Clashes in Greece as thousands protest austerity

May 17, 2017

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — An anti-austerity rally in Greece's capital turned violent Wednesday as a general strike halted flights, ferries and public transportation, and thousands joined protest marches across the country.

A small group of protesters threw gasoline bombs and fired flares at riot police after the marches ended in Athens. Police responded with tear gas. The clashes broke out after peaceful marches involving around 12,000 people.

Nearby, protesting police officers blocked the entrance to a Finance Ministry building. The protests occurred as lawmakers were set to approve another batch of reforms that will impose years more hardship on austerity-weary Greeks.

The new belt-tightening measures that will be imposed beyond the end of Greece's third bailout next year, including pension cuts and tax hikes. The left-led coalition government agreed to the cuts as part of a deal with the country's international creditors to release funds from its bailout.

Thousands of protesters were marching through central Athens toward parliament in a series of demonstrations as part of the strike. "No to the new looting of salaries and pensions," civil servants union ADEDY said.

Police unionists hung a giant banner off the side of Lycabettus Hill in the center of Athens, with a slogan in German and Greek reading "how much is the life of a Greek policeman worth?" Public hospitals were functioning with emergency staff only, while public transport was disrupted, leaving many main roads gridlocked in the capital. Intercity trains were not running, and there was no subway service between Athens airport and the city. Courts were shut while lawyers and notaries public backed away from official duties, and customs and local government offices were closed.

Air traffic controllers were holding a four-hour work stoppage in the middle of the day, leading to the rescheduling or cancellation of more than 150 flights. Ferries were also tied up in port until late Friday after seamen began a four-day strike Tuesday.

Unless bailout funds are unlocked, Greece would once more struggle to meet a spike in debt repayments due this summer and face another brush with bankruptcy. In parliament, lawmakers were debating the measures that include additional pension cuts in 2019 and higher income tax from 2020, ahead of a Thursday midnight vote.

On the streets of Athens, opinions on the strike diverged. "It doesn't make a difference whether you strike or not. All the measures will pass anyway," said Apostolos Seitanidis as he walked in the city center.

But another Athenian, Panagiotis Adamopoulos, disagreed. "Every strike is a holy thing," he said. "If we dismiss it, surely we'll end up getting 300-euro ($330) salaries and 200-euro pensions." Unions and the opposition have compared the new measures to those of a fourth bailout, but without the corresponding funding from international creditors. The government, which originally came to power in 2015 promising to repeal previous austerity measures, has vehemently rejected the accusation, emphasizing that it will also take other measures to relieve poverty.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras spoke Tuesday morning with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country has been the single largest contributor to the Greek bailouts, and discussed the issue of Greece's debt, his office said Wednesday.

While the country's finances have improved under the bailouts, the belt-tightening has led to spiraling poverty. Unemployment, while down from highs of above 27 percent, hovers at around 23 percent.

Greek lawmakers debate extending austerity to decade mark

May 15, 2017

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Lawmakers in Greece started a four-day debate Monday on whether to approve a new package of spending cuts that will extend the number of years Greeks have lived under austerity to more than a decade.

Amid confirmation that the country's battered economy is in recession again, unions have launched a wave of protests ahead of a general strike on Wednesday. The latest round of austerity measures, which form part of an agreement between the Greek government and international bailout lenders, will involve additional pension cuts in 2019 and higher income tax in 2020. Without the new measures, Greece would face the prospect of not getting the rescue money it needs to avoid potential bankruptcy this summer when it faces a big debt-repayment spike.

Greece is currently in the midst of its third bailout program — the current three-year program expires in the summer of 2018 and could be worth up to 86 billion euros ($95 billion) in total. In return for the money, the government promised to enact a series of austerity measures as well as economic reforms — its progress is continually monitored by institutions from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

While the austerity measures has seen Greece's public finances improve, the draconian spending cuts have seen poverty rates surge to more than 35 percent, high in relation to the EU average under 24 percent.

Delays in negotiations between Prime Minister Alexis' Tsipras left-wing government and lenders have held up hopes of a return to growth. Official figures Monday from the National Statistical Authority showed the Greek economy shrinking for the second straight quarter during the first three months of the year — two consecutive quarterly declines is the traditional measure of recession. Greece's GDP shrank by 0.1 percent on a quarterly basis in the first quarter, taking the annual rate of decline to 0.5 percent.

Ahead of Wednesday's general strike, public bus services n Greece's second largest city, Thessaloniki, were halted over delayed worker payments. Ferry services was also due to come to a standstill on Tuesday and Wednesday, while unions have called a general strike on Wednesday.

"We have carried out dozens of general strikes during the bailout period ... clearly unions alone cannot solve the country's major economic and social problems. But this is to protest and expose what is happening," Yiannis Panagopoulos, leader of Greece's largest union, the GSEE, told private Skai television.

