ATHENS, Greece (AP) — A point of pride for Greece was touched by controversy Monday, as the country’s prime minister was criticized by an opposition party for using a military helicopter during a trip to celebrate with Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, on being granted Greek citizenship. In an Instagram post on Sunday, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis shared a photograph showing him and his wife Mareva Grabowski-Mitsotaki at a meeting with Hanks and Wilson, who were holding up their new Greek passports.”Rita Wilson and Tom Hanks are now proud Greek citizens,” Mitsotakis wrote in the post. Greece offered citizenship to Hanks, Wilson, and their two children, in recognition of the family’s help in raising funds for the victims of a deadly wildfire near Athens in 2018. Wilson, an actress and producer, has Greek and Bulgarian ancestry. Government spokesman Stelios Petsas said Monday that the prime minister and his wife had used a commercial flight on Saturday to travel to the island of Paros, and then traveled to nearby Antiparos, where Hanks and Wilson have a holiday home. They then used a military helicopter for a trip to the ancient theater of Epidaurus on Sunday to watch a performance of an ancient tragedy. The main left-wing opposition Syriza party accused the prime minister of using Greece’s military helicopters like a ”personal radio taxi.”Petsas argued that Mitsotakis was performing his duties as prime minister by attending an ”important cultural event.”Neither Petsas nor Syriza referred to Hanks by name. Copyright 2020 Associated Press. All rights reserved. Latest NewsSuggesting a narrower pandemic relief package may be all that’s possible, the White House still pushed ahead with Monday’s planned rollout of the Senate Republicans’ $1 trillion effort as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi assailed the GOP “disarray” as time-wasting during the crisis. A night that started with a reported shooting and a bag containing loaded rifle magazines and Molotov cocktails amid a peaceful protest morphed into an intense early morning confrontation between demonstrators and law enforcement in Oregon’s largest city. The Senate GOP has unveiled a new $1 trillion coronavirus aid package as President Trump touts ”operation warp speed,” the race to find a vaccine is living up to its namWarm for the evening but not too humid with temperatures in the 80s. A few showers approach the Allegheny mountains late evening. Lows in West Virginia in the mid 60s. Clear and very warm for the Shenandoah Valley, lows falling into the upper 60s to low 70s. Updated: 1 hour ago|By LAURAN NEERGAARD, MICHAEL HILL and JOCELYN NOVECKThe biggest test yet of an experimental COVID-19 vaccine got underway Monday with the first of some 30,000 Americans rolling up their sleeves to receive shots created by the U. S. government as part of the all-out global race to stop the outbreak.

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