The post Greece calls for a common EU response to the crisis appeared first on The Edge Media.
]]>Greece was on the frontline of Europe’s migration crisis in 2015, when nearly a million people fleeing conflict in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan landed on its islands, and like other EU member states, it is nervous that developments in Afghanistan could trigger a replay of that crisis.
“We are clearly saying that we will not and cannot be the gateway of Europe for the refugees and migrants who could try to come to the European Union,” Mitarachi told state television ERT.
“We cannot have millions of people leaving Afghanistan and coming to the European Union … and certainly not through Greece,” he said.
EU foreign ministers will hold a crisis meeting on Tuesday to discuss the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban and Greece has requested that the issue is also discussed at a meeting of EU home affairs ministers on Wednesday.
The solution needs to be common, and it needs to be a European solution,” Mitarachi said. Unity between EU member states over whether to deport failed Afghan asylum-seekers crumbled last week.
(This story has not been edited by The Edge Media staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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]]>The post Greece going through the worst heat wave in terms of intensity and duration appeared first on The Edge Media.
]]>On the nearby island of Evia, the Greek coast guard mounted a massive operation with patrol boats and private vessels to evacuate hundreds of residents and vacationers by sea as dozens of fires burned across the country for a third day amid a protracted heat wave.
One of the most severe blazes tore through forest areas 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) north of the capital, destroying more homes. Ground crews of several hundred firefighters dug fire breaks and hosed the flames.
Traffic was halted on the country’s main highway connecting Athens to northern Greece as crews tried to use the road as a firebreak before water-dropping planes resumed flights at first light. But sparks and burning pine cones carried the fire across the highway at several points.
Several firefighters and volunteers were hospitalized with burns, health officials said. Health Minister Vassilis Kikilias said nine people had been taken by ambulance to hospitals in Athens from the fire north of the Greek capital, three of them suffering breathing problems, while 11 more were being treated in a health center on Evia.
“We are going through the 10th day of a major heat wave affecting our entire country, the worst heat wave in terms of intensity and duration of the last 30 years,” Fire Service Brig. Gen. Aristotelis Papadopoulos said.
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]]>“We are working around the clock to send help as fires rage across Europe,” commissioner Janez Lenarcic said in a statement.
“I thank Cyprus, Czechia, France, Slovenia and the Netherlands for swiftly deploying firefighting airplanes, helicopters and a team of firefighters to support countries heavily affected by forest fires.”
The dispatch of the aircraft and firefighters were being coordinated by the EU Civil Protection Mechanism, with the European Commission picking up most of the mobilisation cost.
Greek firefighters have been battling several heatwave-fuelled forest infernos, including around Athens that have destroyed or damaged dozens of homes and businesses and forced the evacuation of villages, and others in the south and on the island of Euboea.
Devastating fires have also scorched parts of Italy, including in Sicily and near Rome.
Both Greece and Italy are EU member states.
EU help was also being given to non-EU neighbours, in the form of two helicopters sent to Albania and 45 Slovenian firefighters to North Macedonia.
The European Union earlier this week deployed firefighting help to Turkey, which is also struggling with violent summer wildfires that have sent residents and tourists scrambling to safety.
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]]>The post “We are facing the worst heatwave since 1987,” PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis appeared first on The Edge Media.
]]>Fires have also raged across Turkey, Spain and Italy over the weekend with experts warning climate change was increasing both the frequency and intensity of such blazes.
More than 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) of pine and olive groves have been torched by a fire that broke out on Saturday near the city of Patras, 200 kilometres (125 miles) west of Athens, according to the National Observatory of Athens citing EU satellite images.
And the authorities were rushing to bolster crews fighting a blaze on the island of Rhodes near Turkey.
“We are facing the worst heatwave since 1987,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said, adding that the authorities were doing “everything possible” to deal with the situation.
After meeting electricity providers, he warned that the brutal heat was putting a strain on the power network and asked for Greeks to limit their consumption in the early afternoon and during the night.
Deputy Civil Protection Minister Nikos Hardalias said that there had been 1,584 fires across Greece in July compared to 953 in 2019, and that there had been 116 new blazes in just the last 24 hours.
“We are no longer talking about climate change but about a climate threat,” he told Star TV.
The fire near Patras was not fully under control on Monday, the country’s weather service told the ANA news agency.
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]]>The post Hans Juergen Fercher tells about Greece’s first underwater museum appeared first on The Edge Media.
]]>“This is a combination of diving and archaeological diving. It’s diving into history,” says the 48-year-old psychiatrist after pulling himself onto the deck of the Triton dive boat.”It makes it special and unique.”
The museum beneath the waves at Peristera, a rocky outcrop off the island of Alonissos, opened in 2020, though the site has been largely mothballed until now due to Covid-19 restrictions.
As Greece opens up its vital tourism industry, the site offers an example of a new and more sustainable source of revenue.
Divers like Fercher and Danish wine-cellar maker, Lisette Fredelund, are willing to pay 95 euros ($110) a dive — about 50 percent more than the cost of a regular recreational scuba outing — for a guided tour of a site once the preserve of professional archaeologists.
“It was just amazing,” said Fredelund. “I was just, while we were down there, trying to imagine what it had been like being on a vessel transporting wine.”
More wrecks have been discovered in the area — the middle of the country’s largest marine reserve — holding out the prospect that more such museums will open.
Greece has made diving part of its focus to attract visitors since legislation passed in 2020 making it possible to access such sites, Tourism Minister Harry Theoharis told AFP.
“This is a type of tourism that attracts people all year round, a special audience that pays generously to dive,” he said, adding that 10 new diving parks are ready to be licensed under the process provided for by the legislation.
More than 4,000 two-handled amphorae are anchored in the sand, their positions marking out the outline of the wooden vessel, the remains of which have been washed away over time.
“We want to propose another kind of tourism to the people who come. I don’t want intensive tourism we can find anywhere else,” Vafinis said.
With four other wrecks discovered nearby, the goal is that they will in turn become accessible, adding Alonissos to the must-do list for divers around the world.
“It goes to put Alonissos on the world diving map, to have like an underwater safari of ancient wrecks,” said Kostas Efstathiou, co-owner of the Triton diving centre.
( Except the headline, this story has not been edited by The Edge Media staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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