Evia

Funds from the relief package for the island of Evia, which suffered extensive damage during powerful rainstorms and floods last Sunday - and cost the lives of eight people - will be allocated on Friday to the two most affected municipalities, Halkideon and Dirfyos-Messapia.

As authorities assess the damage wrought by the heavy rainstorms and floods a few days ago in parts of central and northern Greece, a state of emergency has been declared for the municipalities on the island of Evia and in the regional unit Thessaloniki that were hardest hit. 

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitstotakis speaks with locals on the island of Evia on Monday while surveying the damage caused by flash floods due to heavy rainfall on Sunday. A prosecutor on the island has ordered an investigation to determine whether any person or body can be held responsible for the deaths of eight people, including an infant, due to the floods.

Greek authorities have announced one new fatality from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 163. The average age of the victims is 75. There were also 15 new confirmed cases and the total now stands at 2,834. There are 22 patients on ventilators. There have been 128,525 tests administered for the coronavirus.

Sandra and Eike Stehr are on Elaia beach in the southwestern Peloponnese on what would have been an idyllic holiday under different circumstances.

The total cases of coronavirus in Greece have risen to 66, of which 47 are among a group that traveled to Israel and Egypt in late February, the country's National Public Health Organization (EODY) reported Saturday.

No fatalities have been reported from the disease yet. A 66-year-old man, among the travelers, is in intensive care.

Strong winds reaching speeds of 11 Beaufort in parts of the Aegean prevented ferry boats from sailing from the capital's ports of Piraeus, Rafina and Lavrio on Monday morning and have even affected shorter routes to the Saronic Gulf island of Salamina, between the eastern port of Volos and the Sporades, and even the Igoumenitsa-Lefkimi service in the Ionian Sea.

Cars are seen parked outside the Ostrakina Ski Center on Mount Mainalo in the northern Peloponnese on Thursday. Many parts of Greece have seen heavy snow, rain and freezing temperatures over the past few days, with the villages of Vilia, Erythres and Oinoi in western Attica snowbound and flooding in Karystos on Evia. [Panagiotis Bougiotis/ANA-MPA]

The Holy Synod of the Church of Greece will be launching a campaign to inform the Greek public of the reasons for its opposition to cremation as a means of disposing of the dead, it decided at a meeting on Wednesday.

The Church has a duty to follow the scriptures on the issue, it said, pointing to the teachings of Christ's resurrection.

The opening on Thursday of Greece's first crematorium in Ritsona on the island of Evia serves as an example of the sometimes backward state of the country. 

In Greece, a funerary custom which is anything but a novelty for most European countries became tangled up in a web of dogmatic beliefs that held it hostage to political reluctance for decades.