Fears that the Greek debt crisis could generate another banking meltdown and global economic crash persisted yesterday despite a short-term fix by the EU and IMF.

Greece's political elite is a pond that refuses to be flushed. Two clans have dominated the scene since the fall of the dictatorship: the Papandreou and Karamanlis families and their socialist and conservative tribes who have played out largely fake wars while pursuing similar policies.

Greece's beleaguered prime minister faces an escalating revolt within his own Socialist party as he manoeuvres to pass new austerity measures.

Greece, the sickest patient in the ailing eurozone, was rocked yesterday by a nationwide strike of millions of workers and hours of rioting in street protests against the government's austerity plans.

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou offered today to step down and make way for a national unity government if the opposition agreed on a clear plan on how to proceed with reforms, government sources said.

Greece became the lowest-rated country in the world yesterday after Standard & Poor's cut its rating on the country's long-term debt by three notches to CCC and warned it would view a debt restructuring as a default.

ne of the most popular lessons at the Idler Academy is ancient Greek philosophy. The author and former priest Dr Mark Vernon, who I met at Alain de Botton's Platonic school in Bloomsbury, gives the classes, and I assist.

In Greece just after the Second World War, Patrick Leigh Fermor was on a lecture tour for the British Council.

Flares and fire fill the streets in the Greek capital as police and protesters clash.

Despite bailouts for Greece, Ireland and Portugal, Europe's debt crisis may yet spread to core euro zone countries and emerging eastern Europe, the International Monetary Fund said today.

Police fired tear gas at dozens of youths hurling stones in Athens yesterday and a strike against austerity brought much of Greece to a halt during talks on the next slice of a bailout package.

Most public services in Greece ground to a halt and transport was disrupted today as unions staged a new general strike in protest at the government's introduction of harsh austerity measures intended to keep the debt-ridden country solvent.