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ATHENS, Greece – Deadly riots over harsh new austerity measures engulfed the streets of Athens on Wednesday, killing three bank workers as angry protesters tried to storm parliament, hurled Molotov cocktails at police and torched buildings. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets as part of nationwide strikes to protest new taxes and government spending cuts demanded by the International Monetary Fund and other European nations before heavily indebted Greece gets a euro110 billion ($141 billion) bailout package of loans to keep it from defaulting. The three bank workers — a man and two women — died after...

Masked youths stoned police outside Greece's parliament today in protest at cutbacks proposed to try to end the country's debt crisis. Riot police responded with tear gas and baton charges as more than 7,000 demonstrators gathered in the centre of Athens. They arrested six demonstrators, while onlookers said two officers were badly beaten. Protesters attacked the leader of Greece's biggest trade union and chased guards away from the country's tomb of the unknown soldier. Youths also fought with police inside the Council of State and tried to break into the labour ministry. Inside parliament, politicians were debating the €4.8 billion...

Greek fuel supplies run dry as strike over harsh austerity measures bites Published Date: 20 February 2010 By MARGARET NEIGHBOUR PETROL stations ran dry in Greece yesterday as a customs strike over government austerity measures began to bite. Customs staff initially walked out for three days on Tuesday over salary freezes and cuts in bonuses. But their union announced on Thursday three 48-hour rolling strikes that will keep customs offices shut until next Wednesday, when all workers are being asked to join a general strike. The customs walkout has hampered imports and exports, but the supply of fuel has been...

DALLAS (AP) - A sheriff's dispatcher says fires have struck two more rural east Texas churches, just hours after investigators announced that a blaze last week marked the eighth arson against a house of worship in the state this year. A Smith County sheriff's dispatcher says fire struck a Baptist church near Tyler Monday night. Another hit a church about 3 miles away. The fires come the same day the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives announced a blaze that happened last week was the seventh east Texas church fire of 2010 to be deliberately set.

SNIPPET: "A bomb has exploded outside the Athens stock exchange, slightly injuring a female passer-by and damaging the building, police say. The bomb - which set fire to several cars - was hidden in a stolen van. Another bomb went off outside a government building in Thessaloniki, causing minor damage and no injuries. The blasts may be the work of a Greek extremists' group, Revolutionary Struggle, says the BBC's Malcolm Brabant in Athens. Earlier this year the group claimed responsibility for two bombs aimed at the American Citibank group. Flying glass A warning of the Athens explosion was telephoned to...

The object was spotted by the pilot of Olympic Airways flight 266 from Athens, and the sighting was corroborated by staff at Athens Airport and a nearby Greek air force base. Pilots of two other passenger jets also reported seeing the body.The eyewitnesses described it as looking like a large star, although it was moving erratically and constantly changing shape.Two fighter jets were sent to investigate the sighting over the Greek capital in November 2007 but the object shot up into the sky and vanished before they could get a clear view.

04/13/2009 SNIPPET: "A home-made fire-bomb exploded at 3:25 a.m. at the KAPA Marines showcase, and the ensuing fire quickly spread throughout the two land plots where the company's pleasure craft are on display, totally destroying or causing extensive damage to more than 20 boats." SNIPPET: "Police bomb disposal experts are investigating the site, and have so far come up with two propane canisters."

March 20, 2009 SNIPPET: ""Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him" -- Muhammad" SNIPPET: "An Iranian Muslim extremists group identifying themselves as “Hezbollah” sent a letter to three Iranian pastors with a Muslim background threatening them to return to Islam or else risk being murdered. The radical group calls itself “The Hezbollah Party, Army of the World’s Imam” and accused the pastors of being spies for foreign powers, according to Farsi Christian News Network (FCNN). The extremists demanded the Iranian pastors denounce their faith in Christ and return to Islam. In the letter delivered to the Iranian pastors on...

ATHENS, Greece (Dec. 9) - Masked youths and looters marauded through Greek cities for a fourth night Tuesday, in an explosion of rage triggered by the police shooting of a teenager that has unleashed the most violent riots in a quarter century.

Wednesday January 7, 2009 Greek Bishop Sues Homosexualist Group for Defamation By Hilary White   ATHENS, January 7, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Greek Orthodox bishop has launched a defamation lawsuit against a group of homosexualist activists, reports the homosexual news source Pink News. The bishop is reportedly asking for 1 million Euros in defamation after the group issued a press statement denouncing him. The suit is launched against the Greek homosexualist organization, Synthesis, and activist Leo Kalovyrnas, who denounced the bishop after the latter made comments on the sinfulness of the homosexual lifestyle in a Greek newspaper.   His...

