Prime Minister George Papandreou said on Thursday the opening of closed professions was not an issue of the Memorandum signed between Greece and European Commission, ECB and IMF but that his government "considers it as a help to young people, as a move that opens the market
A team of EU and IMF inspectors winds contacts in Athens on Thursday by meeting Labour minister Andreas Loverdos and Bank of Greece (BoG) governor George Provopoulos in the afternoon, after which it will draw up its report on the basis of which a second tranche of the EU-IMF support package loan to Greece will be disbursed.
The government on Friday announced a tough crackdown on striking truck owners that have voted to defy a civil mobilisation order continue their strike. Among a series of measures and announced by the appropriate ministerial committee was a decision to enlist the aid of the armed forces to transport fuel supplies. The government also slammed the truckers' refusal to comply with the civil mobilisation order as "a grievous insult to law and order that harms society as a whole". Apart from requisitioning the privately-owned tanker trucks, the armed forces are ordered to use their own vehicles to ensure the supply of fuel to crucial sectors such as airports, power plants and hospitals
Alternate Foreign Minister Dimitris Droutsas met on Friday with the UN secretary general's special advisor on the Cyprus issue
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An Apache military helicopter made a crash landing near Megara just before noon on Friday, and the two-member crew on board died
A wildfire that broke out on the island of Samos, in the Kokkari region, on Wednesday night was reported as having been partially contained
Ten professional organisations on Thursday filed a petition with the Council of State against the government's austerity measures.
Stocks ended lower in the last trading session of the week in the ASE on Friday, as investors took profits after a recent rally in the market.
The impasse between government and striking truck owners, the labour unions' recourse to the Council of State
