Bailouts, Euro Zone | featured news

Banks on the tax haven of Cyprus opened Thursday for the first time in 12 days amid the island's continuing financial crisis. Strict limits on the amount of money that could be withdrawn have been imposed – people will be able to withdraw 300 euros ($383) a day and no checks will be cashed – amid fears of a run on the banks.

Cyprus has imposed limits on money transfers and hired extra security guards to prepare for the reopening of its banks, which have been shut for almost two weeks to avoid a run during the country's financial drama.

As Cypriot politicians raced to find a new financial rescue plan ahead of a Monday deadline, tensions built in the streets of the capital. Residents withdrew what money they could from ATMs amid concern the banks could collapse.

Europe has spent hundreds of billions of euros rescuing its banks but may have lost an entire generation of young people in the process, the president of the European Parliament said.

Spain's 17 regional governments are a big part of the country's financial problems. Like the regional savings banks, they are victims of the country's property boom and bust. During the boom years, regional government tax revenues were swelled by stamp duties on property sales, and by income taxes paid by immigrants that came to work on the country's construction sites... Then the bust came...

BERLIN —Greece’s new leaders have had only a month to confront their country’s dismal tangle of economic problems, but some in Europe think the troubled Mediterranean country is up against a hopeless task.

Italy and Spain, battling searing market pressure in the euro zone's widening debt crisis, blocked agreement on measures to promote growth at a European Union summit on Thursday to demand urgent action to bring down their borrowing costs.

Cyprus, the fifth euro zone country to seek emergency funding from Europe, may need a bailout of up to 10 billion euros — over half the size of its economy — officials said.

Greece's new government is to ask lenders for two more years to hit fiscal targets, responding to huge public pressure for a softening of an international bailout but setting up a showdown with its euro zone partners.

European leaders faced increasing pressure on Thursday to respond to the euro crisis, as Spanish bond yields hit a level that has triggered full bailouts of other nations.