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ATHENS Greece will conclude austerity talks with its lenders to continue receiving the bailout funds it needs to exit its economic crisis, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said on Monday. “Greece will soon get the next tranche. Its economy needs liquidity like a desert needs rain,” Samaras told a conference in Athens. But Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras told reporters negotiators would most likely miss a target to complete the talks by Thursday, when a European Union summit takes place. Athens has not received any bailout money since the end of June, with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund withholding [...]

BERLIN German Chancellor Angela Merkel will fly to Athens on Tuesday to meet Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, her spokesman said on Friday, her first trip to Greece since the euro zone debt crisis erupted there. “It is a trip that of course happens to the backdrop of this very difficult situation that Greece is going through right now, the massive adjustment and reform measures that have shaped Greece for the past two years,” Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said. “We see that the reform efforts have increased under the Samaras government and we want to support that.” Samaras told German [...]

LONDON Greece’s Prime Minister Antonis Samaras was meeting with his coalition partners in Athens on Thursday to discuss ways to initiate more spending cuts required by the nation’s international lenders, according to media reports. The meeting comes in the wake of heated anti-austerity protests in Athens on Wednesday and following media reports earlier in the week that Greece’s official budget shortfall of 11.5 billion euros, or about $ 15 billion, may in fact be around twice that amount. On Wednesday, police unleashed tear gas at rioters as the nation went on a 24-hour strike.

Greek and German leaders wrangled publicly over Greece’s plea for further assistanceComes as an index of business activity in the eurozone contracted for seventh month(Financial Times) — Leaders in Athens and Berlin wrangled publicly over how to deal with Greece’s plea for further assistance as fears of a renewed eurozone recession mounted yesterday.An index of business activity in the single currency area showed a seventh consecutive monthly contraction and an accelerating decline in output from Germany, the main engine of eurozone growth.As the debt storm spreads Europe’s leaders battle to save the eurozoneThere was moderately better news from surveys in [...]

Greece’s finance minister is to hold talks in Athens with the head of a global banking association that is representing private bond holders in negotiations over a critical debt reduction deal that is part of the country’s second…