the continent.

Since Friday, officials in Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece have begun formal investigations into the alleged gunman’s extensive travel through Europe in the years before he moved to New Zealand.

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Greece defies church with step towards first crematorium

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Cemeteries are overcrowded and Greeks’ nearest option for cremation is Bulgaria

Greece has moved a step closer to opening its first crematorium, passing a decree that paves the way for a facility to be built in Athens despite persistent criticism from the Orthodox church.

The prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, described the measure as “one of the most important and necessary reforms”, and the city’s mayor, Giorgos Kaminis, said it was a “landmark step”.

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‘Not everything’s for sale’: Greeks mobilise as new hotels obscure Acropolis views

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Athens’ tourism boom capitalises on building regulations relaxed in the economic crisis

The 10-storey hotel at 5 Falirou street in Athens was always going to stand out. Built to impress, its handsomely modernist wood-panelled facade added a contemporary touch to the streetscape of the otherwise lacklustre popular Makriyanni area beneath the Acropolis.

But as local residents watched it go up over the winter, they became ever more concerned. By February, when it had reached 31.5 metres, the hotel was the tallest building in the neighbourhood and had started to impede what had once been uninterrupted views of the Parthenon and the 5000BC monument’s fortified walls.

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EU declares migration crisis over as it hits out at ‘fake news’

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European commission combats ‘untruths’ over issue after row with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán

The European commission has declared the migration crisis over, as it sharpened its attack on “fake news” and “misinformation” about the issue.

Frans Timmermans, the European commission’s first vice-president, said: “Europe is no longer experiencing the migration crisis we lived in 2015, but structural problems remain.”

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Former Melbourne bikie leader Amad Malkoun injured in Athens car blast

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Authorities believe bomb attack might have been carried out by an organised crime gang

The former Melbourne bikie leader Amad “Jay” Malkoun has been seriously injured in an apparent car bomb attack in Athens.

Malkoun, who was previously Victorian head of the Comancheros, was attempting to start his Mercedes outside a gym in the upmarket suburb of Glyfada on Friday when the blast occurred.

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Greece races to move refugees from island likened to a ‘new Lesbos’

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Migration minister warns camp on Samos where hundreds of children live in squalor is six times over capacity

Greek authorities are scrambling to house almost 4,000 people crammed into an overflowing migrant camp in Samos, as aid groups warn of a “humanitarian disaster” on one of Europe’s forgotten frontlines.

Likening Samos to a “new Lesbos,” the country’s migration minister warned of a race against the clock to find suitable accommodation for the ever growing number of people trapped in a reception centre now six times over capacity.

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The Miracle of the Sargasso Sea review – Lynchian psychodrama in the sun

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Criminal undercurrents in a sleepy Greek backwater provide the pretext for a disquieting spectacle of strangeness

A drumbeat of anxiety and impending violence thuds insistently from this opaque, disquieting spectacle from Greek film-maker Syllas Tzoumerkas – who has previously directed challenging films such as Homeland (2010) and A Blast (2014) and was screenwriter on the excellent male-midlife breakdown satire Suntan (2016).

Tzoumerkas’s movie goes out on a creaking limb of weirdness. It’s a bizarre, occasionally almost Lynchian film, alienated and alienating, interspersed – initially, at any rate – with dream-visions of biblical scenes in the burning sun. Its borderline preposterous narrative may simply be the pretext for its tableau of strangeness and bacchanal of dysfunction.

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