Emergency management

The lower chamber of the French Parliament voted to extend the state of emergency in France by 7 months - until July 15, 2017, reported BNR.

Increased security measures have been in force since November last year when jihadists killed 130 people in the centre of Paris.

An explosive device was discovered in a backpack outside the entrance of the Labor Ministry on Stadiou street, central Athens early on Monday, after an anonymous call to Efymerida ton Syntakton newspaper at 1.20 a.m. warned that a bomb would go off after 40 minutes.

Bomb disposal experts were called to the scene and subsequently detonated the device in three controlled explosions.

A woman killed in a gas explosion at a sandwich shop in downtown Athens on Thursday morning has been identified as accountant and mother of two Vassiliki Parastatidou.

Fire investigators say that the explosion on busy Victoria Square was probably caused by welders working in the shop who accidentally cut the gas line.

"Que sera, sera" is how some of us are looking at current developments in Turkey: "What will be, will be." But in our case this only refers to a feeling of uncertainity, hopelessness and despair. The future is uncertain, not only for dissidents but also for the whole country, which stands on the verge of regime change. 

Belgian police and protesting off-duty soldiers clashed on Wednesday in Brussels.

AFP is quoting authorities as saying that 8,500 soldiers took part in the demonstration, and that riot police fired water cannon "after receiving projectiles of smoke bombs and firecrackers from the protestors."

The state of emergency in Bulgaria's town of Bansko has been terminated by order of the mayor Georgi Ikonomov.

The state of emergency continued for 24 hours and was declared due to heavy rainfall which caused the river Glazne to overflow.

On Wednesday, the Glazne river washed away three bridges, flooding a ski road and local entertainment facilities.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged the global community to work together on disaster risk reduction.

The discovery of a radioactive substance stirred panic in the northwestern province of Sakarya on Oct. 20, as a child was hospitalized due to purple-colored spots that appeared on his body. 

The 16-year-old child, identified only as Eyüp B., was hospitalized after playing with a metal object he found in a construction site in the Arifiye district.

On the morning of Wednesday, October 5, at 11 am in the morning, the Civil Defence sirens sounded for about 5 minutes in an exercise simulating a mock air raid.

Civil defense sirens are scheduled to go off across Greece Wednesday as part of the annual military and public defense exercise dubbed Parmenion, after the Macedonian general of Philip II and Alexander the Great.

The air-raid sirens will sound at 60-second intervals, starting at 11 a.m. and lasting until 11.05 a.m.