An 83-year-old woman and her 57-year-old daughter died of asphyxiation at their home in Ioannina, northwestern Greece, after a fire broke out in the bed they shared, the fire service said. The two women both had mobility problems and were unable to escape the blaze, according to police who said the fire had probably been started by a lamp that overheated. The women suffered burns to their backs, legs and faces but had died of the toxic fumes released by the blaze.

The life of a 3-year-old boy who was thrown from the second-floor balcony of his parents’ apartment by a childminder is not in danger, doctors at the Aghia Sofia hospital in Athens said on Saturday. The boy broke his leg and suffered head injuries but was in a stable condition. The 27-year-old childminder, a Romanian national who was not named, was arrested on Friday. The boy has also not been named but police said that his parents too are Romanian.

Greek swimmer Yiannis Drymonakos narrowly missed out on a second medal at the World Short Course Swimming Championships in Manchester, England, yesterday. Despite setting a new Greek record of 1.52.68 in the final of the 200-meter butterfly, Drymonakos came fourth, just three hundredths of a second behind Poland’s Pawel Korzeniowski. The race was won by New Zealand’s Moss Burmester. Drymonakos, one of Greece’s best hopes for a medal at the Beijing Olympics, finished third in the 400-meter medley on Thursday to add a bronze to his medal collection. The 23-year-old had won one gold (in the 200-meter butterfly) and one silver medal (in the 400-meter medley) in the Europeans in March.

Police arrested 28 people during an operation in the early hours of Saturday morning in Hania, Crete. Officers stopped and searched almost 700 people and conducted checks on dozens of stores and vehicles. Of those arrested 17 were Greeks and 11 were foreign nationals. Police did not give details about the offenses the 28 were alleged to have committed.