News archive of August 2020

Washington may send troops to Bulgaria and Romania as part of the redistribution of US forces in Europe.

This was reported by the Wall Street Journal, citing sources familiar with the Pentagon's plans.

Russia, which has reported more than 822,000 cases of COVID-19 and is currently the world's fourth most COVID-infested country, has concluded plans to register a coronavirus vaccine between August 10 and August 12 this year.

This will make way for what will be regarded as the world's first official approval of a vaccine against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Greece expects to receive a significant amount of support in grants and loans from the European Union's coronavirus recovery fund. It is a great opportunity that should not be allowed to go to waste like so many others before it.

Managers and medics at the Taxiarchai clinic in Peristeri, western Athens, have been charged with criminal misconduct following the rapid spread of coronavirus among elderly patients at the facility in April, with 13 of the 35 infections proving fatal.

Draft legislation presented to cabinet last week by Citizens' Protection Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis aims to put a stop to the transfer of inmates convicted of terrorism from high-security penitentiaries to agricultural jails.

Greece's National Health Organization (EODY)  on Saturday announced a sharp rise in Covid-19 infections to Greece, with 110 new cases.

The new cases brought the total number of infections nationwide to 4,587 while the death toll remained at 206 as no new fatalities were recorded. 

Of the 110 new cases, only nine were related to international travel, according to EODY. 

An associate professor at Greece's University of Thessaly says that companies worldwide have begun to respond to the effects of rising heat, as a result of climate change, on the productivity of their workers.

Andreas Flouris, who has researched workers' experiences of heat on the job and devised ways to help them, said companies had begun responding to the problem.

The decisions reached by the leaders summit in Brussels last month on the European Union Rescue Fund may have been beneath the expectations cultivated by France and Germany's initial proposal, as they reduced the level of grants by 22% and increased loans by 44%.

My tweet about the development at Erimitis in Corfu seems to have offended many in Athens. That was never my intention, and for that I unreservedly apologize.

The government will seek to focus the utilization of the 32 billion euros of European Commission grants and loans on "a few emblematic actions," say sources of the new setup that this week's cabinet meeting decided will run the project of absorbing Greece's share from the Next Generation EU fund.