Giorgos Kaminis

The Pulitzer Prize winning Greek-American author Jeffrey Eugenides will visit Athens on September 27 as part of the Athens 2018 World Book Capital celebrations organized by the Municipality of Athens with the support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and the US Embassy in Athens.

US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt (center right) and Athens Mayor Giorgos Kaminis (center left) break ground for the renovation of the American Embassy in Athens on Wednesday. "This is a very, very big week for the US-Greece relationship as we get ready for the Thessaloniki International Fair. Truly a landmark event in our partnership with Greece," Pyatt said.

The City of Athens is introducing incentives to encourage local entrepreneurs active in the social and solidarity economy (SSE) to open up stores in the Stoa ton Emboron (Merchants' Arcade) on Voulis Street near Syntagma Square.

Athens is among 12 cities short-listed for the European Capital of Innovation Award, an annual prize awarded to the European city that is best able to demonstrate its ability to harness innovation to improve the lives of its citizens.

The other 11 finalists are Aarhus, Antwerp, Bristol, Gothenburg, Hamburg, Leuven, Lisbon, Madrid, Toulouse, Umea and Vienna.

A municipal summer camp run by the City of Athens in eastern Attica to help parents struggling to keep their children occupied during the school holidays will be reopened on Sunday after being evacuated during Monday's deadly fires.

Athens Mayor Giorgos Kaminis on Friday expressed concern about a recent spike in illegal activities by self-styled anarchists and hit out at the government for failing to curb the phenomenon, accusing it of "surrendering Athens to a wretched minority who aim to become a state within a state."

Major thoroughfares in central Athens will be closed to traffic on Saturday due to the Antetokounbros 5K Run.

Traffic police said they will begin to gradually close off roads from 4 p.m.

They will not reopen until 9 p.m.

Athens walked away with three major distinctions from this year's World Travel Awards, an annual international event hailed as the "Oscars of tourism."

The ceremony, which was held on Saturday at the Greek capital's Zappeio Hall, saw Athens named Europe's Leading City Break Destination for 2018, beating wildly popular destinations like Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, Paris and Rome.

Heavy rainfall in the past few days has aggravated the capital's already dire trash problem, as structural damage to Attica's main landfill has caused waste to pile up in the streets of Athens.

The rain triggered streams of trash to flow through the streets of Athens and washed large tangles of waste into storm drains. Local residents complained of smell and pollution.

Athens Mayor Giorgos Kaminis warned on Thursday that the inner-city neighborhood on Exarchia is at risk of becoming a "no man's land" and a "black hole in the center of Athens."