North Dakota

MPs voted on Wednesday to expand the scope of an investigation into Dimitris Papangelopoulos, a minister in the former leftist SYRIZA administration, over his alleged meddling in a judicial investigation into bribery claims linked to Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis.

Ruling New Democracy (ND) leads by a wide margin over main opposition SYRIZA in a poll conducted by MRB.
Asked who they would vote if elections were held now, 40 percent of respondents said ND, while 20.3 percent said they would back SYRIZA.

While acknowledging his deficit in the Democratic race, Bernie Sanders said on March 11 he's pressing ahead with his presidential campaign at least long enough to debate Joe Biden this weekend and try to force him to answer questions about economic inequality and the country's fraying social safety net.

Joe Biden decisively won Michigan's Democratic presidential primary, seizing a key battleground state that helped propel Bernie Sanders' insurgent candidacy four years ago. The former vice president's victory there, as well as in Missouri, Mississippi and Idaho, dealt a serious blow to Sanders and substantially widened Biden's path to the nomination.

Two former presidential rivals endorsed Joe Biden on March 6 in the latest sign that the Democratic establishment is coalescing around the former vice president to stop the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, who ratcheted up attacks on his rival ahead of crucial contests next week.

The second of two protected witnesses who had alleged that politicians had taken kickbacks from pharmaceutical giant Novartis did not keep a scheduled appointment with the parliamentary committee probing the handling of the Novartis scandal.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis is out to transform New Democracy from a center-right party with clear references to the traditional parliamentary Right, into a centrist, liberal political party. The idea is to turn ND into a party with loose ideological principles which will nevertheless be capable of securing majorities in Parliament by making the requisite adjustments.

The meetings scheduled by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis for Friday with the leaders of the country's opposition parties on actions taken by his government on key national issues as well as the outcome of his visit this week to the United States, where he met with President Donald Trump, are essential.

Ruling New Democracy (ND) leads by a wide margin over main opposition SYRIZA in the first poll conducted by MRB after the national elections earlier this year.
Asked who they would vote if elections were held now, 36.4 percent of respondents said ND, versus 21.9 percent for SYRIZA.

Opposition leader Alexis Tsipras on Monday defended the economic record of his leftist administration, while accusing the conservative government of indulging in populism.