"The government is now implementing the measures that it once protested against ... they have surrendered to everything." The debate on the new austerity measures began in parliament Monday and is due to end with a vote late Thursday.

Costas Kantouris in Thessaloniki contributed.

Greek train derails, crashes into house; 3 dead, 10 injured

May 14, 2017

THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) — An Intercity train derailed and crashed into a house in northern Greece, leaving three people dead and 10 injured, Greek police said Sunday. The train, traveling on the Athens-Thessaloniki route with 70 passengers, derailed at 9:45 p.m. (1945 GMT) Saturday in the village of Adendro, 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of the northern city of Thessaloniki. Its engine rammed into a three-story house, exiting on the other side.

There was no immediate reason given for the derailment. An investigation has begun. Police said the train's 44-year-old driver and a 50-year-old passenger died at the scene, and a 55-year-old passenger died Sunday morning. All three were men. Two other passengers are in serious condition.

The police announcement raised the number of injured, which train operator Trainose earlier had put at seven. "I was sitting on my porch. I saw a flash and immediately heard a terrible explosion," neighbor Giorgos Mylonas, 78, told The Associated Press.

Merkel hosts Indian leader Modi, looks to broaden world ties

May 30, 2017

BERLIN (AP) — The leaders of Germany and India heaped mutual praise upon each other Tuesday — each referring to the other as a "reliable partner" in a notable contrast to Chancellor Angela Merkel's recent public doubts about Germany's ties with the United States.

Merkel suggested that Europe's relationship with the U.S. had shifted significantly following last week's NATO and G-7 meetings with President Donald Trump that produced disappointing results, saying Saturday that "the times in which we can fully count on others are somewhat over, as I have experienced in the past few days."

Asked Tuesday whether her meetings with senior officials from India and China this week signaled a pivot away from Germany's old ally in Washington, Merkel sought to dampen speculation of a major rift.

"The trans-Atlantic partnership is of outstanding importance and what I said was merely meant to note that in view of the current situation there are more reasons ... for us in Europe to take our fate into our own hands," Merkel told reporters in Berlin.

Speaking after a meeting with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, she went out of her way to laud the South Asian country as a "reliable partner" on major projects and noted that India was working hard to implement the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.

"India wants the world not just to be interconnected but also that it should be sensibly run," Merkel said, backing European Union talks for a trade agreement with India. Climate and trade were the two main issue of contention between the United States and other members at the G-7 summit of major economies in Sicily last week, and the topics look set to flare up again soon.

Trump criticized Germany's trade surplus with the United States on Tuesday, tying the issue to Berlin's military spending. "We have a MASSIVE trade deficit with Germany, plus they pay FAR LESS than they should on NATO & military. Very bad for U.S. This will change," he tweeted.

"Donald Trump is making clear with his tweet that he considers Germany a political opponent," said Thomas Oppermann, the parliamentary caucus leader of the Social Democrats, the junior partners in Merkel's coalition government. "This is a new situation — we lived for decades in the certainty that we could rely on each other as partners in an alliance, and this certainty no longer exists today."

Trump has also said he plans to make a decision this week on whether to withdraw the United States from the Paris accord — widely considered a key achievement of the Obama administration and a necessary measure if the world wants to avoid a sharp rise in global temperatures.

For his part, Modi declared that "the world needs a strong leadership, which is demonstrated by Chancellor Merkel." "Germany is a large, reliable and trustworthy partner for us," he added. Merkel is scheduled to meet with China's Prime Minister Li Keqiang on Wednesday.

Geir Moulson contributed to this report.

Reliving Communist past helps East German dementia patients

May 30, 2017

BERLIN (AP) — Every weekday morning, white-haired women patiently line up before a door at a Dresden retirement home, step in, and quickly step back nearly six decades into their past in Communist East Germany.

Most of the women — in their late 70s at the youngest — are suffering from severe dementia, but the reminders from bygone days trigger memories and skills once thought lost, and produce surprising levels of happiness and comfort.

They park their walkers next to a Kaufhalle sign from the former East German grocery chain, put on their colorfully-patterned nylon aprons and start the day just like they did some 50 years ago. They chop up bell peppers, tomatoes and sausages for the popular Hungarian salad of their youth, wash dishes in an original 1960s metal sink and iron their laundry with old-fashioned pressing irons while happily humming along to schmaltzy East German tunes coming from a record player.

It's hard to imagine that many were — not so long ago — bedridden and unable to eat or use the bathroom on their own, said Gunter Wolfram, the director of the Alexa home in the former East German city of Dresden.

"From the first day on, this room has been a big success story," Wolfram said. "The people are very happy to recognize things from the old times. They immediately feel comfortable." The 49-year-old, who grew up in East Germany himself, said it was sheer coincidence that he found out that Communist kitsch and other memorabilia brought comfort to some of his 130 residents. The revelation came two years ago when he decided to decorate the home's movie theater with a vintage flashy Troll scooter that was once very popular in East Germany.

