Scores still stranded on blaze-hit Italian ferry

ATHENS, Dec 29 (agencies): Five people have died and 59 are still awaiting rescue after a blaze on an Italian ferry off the island of Corfu, Greek officials say.
One man is known to have died trying to escape the ship, and a further four bodies have been recovered from the sea.
Helicopter crews have been winching people to safety despite gale-force winds and thick smoke.
The Italian navy said that 419 of the 478 people on board had been evacuated.
It is still unclear what caused the fire to break out on a car deck on Sunday.
Overall, 391 people have been rescued from the ferry that was carrying 478 passengers and crew, Varvitsiotis said.
Prosecutors in the Italian port of Bari on Monday opened a criminal investigation into how the Norman Atlantic caught fire at sea and whether negligence contributed to the disaster.
The investigation will seek to establish how the fire started and why it was able to gain such force that passengers feared they would be burned alive or suffocated by thick smoke.
The Italian owner of the boat has insisted that the vessel was in full working order and had passed a technical inspection which included its firedoors on December 19.
One of the first survivors to arrive in Italy on Monday has alleged that the staff were clearly unprepared for dealing with an emergency and appeared to be unaware of how to organise an evacuation.
More than 140 shivering, exhausted and terrified passengers and crew remained stranded Monday on a stricken car ferry that caught fire in the Adriatic Sea 30 hours earlier.
The Italian navy, which has been coordinating efforts to winch people off the Norman Atlantic by helicopter, said a total of 335 of the 478 passengers and crew had been taken off the boat, which continued to be buffetted by powerful, bitingly cold winds and huge waves.
The Italian-owned ship, which was travelling from Patras in western Greece to Ancona in Italy, has been drifting off the coast of Albania since a fire ripped through its car deck in the early hours of Sunday, leaving it impossible to steer.
A flotilla of merchant, coastguard and military ships from Greece, Italy and Albania have been involved in what has proved to be a fiendishly difficult evacuation operation.
The drama has claimed one life so far, a Greek passenger who fell into six-metre high waves while trying to get into a lifeboat on Sunday. His wife also ended up in the sea but was rescued.
Some of the rescued passengers have displayed symptoms of hypothermia and there were fears those still on board would be worse-affected.
A medical team was on board the ferry helping to decide who should be given priority for evacuation. The multinational crew, headed by Italian skipper Argilio Giacomazzi, 62, were expected to be the last off, in keeping with maritime tradition.