Kos

Three refugees, including a child, were missing and six were injured off the island of Kos on Wednesday morning after a Coast Guard boat rammed their rubber dinghy carrying 34 people on board.

The dinghy capsized throwing all passengers into the water, state-run news agency ANA-MPA reported.

About 50,000 tourists are stranded in Greece and mainly on island resorts after British travel firm Thomas Cook collapsed, the tourism minister said on Monday as extra flights were booked to ease their return home.

Some 50,000 holidaymakers stranded in Greece due to the collapse of the Thomas Cook tour operator are to be repatriated in the coming days, Greek Tourism Minister Haris Theoharis told Skai television on Monday. 

The first 22,000 are to be repatriated over the next three days, the minister said, adding that aircraft were to arrive on Monday at Zakynthos, Kos and Corfu. 

Some 50,000 holidaymakers stranded in Greece due to the collapse of the Thomas Cook travel agency are to be repatriated in the coming days, Greek Tourism Minister Haris Theoharis told Skai television on Monday. 

The first 22,000 are to be repatriated over the next three days, the minister said, adding that aircraft were to arrive on Monday at Zakynthos, Kos and Corfu. 

Greece's coast guard says 12 Israeli tourists have been rescued after they got caught in high winds during a kayak trip between two islands in the eastern Aegean Sea.

The tourists alerted authorities after setting out from the island of Kos on Friday to nearby Nissiros, some 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) to the south.

A 20-year-old foreign national was arrested on Saturday and charged with starting Friday's fire on the southeastern Aegean island of Leros.

The fire began in the area of Merikia and soon spread, burning more than 4 hectares of pine forest.

The suspect, who is a resident of the island, appeared before a prosecutor on the nearby island of Kos.

A recession at home, combined with Greek hotels' loss of competitiveness, due to their being overburdened by taxation, and the recovery of destinations such as Egypt and Turkey, has led to a drop in the number of German tourists this year.
Reservations by Germans on Crete were down 6 percent in July compared to the same month last year, while those in Rhodes dropped 5 percent.

The island of Kos became the first region of Greece to install electronic signs alerting to a possible tsunami, but a local hotelier association complained the signs are "terrorizing" tourists.

A Turkish cultural association said on Aug. 5 that almost all mosques and graveyards on Greece's Kos (Istankoy) island were "ruined" and closed to worship.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis talks with a musical instrument maker on Karpathos on Saturday.