Street performance

Following a decision by Transport Minister Christos Spirtzis, the homeless will be able to sleep at three central Athens metro stations - Omonia, Monastiraki and Metaxourgeio - which will stay open around the clock for the third week in a row due to freezing overnight temperatures.

If necessary, the measure will be enforced again, the minister said.

The City of Athens has launched disciplinary action against a municipal worker who shut down a homeless shelter in the city center in the middle of a snowstorm on Monday night because his shift was over.

Outside the headquarters of Greece's governing political party is a moving snapshot of what a seven-year financial crisis can do to a country: A central Athens square where refugees rest, police chase petty criminals, and the homeless wait for meals handed out by charities.

Seventy-one percent of the Greek capital's homeless population has ended up on the streets in the last five years and 21.7 percent in the last year alone, a study by the City of Athens's Homeless Shelter (KYADA), funded by the Norwegian government and other European countries, has found.

The project City Nomads will be aiming at improving living conditions for the homeless in Bulgaria, and the main focus will be put on people collecting and separating garbage across the streets.

A Russian couple allegedly carried out a string of murders targeting homeless people in Moscow to "clean up" the city, investigators said on Feb. 20.
      
Moscow's Investigative Committee said it had  detained a 20-year-old man on suspicion of seven murders and a 25-year-old woman  believed to have taken part in four of the killings.
      

New York is known for its millionaires and its luxurious skyscrapers with the obscene rents. Yet this same US mega-metropolis has broken yet another record. 60,000 homeless people live in its streets.

The number of homeless has increased by 11% compared to January 2014 when it was 53,615 people.

Two homeless men had to be rushed to hospital after a fire broke out in an abandoned building they were sleeping in in the central Athenian suburb of Votanikos.

One of the men had suffered burns and the other was having breathing problems when emergency medical crews arrived at the scene.