Natalie Christopher found dead less than a mile from hotel two days after she disappeared
Rescuers searching for a British scientist who disappeared on the Aegean island of Ikaria have found her body at the bottom of a ravine.
Natalie Christopher, 35, was found less than a mile from the hotel where she was on holiday with her partner.
Continue reading...Dr Natalie Christopher, 34, thought to have disappeared after going for morning run
Greek authorities have broadened the search for a British scientist believed to have disappeared after she went for an early morning run on the Aegean island of Ikaria.
More than 24 hours after Dr Natalie Christopher was first reported missing, the quest to locate the 34-year-old intensified as officials in Athens dispatched a helicopter equipped with infrared cameras to join the search operation.
Continue reading...Six people have been killed and dozens more injured in fierce storms in northern Greece. Strong winds and hail hit the popular Halkidiki region near the city of Thessaloniki late on Wednesday. Television footage showed overturned cars, fallen trees, torn roofs and mudslides. The freak storm lasted about 20 minutes, according to witnesses interviewed by the state broadcaster ERT
Continue reading...Remains discovered on Mani peninsula could rewrite history of Homo sapiens in Eurasia
A broken skull chiselled from a lump of rock in a cave in Greece is the oldest modern human fossil ever found outside Africa, researchers claim.
The partial skull was discovered in the Apidima cave on the Mani peninsula of the southern Peloponnese and has been dated to be at least 210,000 years old.
Continue reading...After steering New Democracy to landslide win, former banker says ‘hard work begins today’
Greece’s outgoing prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, has handed over power to Kyriakos Mitsotakis, a former banker who navigated the centre-right New Democracy party to landslide victory in Sunday’s snap general elections.
In a changing of the guard that was as subdued as it was swift, Mitsotakis assumed office after he was officially sworn in by the Orthodox Christian country’s spiritual leader, Archbishop Ieronymos.
Continue reading...Outgoing PM has been on quite a journey but he doesn’t seem to have taken the Greek people with him
For Brussels and Berlin, it may as well have been Moros, the Greek god of impending doom, a driver of mortals to their deadly fate, who had been elected as the prime minister of Greece in January 2015.
Alexis Tsipras was the radical leftwing firebrand with the open-necked shirt, whose Syriza government posed a threat to the European order through its demands to rewrite the rules underpinning the single currency, and willingness to take Greece and the EU to the brink to achieve that goal.
Continue reading...Incumbent prime minister Alexis Tsipras, of Syriza, calls rival Kyriakos Mitsotakis to concede defeat
Voters in Greece have given Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ centre-right New Democracy party a resounding mandate to form a new government after it won by a landslide over the incumbent leftwing Syriza party, which has been in power since 2015.
As the outcome of Sunday’s general election became clear, the prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, conceded defeat, calling Mitsotakis to congratulate him on his victory. The official handover of power will take place on Monday.
Continue reading...In Syntagma Square, all the way from the grubby marble stairs opposite the Greek parliament down to the bottom of the plaza, people have gathered. Some are holding flags – the red, white and purple flags of Syriza, the once-radical leftist party whose leader they have come to hear.
Hip-hop thunders from giant speakers. The air is heavy and hot. An expectant crowd has been kept waiting for over an hour in temperatures turbocharged by massive spotlights. By the time Alexis Tsipras appears, many are sweating profusely. Still they roar their approval. The countdown has begun.
Continue reading...Government caves in after protests from rights groups and senior judicial officials
Greece’s government has rushed to revise legislation that redefines rape after unprecedented criticism from activists, human rights groups and senior judicial officials.
The law, part of a new penal code submitted to parliament by Alexis Tsipras’ administration only weeks before snap elections, had raised fears of convicted rapists being treated more leniently.
Continue reading...Centrist Kostas Bakoyannis says his approach transcends divisions that have long defined Greece
The mayor-elect of Athens says he doesn’t believe in grand projects, nor does he “do utopias”. What he prefers to focus on is “real life” – and seeing it by walking and talking with almost everyone he meets.
It has paid off. After visiting 129 neighbourhoods across Athens since launching his campaign to become the capital’s youngest mayor, Kostas Bakoyannis, at 41, has been catapulted to the top office of City Hall with the widest margin of victory ever. With him comes a team of councillors that will be among the most politically diverse on record.
Continue reading...The Greek capital entombed its major rivers in concrete during its car-centred postwar development. Now the most storied of them, Ilisos, could be set free
Photographs by Christian Sinibaldi
Walking through the densely built metropolis of Athens, few visitors or even locals realise the Greek capital was once crisscrossed by three major rivers, not to mention some 700 smaller streams that flowed into them.
The Kifisos, the Iridanos and the Ilisos were buried under concrete during the city’s postwar car-centred development, in what daily newspaper Kathimerini has labelled “a crime against the city”.
Continue reading...Dispute likely to escalate after Nicosia said it would seek to arrest anyone caught drilling
Tensions over energy resources in the eastern Mediterranean have risen sharply after Turkey said it would “exercise its sovereign rights” to drill off Cyprus in flagrant defiance of warnings from western allies.
As the dispute over potential gas reserves intensified, Ankara insisted its state-of-the-art drilling ship, the Fatih, and its support vessels would begin operations in waters viewed by the EU as being within the island’s exclusive economic zone.
Continue reading...Old allies accuse former Greek finance minister of splintering leftwing vote at a time of far-right revival
Four years after Greece’s former “rock-star finance minister” clashed with his northern European counterparts over austerity measures and debt relief, Yanis Varoufakis is once again taking the fight to his old enemy.
This time, he hopes to make friends rather than foes: at the end of this month, Varoufakis will try to convince voters to elect him as a member of the European parliament – not in his native Greece, but in Germany.
Continue reading...The Greek economist is back battling the EU establishment, this time at the helm of a new movement, DiEM25. Backed by Pamela Anderson and the world’s most famous cyborg, he is fighting ultra-right populism with a radical agenda he thinks can restore people's lost faith in democracy. As the European parliamentary elections approach, is anyone listening? Phoebe Greenwood finds out
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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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
Continue reading...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”.
Continue reading...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%.
Continue reading...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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