Greece

ND garnered 40.79 per cent of the votes, securing 145 seats in the next 300-member Parliament, according to 96.03 per cent of the votes counted, official results released by the Interior Ministry revealed.

The ruling on National Party-Hellenes, founded by jailed former lawmaker Ilias Kasidiaris, was based on a recent law that bans the participation in the electoral process of parties whose leadership has been convicted of crimes carrying a potential sentence of life imprisonment, such as running a criminal organisation, Xinhua news agency reported, citing Greek national news agency AMNA.

"The general elections will be held at the end of the (government's) four-year term, as I had promised from the start," he said during a cabinet meeting on Tuesday. If a second round of elections is required, it will take place at the beginning of July at the latest, Xinhua news agency quoted the Prime Minister as saying.

Six people have been admitted to intensive care, it added on Wednesday. With a search and rescue operation still underway near the city of Larissa, the death toll is expected to climb higher, Greek Fire Service spokesman Vasilios Vathrakogiannis told a press briefing. "We will work so that this 'never again' that I heard in Larissa will not remain an empty promise," he told Greek national broadcaster ERT.

Polling stations opened at 0500 GMT and are set to close at 1600 GMT, and the final results are expected about two hours after the end of voting, said local authorities, Xinhua News Agency reported. Chief Returning Officer Costas Constantinou said over 561,000 people have registered to vote, with over 10,000 voting from abroad, primarily in Greece, the UK, Belgium, and the US.

Anastasiades, who is not a candidate in the presidential elections this Sunday, thanked Greece for its steady support to efforts to resolve the long-standing problem. "I think we have adequately shielded Cyprus, so that it can negotiate a solution that is functional and viable," he said during his meeting with Greece's Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the country's national news agency AMNA reported.

The last monarch of Greece had been hospitalized for several days in a local hospital where he died on Tuesday, Xinhua news agency quoted Greek national broadcaster ERT as saying in a report. Constantine II became king in 1964, but was forced into exile after a failed counter-coup against the military dictatorship which took over in 1967.

The Ministry's Permanent Secretary Kornelios Korneliou told the state-run Cyprus News Agency on Saturday that the proposal is expected to be put forward by Baltic countries during the informal meeting of the EU foreign ministers (Gymnich) in Prague on August 30 and 31.