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Many have only recently traded their lives in Amsterdam, Berlin or Rome for the frontlines of northern Iraq

European Youth Card holders will continue to benefit from 12-euro train tickets on the Athens-Thessaloniki-Alexandroupoli and Athens-Kalabaka routes, it was announced on Monday.

The deal, signed between Trainose and the General Secretariat for Youth, foresees 3,000 tickets sold per month to card holders on certain intercity services.

In a surprise decision, authorities have banned access to the planted areas of Pedion tou Areos, one of the country’s largest public parks, and other green spaces in Athens.

By Sophia Waterman

The head of the National Confederation of Greek Commerce (ESEE), Vassilis Korkidis, described as largely disappointing the results of stores in major cities opening on Sunday for the start of the summer sales.

There were protests in Athens and Thessaloniki on Sunday to mark the first day that a new law, allowing stores in 10 parts of the country to open on the last day of the week, was being implemented.

Store employees went on strike and protesters jeered shoppers or clapped them sarcastically as they exited shops in Greece’s biggest cities.

By Dimitra Manifava

The government has decided to extend the pilot scheme concerning year-round Sunday opening for retail stores to 10 areas around the country, prompting the resignation of the head of the National Confederation of Greek Commerce (ESEE), Vassilis Korkidis, from the commerce department of the larger of the two coalition parties, New Democracy on Monday.

The City of Athens is opening public air-conditioned spaces to citizens due to a heat wave expected to hit the capital on Wednesday and Thursday. Several public spaces will be available to citizens in the areas of Aghios Pavlos, Koukaki, Neos Kosmos, Kato Petralona and Ambelokipi on both days.

Stormy weather resulted in power cuts across several parts of Thessaloniki in the early hours of Wednesday, while a flight scheduled to land at the northern city’s airport on Wednesday night was forced to return to Athens.

Boring for a railway tunnel in central Greece that will reduce travel time between Athens and Thessaloniki by half an hour was completed on Friday, according to ERGOSE, a subsidiary of the Hellenic Railways Organization (OSE).