Urban decay

A powerful explosion damaged a court complex in central Athens early Friday, hours after Parliament voted to crackdown on anti-bailout protesters who gather regularly at the building.

Police said the blast occurred before dawn, following warning telephone calls to the offices of a daily newspaper and news website.

An amendment introduced on Wednesday to a Justice Ministry draft bill says that anyone trying to prevent foreclosure auctions with violence or the threat of violence will be instantly prosecuted.

The new law is aimed at cracking down on the vociferous and sometimes violent protests witnessed across the country against the sale of properties seized by banks from debtors.

A raging California wildfire powered by fierce winds grew into the third-largest in state history on Dec. 16 as forced evacuations turned neighborhoods into ghost towns and ash fell in some areas like heavy snow.

A new generation emerges every 30 years, according to the accepted calculations, so by that math, not even one generation has passed between the end of the Cold War and the dashing of hopes for a safer and more stable world.

Greece's middle class is dwindling and about 700,000 people are now closer to the poverty line, a new survey has found.

According to data provided by the Dianeosis nonprofit think tank, the percentage of people at risk of poverty or social exclusion has risen from 28.3 in 2007 to 35.6 in 2016.

Government officials will go into talks with the institutions on Saturday hoping they will culminate in a staff-level agreement (SLA). Some common ground was achieved on Friday but the Greek side had to make several concessions.

Banks are preparing to offer mortgage loans especially for the acquisition of houses through auctions, in a bid to support property transactions that look set to increase in the coming months due to the start of online foreclosures.

Law enforcement authorities in Athens were in communication on Monday with their counterparts in Berlin after the arrest on Sunday of two German nationals during a raid on an anarchist squat in the downtown district of Exarchia.

The first online foreclosures, set to start on November 29, will concern the assets of individuals or enterprises with debts of 500,000 euros or more (in some cases over 2 million euros).

Mexico on Nov. 16 undertook to focus more resources on the search for missing people, the number of which has grown dramatically in recent years as gang violence has claimed tens of thousands of lives.