Europe Debt, Country Bailout | featured news

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou sacrificed his finance minister on Friday and put his main socialist party rival into the job in a bid to force through an unpopular austerity plan and avert bankruptcy.

Prime Minister George Papandreou has vowed to stay on and fight to pull his country out of a crippling debt crisis, facing down a revolt in his Socialist party over new but widely unpopular austerity measures....

Portugal will elect a new government on Sunday which will lead the country through a period of deep austerity and recession after it received a 78-billion-euro ($114 billion) bailout from the European Union and IMF.

Euro zone finance ministers are ready to back an EU/IMF bailout of Portugal at a Monday meeting overshadowed by the arrest of International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on sexual assault charges.

Bleak EU economic forecasts on Friday showed Greece will miss its debt targets this year without further reforms and a senior policymaker said Athens was not meeting the terms of its rescue package.

Speculation is growing that Greece may need a second financial bail-out from the international community

Portugal launched talks on Tuesday with European authorities and the IMF on a bailout the caretaker government said it needs to pay the country's dues from June, as politicians jostled ahead of a general election.

Ireland's ailing banks need another euro24 billion ($34 billion) in cash in a move that will leave all of them under state control and facing a complete overhaul, officials announced Thursday in a long-awaited effort to cap a 3-year banking crisis....

Ireland's parliament approved a multi-billion euro EU/IMF bailout package on Wednesday in the face of opposition threats to renegotiate the deal to force losses on some senior bondholders in Irish banks.

The Belgian finance minister and International Monetary Fund suggested that the scope of measures to stabilize the euro should be strengthened.