Thousands of workers marched through the Greek capital Athens on Wednesday as part of a 24-hour general strike called by labor unions to protest the rising cost of living and timed to coincide with the government submitting the 2025 budget to Parliament. Public and private sector workers walked off the job as part of the labor action that disrupted public transport and left ferries connecting the Greek islands with the mainland tied up in port. Medical staff at state-run hospitals and teachers were among those who joined the strike, which was called by labor unions to protest the high cost of living and demand collective wage agreements that were scaled back during Greece’s nearly decade-long financial crisis that began in 2010. Around 12,000 protesters marched through central Athens, while another 5,000 demonstrated in the northern city of Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city. “We want to showcase the rage and resentment of salaried employees for what is happening to their income,” said Yannis Panagopoulos, head of the General Confederation of Workers of Greece, the umbrella union representing private sector workers. “We have no other way to be able to cope with the high cost of living other than with an increase to our income. But our incomes remain frozen in the bailout era,” he said. Greece’s financial crisis saw a quarter of the country’s economy wiped out after decades of profligate spending left it locked out of international bond markets. Successive international bailouts came on condition the country implement deeply unpopular reforms that included pension and wage cuts and saw poverty and unemployment rates spiral. Greece has since returned to healthy growth and recently achieved investment-grade status again, but it still retains the highest debt-to-GDP ratio in the European Union. “Greece needs a pay rise,” Esther Lynch, General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation, said Tuesday ahead of the strike. She said she was in Athens “to bring the solidarity greetings from 45 million workers and their trade unions from around Europe.” The European confederation supports “all workers in Greece who are going to come out to demand that pay rise and to demand the genuinely binding collecting agreement to guarantee a fair day's pay for a fair day's work,” she said. Unions have criticized the center-right government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis for failing to tackle inflation and housing policies, which have eroded workers’ living standards. Journalists at Greek media outlets held their own 24-hour strike in support on Tuesday, pulling all news broadcasts off the air for the day so they could cover Wednesday’s general strike.

The Bangladesh Embassy in Athens, in cooperation with the first multilingual library in Greece, has hosted a screening of the documentary film "Hasina: A Daughter's Tale." Held at the "We Need Books" library premises Sunday, the screening was attended by a good number of Bangladeshis, students, embassy officials, members of the diplomatic corps, and the local civil society. The maiden screening of the docudrama in a country like Greece, the cradle of ancient and western civilisation, created a lot of enthusiasm and curiosity among the audience about Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, her family members and their role in the making of a modern, democratic, secular, and developing nation, said a media statement. They were particularly amazed to see how Sheikh Hasina, daughter of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, had tried to cope with her most struggling time along with her only other surviving sister Sheikh Rehana following the brutal assassination of their father and all other members of their family. The screening of the film was preceded by a short welcoming speech by the founder of the multilingual library Ioanna Nissiriou. Bangladesh Ambassador Ashud Ahmed thanked the viewers for joining the screening of the documentary film organised as part of the Embassy's ongoing celebrations of the golden jubilee of the independence of Bangladesh. He mentioned his embassy's plan to organise more such screenings in different corners of Greece in the coming days. Ambassador Ashud hoped that Bangladesh would become a real Golden Bengal that would have prosperity, modernity, inclusivity, democracy and secularism as designed in Vision 2041 under the leadership of Sheikh Hasina. Also read: Screening of 'Hasina: A Daughter's Tale' connects Kolkata audience

