Europe Debt Crisis, Country Bailout | featured news

By insisting that it receive collateral from Greece in return for aid, Finland threatens to upend an agreement that euro zone countries made in July to expand the E.U. bailout fund.

Riot police fired tear gas at youths hurling rocks and petrol bombs near the Greek finance ministry Tuesday, trying to quell the anger unleashed during mass protests and a general strike as parliament debated new cost-cutting measures.

Under the plan, French banks would give Athens more time to pay back loans as they come due over the next three years.

Greece has secured a second bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, and it too will be on the order of €110 billion, Prime Minister George Papandreou said.

Hours of talks between eurozone finance ministers on the imploding finances of Greece broke up early Monday morning without the ministers signing off on a vital installment of rescue loans needed to avoid bankruptcy next month.

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.