"Instead of paying attention to the movie, these people got so excited about the motorcycle. They could all of a sudden remember how to start the ignition, and chatted with bright eyes about outings to the Baltic Sea on their own Trolls a long time ago — it was amazing," Wolfram said.

Inspired by this, he set out to create an entire room in 1960s East German style. He scoured the region's flea markets and soon had an impressive collection of well-known Ossi — slang for anything and anybody from East Germany, products.

He gathered Spee and Fewa laundry detergents, yellowed magazines and the plastic pepper-and-salt shakers that almost every family in East Germany owned. He also found a wooden wall unit that only the well-to-do could afford at the time. Together with his colleagues, he set up the 1960s room — and the home's residents were so eager to spend time in a place that felt like home they started coming in droves.

Because of the room's success, the waiting list for future residents is full and directors from other retirement homes have called Wolfram, asking for advice. Soon the demand for the daily trip back into the past had become so popular that Wolfram added a second room, this one designed in East German 1970s style — including psychedelic-patterned curtains, tasseled floor lamps and a bright-orange rotary dial phone.

In West Germany, capitalism ruled and U.S.-style consumerism flourished only a few years after the end of World War II, but materialism was frowned upon in the Communist East and consumer goods were scarce. Since only a few brands were sold in the country's Kaufhalle supermarkets, they have very high recognition value among former East Germans.

Some of the items also feature prominently in the 2003 Golden Globe-nominated German movie "Good-bye Lenin!" in which the son of a woman, who had slipped into a coma before the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, desperately tries to re-create the old East Germany after she finally wakes up in a reunited Germany. The boy stacks the home with the famous Spreewald pickles and other products from the DDR — as the German Democratic Republic was called in German — trying to obliterate all signs of capitalism.

Herlind Megges, a gerontologist from Berlin's Charite university hospital who has not been involved in the Alexa home project, said such memory therapy can help improve the capabilities and well-being of dementia patients.

"Memory therapy is often used because it activates exactly what's still there and still working well," Megges said. "It's important for these people, who don't feel well in this world because it doesn't match their current memory, that there's an environment where they feel comfortable."

Objects from earlier phases of a patient's life that are connected to comfortable feelings can lead to physical and cognitive improvement, Megges said. Often patients can still retrieve memories from their childhood and early adulthood even when their short-term memory fails.

Millions of elderly around the world suffer from Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia in which they lose their ability to respond to their environment. While there's no cure yet, research institutions worldwide are trying to find better ways to treat the disease, delay its onset and improve the quality of life for dementia patients.

"We're treating the symptoms, we currently cannot treat the causes of the disease," Megges said. For Gerda Noack, a 92-year-old retired hat maker born and raised in Dresden, the yesteryear room has been a blessing.

The elegant Noack, who always wears a carefully knotted silk scarf around her neck, used to roam the hallways of the retirement home all day, says Wolfram. She was restless and frustrated, always looking for something she thought she had lost — until she started visiting the 1960s DDR room.

While standing in the room's kitchen last week, she peacefully stirred the chopped-up peppers in an old frying pan, then later cleaned up dishes with an expression of contentment. Asked if she was happy, she nodded cheerfully, waiting for the nurses to dish up the Hungarian salad she had helped to prepare.

"These old, routine activities in the company of other women in a familiar environment really make our residents much more at ease with themselves," said Wolfram. "It's almost become like a job for them, where they spend the entire week here with a whole new sense of purpose."

Germany to host Ukraine talks in Berlin as fighting persists

May 29, 2017

BERLIN (AP) — Germany's Foreign Ministry says envoys from Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France will meet this week in Berlin to try and push forward the implementation of a peace deal for eastern Ukraine.

Ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer told reporters Monday that, due to the "difficult and deteriorating" situation in eastern Ukraine, Germany has scheduled a meeting Tuesday with those countries and a representative from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The Ukrainian government has been fighting Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine since 2014, after Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula. The fighting has cost some 10,000 lives. The diplomats are trying to bridge differences between Russia and Ukraine over implementing the 2015 Minsk deal for eastern Ukraine, which was brokered by Germany and France.

Germany considering Jordan, Cyprus for anti-IS base

May 17, 2017

BERLIN (AP) — Germany's defense minister says her office has drafted a list of eight locations where it could move aircraft supporting the anti-IS mission if Turkey continues to block German lawmakers from visiting troops at the Incirlik base.

Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday a team is already in Jordan to assess a site there for its Tornado reconnaissance jets and a refueling plane, and Cyprus is also being considered. Nonetheless, she stressed talks with Turkey were still ongoing.

Germany has granted asylum to some soldiers Turkey believes were involved in a failed coup attempt last summer. That has prompted Turkey to block a request for German lawmakers to visit some 270 troops serving with the coalition against the Islamic State group at the Incirlik air base.