Greece will enter Thursday's critical European summit in a state of disarray after its Finance Minister-designate resigned over health problems yesterday.

Greece is heading into the most important European summit of recent times without its new prime minister, who will remain in Athens to recover from eye surgery. The sense of a leadership vacuum has been compounded by the collapse of the new finance minister who was taken to hospital before he could be sworn into office.

As a new PM takes office, Daniel Howden finds out how ordinary Greeks are surviving

Greece got its first elected prime minister for eight months yesterday as the conservative leader Antonis Samaras was sworn in at the head of a coalition government.

Fresh from elections in which Greek voters pulled back from the brink of confrontation with its international creditors, the country is set to risk further ire by asking for more time to meet the targets it has been set in return for loans.

Samaras must prove himself at home and in Europe

EasyJet's founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou moved closer to launching a pan-African, low-cost airline yesterday after a British investment firm he is part of bought Lonhro's African aviation business.

The architect of Kenya's military campaign in Somalia and a leading presidential candidate for next year's election has died in a helicopter crash in the hills outside the capital, Nairobi.

Rights groups hail jailing of Liberia's former president for horrific war crimes in Sierra Leone

Investigators in Nairobi are trying to establish the cause of a blast that wounded at least two dozen people and destroyed a complex of shops in a city that has been on red alert for a possible terrorist strike.