11.00 News in brief

Hopes are fading of finding anyone else alive beneath the rubble of collapsed buildings in Albania, two days after a deadly quake struck the country, that killed at least 46 people and injured more than 900. Rescue teams were struggling all night to find people alive, despite the heavy rainfall and intense aftershocks.
EMAK rescue team returns to Greece, while a delegation of civil engineers is travelling to the country to assist authorities in evaluating the stability of buildings.

Athens on Thursday strongly condemned a decision by Turkey and Libya to set out maritime boundaries in the Mediterranean as “completely unacceptable.”

“The signing by Turkey and Libya of a memorandum of understanding cannot violate the sovereign rights of third countries,” ministry spokesman Alexandros Gennimatas said in a statement.
Diplomatic sources said that the Greek Foreign Affairs Minister Nikos Dendias called the Turkish ambassador in Athens requiring explanations and also spoke on the phone with his Cypriot and Egyptian counterparts.

The government’s energy bill was passed in parliament on Thursday by a majority vote, paving the way for the liberalization of the energy market in Greece.

Finally, the Public Power Corporation’s Labor Union, GENOP-DEH, called off its scheduled 48-hour strikes it had announced on Monday.

The country’s medical authorities were placed on high alert on Thursday after lab tests revealed that the death of an 8-year-old boy in the intensive care unit of the Athens General Children’s Hospital on Wednesday was possibly caused by diphtheria, a disease that was eradicated in Greece almost three decades ago.

Authorities are now waiting for results from the United Kingdom’s Public Health England agency to confirm whether the cause was indeed diphtheria.

Local authorities on the Aegean islands of Lesvos, Samos, Chios, Kos and Leros have rejected the government’s plan to create new closed centers for migrants.

In a joint statement, the mayors of the five islands called on the government “to honor its pre-election commitments to proceed immediately with the large-scale decongestion of the islands and to respect the decisions of our city councils.”

Malta’s prime minister, Joseph Muscat, emerged from a marathon cabinet meeting at 3am on Friday to announce that he would stay in the job until the investigation into the murder of the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was complete.

And the weather forecast…

Partly cloudy in Attica this morning with the temperature expected to reach 21 degrees Celsius.

More news in brief Monday morning at 9