Three large wildfires churned across Greece on Saturday, with one threatening whole towns and cutting a line across Evia, the country’s second-largest island, isolating its northern part. Others engulfed forested mountainsides and skirted ancient sites, leaving behind a trail of destruction that one official described as “a biblical catastrophe.” A flotilla of 10 ships — two Coast Guard patrols, two ferries, two passenger ships and four fishing boats — waited at the seaside resort of Pefki, near the northern tip of Evia, ready to evacuate more residents and tourists if needed, a Coast Guard spokeswoman told The Associated Press, on customary condition of anonymity. Firefighters were fighting through the night to save Istiaia, a town of 7,000 in northern Evia, as well as several villages, using bulldozers to open up clear paths in the thick forest. Read: Thousands flee homes outside Athens as heat fuels wildfires The fire on Evia forced the hasty Friday night evacuation of about 1,400 people from a seaside village and island beaches by a motley assortment of boats after the approaching flames cut off other means of escape. The other dangerous fires were one in Greece’s southern Peloponnese peninsula, near Ancient Olympia and one in Fokida, in the Central Greece Region, north of Athens. The fire in Ancient Olympia moved east, away from the ancient site, threatening villages in a sudden flare-up Saturday afternoon. North of Athens, the fire on Mount Parnitha, a national park with substantial forests, was still burning with occasional flare-ups, but a Fire Service spokesman told the AP late Saturday that containment efforts were “going well.” Deputy Civil Protection Minister Nikos Hardalias told reporters Saturday night that firefighters hoped to contain the fire Sunday. Smoke from that fire was still spreading across the Athens basin. Earlier, the blaze had sent choking smoke across the Greek capital, where authorities set up a hotline for residents with breathing problems. One volunteer firefighter died Friday and at least 20 people have been treated in hospitals over the last week during Greece’s most intense heat wave in three decades. Temperatures soared up to 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit). Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Saturday visited the fire department’s headquarters in Athens and expressed his “deep sadness” for the firefighter’s death. He later visited the airport, west of Athens, from which firefighting planes take off and thanked the pilots, Greek as well as French, who arrived to support the firefighting effort. Securing aid for everyone affected by the wildfires will be “my first political priority,” he said, promising that all burnt areas would be reforested. “When this nightmarish summer has passed, we will turn all our attention to repairing the damage as fast as possible, and in restoring our natural environment again,” Mitsotakis said. A local official in the Mani area of southern Peloponnese, south of Sparta, estimated the wildfire there had destroyed around 70% of her area. Read:In heat emergency, southern Europe scrambles for resources “It’s a biblical catastrophe. We’re talking about three-quarters of the municipality,” East Mani Deputy Mayor Eleni Drakoulakou told state broadcaster ERT, pleading for more water-dropping aircraft. Other officials and residents in southern Greece phoned in to TV programs, appealing live on air for more firefighting help. Greece requested help through the European Union’s emergency support system. Firefighters and aircraft were sent from France, Spain, Ukraine, Cyprus, Croatia, Sweden, Israel, Poland, Romania, Switzerland and the United States. On Saturday alone, Germany’s Disaster Assistance agency tweeted that 52 firefighters and 17 vehicles from Bonn and 164 firemen and 27 vehicles from Hessen were heading to Athens to help. Egypt said it was sending two helicopters, while 36 Czech firefighters with 15 vehicles left for Greece. The causes of the fires are under investigation. Three people were arrested Friday — in the greater Athens area, central and southern Greece — on suspicion of starting blazes, in two cases intentionally. Another person, a 47-year-old Greek, was arrested Saturday afternoon in the Athens suburb of Petroupoli for lighting two fires in a grove and setting four dumpsters on fire, police said. Greek and European officials also have blamed climate change for the large number of fires burning through southern Europe, from southern Italy to the Balkans, Greece and Turkey. Fires described as the worst in decades have swept through stretches of Turkey’s southern coast for the past 10 days, killing eight people. The top Turkish forestry official said 217 fires had been brought under control since July 28 in over half of the country’s provinces, but firefighters still worked Saturday to tame six fires in two provinces. In Turkey’s seaside province of Mugla, a popular region for tourists, some fires appeared to be under control Saturday but the forestry minister said blazes were still burning in the Milas area. Environmental groups urged authorities to protect the forests of Sandras Mountain from nearby fires. Further north, at least six neighborhoods were evacuated due to a wildfire in western Aydin province, where shifting winds were making containment efforts difficult, Turkish media reported. Read: Californians endure intense weekend of wildfire fears Municipal officials in Antalya, on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, said a wildfire was still burning around the Eynif plain, where wild horses live. Massive fires also have been burning across Siberia in northern Russia for weeks, forcing the evacuation Saturday of a dozen villages. In all, wildfires have burned nearly 15 million acres this year in Russia. In the U.S., hot, bone-dry, gusty weather has also fueled devastating wildfires in California.

