Provinces of Greece

The service of "Odontotos", the iconic rack railway train of Kalavryta in the northern Peloponnese, will return to service again on Saturday, after a pause during regional fires, operator Hellenic Train said on Friday.

The Civil Protection Ministry has warned of a "very high risk" of fire in six of the country's 13 regions on Saturday.

Police forces are giving instructions to citizens on how to escape from the area. The government is on the alert, and the church bells are ringing all the time so that even the last residents understand that they have to leave.

"I am deeply concerned about the residents of Loutses who have refused to abandon their homes. Despite our attempts to persuade them with friends, acquaintances, and even psychologists, nothing seems to work," says Mayor Giorgos Macheimaris of North Corfu.

With temperatures peaking in the low 40s Celsius on Friday, authorities have issued a fire hazard warning for Saturday.

According to the fire hazard prediction map published by the Civil Protection Agency, five regions are considered to be at very high risk of wildfires, ranking at Level 4 (orange) out of a maximum of 5.

Police in Lesvos have conducted an operation to locate and bring to safety 10 newly arrived migrants to the northern Aegean island.

The operation, which was focused on the Plomari area in the south of the island, also involved coast guard, firefighters and a police aircraft.

Smoke from the major fires in Canada has reached the Ionian Sea and Crete, according to the Meteo service of the National Observatory of Athens.

A Czech tourist has died after collapsing on a beach on the northern Aegean island of Thasos, with eyewitnesses saying that it took 51 minutes for an ambulance to reach the scene.

The woman, who was aged between 45 and 50, is understood to have collapsed shortly after emerging from swim at Astrida beach, in the southern part of the island.

There has been an unprecedented explosion in construction on the Cyclades in the Aegean over the last five years, according to data from the National Statistical Service on new constructions from 2018 to 2022 on the region's 23 inhabited islands. 

The Megalopolis Basin in the Peloponnese was among the southernmost ecological refuges in Europe during the glacial periods of the Middle Pleistocene, according to the results of a five-year program of surface and geoarchaeological research recently completed by the Culture Ministry and the American School of Classical Studies in Athens (ASCSA).