News archive of September 2023

At least 100 people were killed and more than 150 injured when a fire broke out during a wedding at an event hall in the northern Iraqi town of Qaraqosh, officials said early Wednesday.

At the main hospital in the predominantly Christian town east of Mosul, an AFP photographer saw ambulances arriving with sirens blaring and dozens of people gathering in the courtyard to donate blood.

A Hellenistic plasma intaglio, engraved with a young warrior seated on a rock (323-31 BC), is among the items stolen from the British Museum. The museum has launched a public hotline asking for help to locate some 2,000 missing artifacts, revealing they were mostly ancient Greek and Roman gems and jewelry.

A fire erupted on the escalators of the pedestrian walkway located outside the terminal station of the ISAP electric railway and metro in Piraeus in the early hours of Wednesday.

As reported by state broadcaster ERT, firefighting teams promptly arrived at the scene and extinguished the fire, with no injuries reported.

Police in Athens have launched an investigation after an arsenal of weapons was uncovered in a ground-floor warehouse in the upmarket district of Kolonaki.

The hoard, which was found on Neofytou Douka Street, included a number of M1-style rifles, magazines, hundreds of bullets and three old grenades.

Attica and a significant part of central Greece were battered by severe storms, intense lightning activity, and flooded streets early on Wednesday. The adverse weather system named Elias is sweeping across the region, causing concern that lingers until Thursday.

A staunch advocate of Greece, US Representative Grace Meng, a Democrat representing New York City and a member of the Congressional Hellenic Caucus and the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations, talks to Kathimerini about an amendment she recently introduced in the defense budget aimed at bolstering US-Greek defense cooperation.

Milan Fashion Week was not even over and the fashionistas were already back in Paris on Sept. 23 for another 100-plus shows in the hectic womenswear season.

The spring-summer 2024 collections in the French capital run until Oct. 3, with 107 brands presenting, of which 67 are giving runway shows.

The U.K.'s inflation-fuelled cost-of-living crisis is set to "cut lives short" and "significantly widen the wealth-health gap", according to a study published by open access journal BMJ Public Health.

Ford is halting work on a major battery plant in the northern U.S. state of Michigan, the automaker has said, just seven months after launching the project with a Chinese partner.

The stoppage, which a Ford a representative confirmed to AFP, comes as the company faces a major strike along with both of the other "Big Three" U.S. automakers, Stellantis and General Motors.

London's Gatwick airport has said that it had been forced to cancel more than 160 flights between yesterday and Sunday due to an exceptional shortage of controllers, partly caused by coronavirus infections.