Seas

Three people have died and up to 12 others are missing after a dinghy carrying migrants overturned near the Greek resort island of Mykonos, officials said.

Greece has secured 24 million euros in European Union funding to upgrade its northern Aegean Sea port of Alexandroupoli, privatization agency TAIPED said on Wednesday.

Alexandroupoli has been used by US military ships to unload munitions and move them to the eastern flank of NATO.

Authorities on the island of Mykonos, southern Greece, demolished on Thursday a small structure built illegally on a beach on the northern coast. 

The building, a small square cement structure with a window door, surrounded by a reed fence, was located on Mersini beach. It had been recorded as illegal and issued a demolition order since 2016, but no action had been taken. 

Due to the heavy rainfall that started in the morning hours of May 17 and accidents that have occurred at some points of the city, traffic was jammed once again in Istanbul.

Citizens leaving their homes to go to work and school were stuck in heavy traffic. The traffic congestion occurred in both directions on Kadıköy D-100 Highway.

Local residents and businesses on Sifnos are backing a letter recently sent by the municipality to three ministries, calling for a ban on swimming pools, underground buildings, the alteration of the island's architectural heritage and the destruction of paths.

Weather events and patterns in the Mediterranean indicate that the region, including Greece, will experience a summer as hot if not hotter than the last, which brought successive heatwaves and raised the climate change alarm. 

Cunda Island, a natural protected area, has been declared as a "sensitive area to be strictly protected" after reevaluation of its status, according to the decision published in the Official Gazette on April 13.

The Holy Fire, flown to Greece each year from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, is set to arrive on a special Aegean Airlines flight on Saturday evening, in time for Easter midnight mass.

Accompanying the Holy Fire on the Aegean aircraft will be a small diplomatic mission and the plane is expected to land at Athens international airport at approximately 6 p.m.

The annual Easter exodos of Athenians from the capital picked up pace at Attica's ports, motorways and airports on Good Friday.

A total of 14 ferries are scheduled to depart for the Aegean islands and 31 for the Saronic islands. Another 12 ferries will depart from Rafina and 9 from Lavrio ports.

Ferryboats leaving the capital's port of Piraeus for the islands of the Aegean reported occupancy rates of as high as 90% on Tuesday, in the runup to Easter, the biggest religious holiday on the Greek Orthodox calendar.