Kalamata mayor backtracks on deadly flare 'tradition'

A day after he said that the officially sanctioned flare-throwing Easter tradition, which cost a cameraman's life Sunday, could not be stopped because it was in the city inhabitants' "DNA," the mayor of the southwestern city of Kalamata now concedes that there's no way the city council will sanction the staging of this event in the future.

Speaking at the radio station of state news agency ANA-MPA, mayor Panayiotis Nikas conceded that "no city council in the future will undertake the responsibility to continue supporting this event. I'm afraid that, after this death, this tradition has reached the end of the road." He added that the city council had, so far, approved the staging of this event unanimously.

Costas Theodorakakis, a 53-year-old cameraman, was filming the event Sunday night, when he was hit in the head by a flare. He died at a local hospital shortly after....