News archive of November 2018

Alpha Bank turned profitable in July-to-September on stronger trading gains compared to the second quarter, and lower credit-loss provisions, Greece's fourth-largest lender by assets said on Thursday.

National Bank, Greece's second-largest by assets and 40 percent owned by the country's HFSF bank rescue fund, on Thursday reported a net profit from continued operations of 17 million euros in the third quarter, versus a net loss of 15 million euros in the second quarter.

President Klaus Iohannis criticized on Thursday the statement of Finance Minister Eugen Teodorovici regarding overseas Romanians' right to work, saying it is inappropriate and anti-Romanian.

Greek state bonds benefited from a more positive mood in Italy on Thursday, with the country's 10-year bond yield hitting a four-week low of 4.26 percent, down 7 basis points on the day.

[Reuters]

The mayor of the southern half of the divided Kosovo town of Mitrovica, Agim Bahtiri, has called an urgent meeting of the local assembly to amend the law on reunifying the city, following the resignation of his Serbian counterpart in the north of town.

Archbishop Ieronymos on Thursday dismissed the outcry among clerics over the tentative deal he struck with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on church-state relations as a "bubble."

"I will speak last and when I do speak last you will see that all this noise was a bubble," he said.

The European Parliament adopted a resolution criticising Serbia for not accepting that the Srebrenica massacres carried out by Bosnian Serb forces were genocide.

A primary school teacher convicted of molesting pupils was sentenced to 48 years in prison by a Thessaloniki appeals court on Friday.

As is in the first trial, the court did not acknowledge any mitigating circumstances for the acts that it said the 54-year-old committed against 10 girls in the library of a primary school in eastern Thessaloniki.

Concluding a four-day visit to Greece, the US Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Threat Prevention and Security Policy Elizabeth Neumann said her talks would provide an "important basis" for next month's US-Greece Strategic Dialogue. 

Following the arrival of a storm system dubbed Penelope in Greece earlier this week, the first heavy snowfall appeared on Thursday in northern Greece as temperatures plunged.

In many parts of the north and elsewhere in the mainland, temperatures dropped by up to 10 degrees Celsius within a few hours.