(AP) Athens — Greek Police said some 17,000 people were gathering for two separate protests leading to Syntagma Square, outside Parliament. They chanted slogans against the painful cutbacks, which include reducing the minimum wage by 22 percent and cutting one in five government jobs in a country which is in its fifth year of recession.
The Greek coalition government had hoped some of the heat had been taken out of the crisis after leaders agreed Thursday to a raft of austerity measures they hoped would pave the way for the euro130 billion ($173 billion) bailout package. But finance ministers from the other 16 eurozone states put up a roadblock later in the day by insisting that Greece had to save an extra 325 million euros.