More than 500 firefighters struggled through the night to contain a large forest blaze on the outskirts of Athens, which raced into residential areas Tuesday, forcing thousands to flee. It was the worst of 81 wildfires that broke out in Greece over the past 24 hours, amid one of the country’s most intense heatwaves in decades. Civil Protection chief Nikos Hardalias said the fire north of Athens was “very dangerous,” and had been exacerbated by strong winds and tinder-dry conditions due to the heat that reached 45 Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) in the area. Read:In heat emergency, southern Europe scrambles for resources No severe injuries were reported, and authorities said several buildings had been damaged but no detailed breakdown was available. The cause of the blaze was unclear. “We continue to fight hour by hour, with our top priority being to save human lives,” Hardalias said. “We will do so all night.” “These are crucial hours,” Hardalias said. “Our country is undergoing one of the worst heatwaves of the past 40 years.” The wind dropped later Tuesday, and the regional governor for greater Athens, Giorgos Patoulis, said this could allow the fire to be tamed after water-dropping aircraft resume operations at first light Wednesday. “If the winds don’t grow it can be brought under control by the early morning so the planes can provide the final solution,” he told state ERT TV. The blaze sent a huge cloud of smoke over Athens, prompting multiple evacuations near Tatoi, 20 kilometers (12 1/2 miles) to the north and forcing the partial closure of Greece’s main north-south highway. Residents left their homes in cars and on motorcycles, often clutching pets, heading toward the capital amid a blanket of smoke. One group stopped to help staff from a riding school push their horses into trucks to escape the flames. Fire crews went house to house to ensure that evacuation orders were carried out, and 315 people were escorted to safety after calling for help. Authorities said nobody was listed as missing, and Greek media said six people required treatment for light breathing complaints. Read:At least 2 killed in German chemical blast; 31 injured As the heat wave scorching the eastern Mediterranean intensified, temperatures reached 42 degrees Celsius (107.6 Fahrenheit) in parts of the Greek capital. The extreme weather has fueled deadly wildfires in Turkey and blazes in Italy, Greece, Albania and across the region. Wildfires also raged in other parts of Greece, prompting evacuations of villages in Mani and Vassilitsa in the southern Peloponnese region, as well as on the islands of Evia and Kos, authorities said. A total 40 blazes were raging late Tuesday. The fires prompted Greek basketball star Giannis Antetokounmpo to cancel celebrations planned in Athens for the NBA championship he won recently with the Milwaukee Bucks. “We hope there are no victims from these fires, and of course we will postpones today’s celebration,” Antetokounmpo wrote in a tweet. Earlier, authorities closed the Acropolis and other ancient sites during afternoon hours. The site, which is normally open in the summer from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., will have reduced hours through Friday, closing between midday and 5 p.m. The extreme heat, described by authorities as the worst in Greece since 1987, has strained the national power supply and fueled the wildfires. The national grid operator said the power supply to part of the capital was “endangered” after part of the transmission system, damaged and threatened by the fires, was shut down. Seven water-dropping planes and nine helicopters were involved in the firefighting effort near Athens, including a Beriev Be-200 amphibious aircraft leased from Russia. They ceased operations after dark for safety reasons. Read:Europe’s summer tourism outlook dimmed by variants, rules The blaze damaged electricity pylons, adding further strain on the electricity network already under pressure due to the widespread use of air conditioning. The Greek Fire Service maintained an alert for most of the country for Tuesday and Wednesday, while public and some private services shifted operating hours to allow for afternoon closures. Hardalias appealed to the public for high vigilance. “Because the heatwave will continue in coming days, please avoid any activity that could spark a fire,” he said.