Army and municipal crews removed hundreds of vehicles that had been stranded in snow for three days along a road linking Athens to the capital’s international airport, as authorities struggled to clear blocked thoroughfares and restore power to blacked-out parts of the city.

Heavy snowfall has caused major disruptions in Greece and neighboring Turkey, halting flights, blocking highways, and causing power outages.

Snow blanketed Athens and much of the country on Monday, leaving thousands of drivers trapped on major roads in the Greek capital for hours, with many forced to spend the night in their cars in freezing temperatures.

Many city streets were still impassable on Wednesday, while the snowstorm also knocked out power to several Athens neighborhoods.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis offered a “personal and sincere apology” to the stranded drivers in remarks made during a Cabinet meeting, but he blamed the road’s private operators for mishandling the reaction to the storm.

A rare heavy snowfall covered Jerusalem, some of northern Israel and hilly areas in the occupied West Bank overnight into Thursday, shutting down roads and schools.

Worshippers had to trudge through inches of snow to reach the holy sites in Jerusalem’s walled Old City, including the snow-capped Dome of the Rock and the Western Wall.

Heavy snow is rare in the city, so children went out into the streets to watch the flakes falling and hurl snowballs at each other.

Abed Shabany, 39, took his two sons to play on a hill overlooking Jerusalem. As he reversed his Jeep through inches of slush, other parents kept themselves warm brewing coffee on gas canisters in their boots.

 “I haven’t seen anything like this for years,” he said. “There’s no school today so I’m just going around with the kids making snowmen and snowballs. I think it’s a good sign. It will be a good year, I hope.”

Municipality cherry-pickers were out in the city centre, sawing off broken and dangerous branches, with much less traffic on the roads than usual.

Police closed off several main highways leading to Jerusalem, and bus services inside the city were suspended.

Throughout the night, 210 snow ploughs worked to clear the city streets, Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion told Israel Army Radio on Thursday morning. The snow piled up to a height of about 20 centimeters (8 inches), according to Israeli media.

Before arriving in Jerusalem, the winter storm swept through the Mediterranean region, from Greece across Turkey and into Syria.

Singapore on Thursday recommended supermarkets start charging for disposable carrier bags, a move aimed at slashing carbon emissions in a tiny nation that produces enough annual waste to fill hundreds of Olympic-sized swimming pools.

A 2018 study by the Singapore Environment Council found shoppers take home 820 million disposable bags from supermarkets each year, an average of 146 bags per person.

The National Environment Agency (NEA) is proposing that from next year, supermarkets charge 5 to 10 Singapore cents per bag.

“Such excessive consumption is unsustainable. It not only uses up resources, but also adds to Singapore’s carbon emissions when they are incinerated in our waste-to-energy plants,” it said.

Singaporean households and businesses threw away about 200,000 tonnes of disposables in both 2019 and 2020, enough to fill 400 Olympic-sized pools, the NEA said. An estimated two-thirds of the waste was disposable bags.

Clean and green Singapore incinerates almost all of its non-recyclable waste, with the ash and some solid waste shipped to Pulau Semakau, a nearby manmade island, but that is estimated to be filled by 2035.

Israel’s cabinet approved a plan to plant 450,000 trees in the country’s cities to mitigate some effects of climate change by offering more shade and cooler temperatures.

The plan, which is predicted to cost about 2.25 billion shekels, or $716 million, will be carried out between now and 2040. The goal of the plan is for 70% of sidewalks to be shaded by trees.

“The government of Israel has set the subject of climate as a national aim. More than 90% of the country’s residents live in urban communities, and the hotter the climate gets, the harder it will be to move around outside,” Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said, according to The Times of Israel.

The plan is meant to both protect residents of cities from sizzling temperatures as the climate changes in Israel’s already hot climate but also to prevent further damage from climate change.

Trees recycle carbon dioxide, one of the gases emitted by polluting cars, as well as anchor soil and absorb rainfall, mitigating the effects of flooding, which has become an increasingly common event in Israel.

But even as Israel plans for new tree saplings, hundreds of thousands of more mature trees are being cut down each year for reasons like construction, according to Haaretz.

In response to questions about tree felling by Haaretz, Israel’s Environmental Protection Agency said it would establish a group to “look into aspects of preventing felling, both in public areas and in private gardens.”