Panos Panagiotopoulos

Heavy snowfall and gale-force winds shut down the popular ski resort of Vora-Kaimaktsalan in Pella, northern Greece, on Tuesday.

Resort manager Panos Panagiotopoulos told the Athens-Macedonian News Agency that a fierce blizzard kicked up in the area in the early hours of Tuesday, making conditions hazardous at the popular winter destination.

A prosecutor investigating reports that entrepreneurs close to the government were gathering money to bribe MPs into backing the coalition’s candidate for crucial presidential elections early next year deemed on Friday that there was inadequate evidence to substantiate such claims and shelved the probe.

Leftist SYRIZA’s spokesman Panos Skourletis and the head of Alexis Tsipras’s political office, Nikos Pappas, on Thursday testified before a prosecutor probing claims that entrepreneurs close to the government were gathering money to bribe MPs into backing the coalition’s candidate for presidential elections early next year.

Google has launched its Street View map service in Greece after winning approval from the privacy authority that blocked the ground-level map application five years ago.

Company officials said the service went live Thursday after «extensive and detailed» negotiations with the country's Data Protection Authority, which last year lifted objections made to the project in 2009.

Greece is hoping for a new tourism record this year, with arrivals likely to exceed 20 million, in a new sign that the country is winning back foreigners as the economy gets back on its feet.

After a poor season in 2012 – a year marked by back-to-back elections, political instability, and anti-austerity protests – the tourism industry seems finally to be getting its swagger back.

Tourists will be able to visit Greece’s most famous heritage sites seven days a week starting in April, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said today.