by Harald Hau* Last week, the European heads of government added €109 billion to the existing €110 billion rescue plan for Greece. As Europe’s financial sector would have otherwise taken a huge hit, this column address the question: How did the financial sector manage to negotiate such a gigantic wealth transfer from the Eurozone taxpayer and the IMF to the richest 5% of people in the world? When the deal w ...

ATHENS | Wed Aug 3, 2011 7:01pm IST (Reuters) - Greece will tighten its internet and media laws to stem violence against politicians backing a deeply unpopular austerity plan, the justice minister said. The move follows public warnings by Prime Minister George Papandreou last month that violent protests against spending cuts, pushed through by his government to satisfy international lenders, threatened to d ...

Debt crisis forces many on to the streets through bankruptcy and job loss Peter Papadopoulos, an unemployed chef who became homeless last August Peter Papadopoulos, who became homeless last August, has been in a hostel in Athens for the last three months. Photograph: Sean Smith for the Guardian A young man is sitting in the corner of the Klimaka hostel, rocking himself against his knees in a slow repetitive ...

The Associated Press ATHENS, Greece — They descended by the hundreds -- black-shirted, bat-wielding youths chasing down dark-skinned immigrants through the streets of Athens and beating them senseless in an unprecedented show of force by Greece's far-right extremists. In Greece, alarm is rising that the twin crises of financial meltdown and soaring illegal immigration are creating the conditions for a right ...

An abandoned 19th-century villa has become a symbol in bricks and mortar of dubious public-private deals. By Aditya Chakrabortty To understand one of the most intriguing stories of the Greek debt crisis you don't need a degree in economics or an expert grasp of Brussels diplomacy – merely a willingness to get a bit muddy. You start with a cramped 15-minute bus ride out of central Athens to a suburb called Z ...

Tens of thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets in seven cities across Israel, and their social slogans are rapidly being replaced by calls for the government to step down. Rallies started at 9 pm on Saturday, with the main events held in Tel Aviv, where a large crowd gathered at the “Tahrir Square of Israel”, in front of the Tel Aviv Museum. The demonstrations, during which protesters carried ...

Municipality cops and riot police evacuated by force the protesters camp at Syntagma Square in Athens, Greece after 60 days. At 04:20, 4 Riot team squads circling each side entered the revolutionary camp. A small team of police officers with a D.I. entered from the lower side. The Riot guards surrounded the protesters while the D.I. stated that the protest and the camp were declared illegal, due to a Greek ...

by www.ftd.de Financial Time Deutschland Deutschlands größtes Geldhaus in einer Dreifachrolle: als Gläubiger, als Ideengeber für die Umschuldung in Person von Josef Ackermann – und nun auch noch als Berater der Griechen. Heikel ist auch die Rolle von BNP Paribas. von Barbara Schäder Frankfurt Die Deutsche Bank wird sich an der geplanten Umschuldung Griechenlands gleich mehrfach beteiligen: Als Gläubiger und ...

(Reuters) - Germans may accuse spendthrift euro zone southerners of too much play and not enough work, but they enjoy the most generous annual holiday time in the European Union, a study released on Wednesday showed. Reporting by Eric Kelsey, editing by Paul Taylor Workers in Germany enjoy 30 days of paid holiday a year on average, the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions ...

Sooner or later you have to choose.Which side are you on? ...