"Pay close attention to Greece; at a time of world-wide economic upheaval, it might eerily presage disturbances elsewhere in 2009" ___ reece has been torn apart by the worst riots in decades, now entering their third week. Bands of self-declared anarchist youths have rampaged through the streets of Athens and other major cities causing hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage, setting off a spiral of unrest in which the nation’s unions, among other groups, have taken part. Both shops and hotel lobbies have been ransacked, and hospitals, airports, and transport have been brought to a standstill. What sparked...

How low will they go?? As low as laser blinding Greek Police: "A riot policeman is aimed at with a laser light pointer during riots outside the Athens Polytechnic. Small bands of Greek rioters hurling firebombs attacked an environment ministry building, shops and banks in Athens on Saturday during an eighth day of protests following the killing of a teenager by police." And that's not all: "A warning from Serb intelligence about the mobilization of an extremist Islamic organization in Greece has put the Greek authorities on high alert. Several days ago, Serb intelligence briefed a Serb parliamentary Committee that...

The rioting began in Athens late on Saturday soon after the shooting in the central Exarchia district, where youths threw petrol bombs at police, burnt dozens of cars and smashed shop windows. It quickly spread to Greece's second largest city of Thessaloniki and other towns in northern Greece. Cities on the holiday islands of Crete and Corfu also saw protests at the shooting, which prompted Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos to offer his resignation. Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, whose fragile government has been rocked by a series of scandals, rejected it, a ministry spokeswoman said.

An Albany man who came to town for a conference was arrested on a felony charge and jailed for 18 hours because he had a gun in his hotel room. Eric Dewayne Baylis, 45, said he didn't know that the hotel was owned by the University of Georgia, which put him in violation of a state law forbidding weapons within school safety zones. His employers made the lodging arrangements and he had no idea the hotel is owned by UGA. "I actually didn't know (it) was campus property," Baylis said Thursday, soon after posting a $2,000 bond to get out...

The frontrunner to become Israel’s next prime minister, Tzipi Livni, was a Paris agent for Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence agency, in the early 1980s when it ran a series of missions to kill Palestinian terrorists in European capitals, according to former colleagues. They say Livni, now foreign minister, was on active service when Mamoun Meraish, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organisation, was shot dead by a Mossad hit squad in Athens on August 21, 1983. She was not directly involved in the killing, in which two young men on a motorcycle drew alongside Meraish’s car and opened fire,...

2,500 years ago, a city bigger than Athens in Orissa 11 Feb 2008, 0028 hrs IST,Minati Singha,TNN Experts say Sishupalgarh is the ‘most visible standing architectural monument’ discovered in India (TOI Photo) BHUBANESWAR: From under the ruins of an ancient fort on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar, archaeologists have dug out the remains of a 2,500-year-old city which they believe was bigger than classical Athens. Eighteen pillars were found among the remnants of the grand city at Sishupalgarh, a ruined fortification first discovered 60 years ago. The findings include debris of household pottery and terracotta ornaments, pointing to an advanced lifestyle...

Although the White House is poised to back away from misguided attempts to "engage" the Iranian mullahs, don't expect the State Department to play along. Just as State has undermined the president multiple times already on matters relating to every spoke of the "axis of evil," State most likely will continue talking to the mullahs. A recent Washington Post article gave an indication that Foggy Bottom officials may grudgingly embrace a new tough-on-Iran policy—if officially handed down by the White House—noting that State "appears inclined to accept such a policy." But history suggests otherwise. The State Department's top policy official,...

Greek forest fires kill 47 as blaze nears Athens By Roya Nikkhah, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 1:40am BST 26/08/2007 Forest fires have ripped through southern Greece, killing 47 people, injuring 40 and leaving hundreds homeless. A hot, dry summer and a three-day heatwave with temperatures of 40C created the tinderbox conditions A national state of emergency was declared yesterday as firemen fought up to 170 fires which have raged since Friday, forcing the evacuation of dozens of villages. The southern Peloponnese region was described as a "crematorium" by officials, who said the death toll was expected to rise as gale-force...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) -- A man was being detained in New York for the death of a woman who was dragged for several miles under a minivan after trying to stop the driver from fleeing a collision, officials said Monday. Abdelaziz Bilal Hamze, 24, was detained on Delta flight 132 bound for Athens, Greece, Broward County Sheriff's spokesman Elliot Cohen said. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained him while the plane was pulling away from the gate at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, Cohen said. Broward sheriff's deputies were en route to New York to interview Hamze,...

Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis - January 19, 2007, Friday Analysis. By GIS Staff. Reliable sources indicate that the Chinese-built RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade fired at the US Embassy in Athens on January 12, 2007, was supplied to the leftist Greek terrorist organization, Revolutionary Struggle, by the Albanian jihadist -linked group, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA/UCK). The confirmation of the link demonstrates the growing linkages between anti-Western leftist terrorist groups and anti-Western Islamist jihadi groups, and there is some suggestion that the reappearance of Revolutionary Struggle may have been prompted directly by support received from the cash-rich KLA. The KLA...