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2010

Contents

Events

January

February

March

April

  • April 8: Athanassios Lerounis, a Greek national kidnapped by the Taliban eight months ago in Pakistan is released. He was abducted while based in the northern district of Chitral, where he worked as the curator of a heritage museum for several years.
  • April 11: The eurozone maps out a plan to lend Greece 30 billion euros in 2010, at a rate of five percent.
  • April 22: The EU sharply increases Athens' 2009 public deficit estimate to 13.6 percent. Moody's cuts Greece's sovereign debt rating a notch from A2 to A3, sparking market panic.
  • April 23: Greece asks its European Union peers and the International Monetary Fund for 10 billion euros ($159 billion) of urgent aid (a bailout loan) at low rates, promising new austerity measures.
  • April 24: Panathinaikos defeat Aris Thessaloniki 1-0 in the final of the Greek Football Cup to complete their domestic double.
  • April 27: Standard & Poor's downgrades Greece's sovereign debt to junk status and cuts Portugal and Spain's credit ratings. European stock exchanges tumble.

May

  • May 1: Violent protests against proposed austerity measures take place throughout Greece.
  • May 2: Athens announces a drastic austerity programme. Eurozone members and the IMF agree to a €110bn (£95bn; $146.2bn) three-year bail-out package to rescue Greece's embattled economy.
  • May 3: The European Central Bank suspends benchmark criteria for lending to Greek banks.
  • May 5: Greece is paralysed by a general strike as workers protest the austerity measures proposed by PM Papandreou to combat the national debt. During the protests, three people die in a firebomb attack on an Athens bank.
  • May 6: Greek parliament approves latest austerity bill.
  • May 7: Eurozone leaders meet at a summit to stem the Greek crisis and stop the crisis from spreading.
  • May 7: Olympiakos defeat Partizan Belgrade 83-80 to advance to the final of the Euroleague.
  • May 9: Olympiakos fail to win the Euroleague as they lose 86-68, in the final, to Barcelona.
  • May 9: The IMF unanimously approves its part of the rescue loans, with 5.5 billion euros being provided immediately.
  • May 10: The Athens Stock Market index rises by 9.13% to 1,779.30.
  • May 14: Turkish PM, Tayyip Erdogan, arrives in Athens, on an official state visit, accompanied by ten cabinet ministers.
  • May 17: Deputy Minister for Tourism, Angela Gerekou, resigns over a press revelation that her husband, singer Tolis Voskopoulos, owes more than €5 million in back taxes and fines.
  • May 18: Greece receives a 14.5 billion euro ($18.7 billion) loan from the EU and can now repay its immediate debt.
  • May 25: Newly-elected Turkish-Cypriot leader, Dervis Eroglu, meets for the first time with President Dimitris Christofias as the Cyprus talks continue where they left off before the Turkish-Cypriot elections.

June

July

  • July 6: An era comes to an end as Olympiakos president, Socrates Kokkalis sells his interests in the club to shipowner Vangelis Marinakis.
  • July 7: Greek parliament passes pension reform, a key requirement of the EU/IMF deal, cutting benefits, curbing widespread early retirement and raising women's retirement age from 60 to match men at 65.
  • July 8: Yet another general strike takes place throughout Greece.
  • July 15: Olympiakos FC defeat KS Besa of Albania 5-0 in the 2nd qualifying round of the Europa League, recording their greatest ever away win in Europe.
  • July 19: Reporter Socrates Giolas is murdered outside his home in Ilioupolis by unknown assailants. Police said ballistics tests tied the killers' guns to previous attacks by the leftist militants Sect of Revolutionaries.
  • July 21: Giorgos Papandreou pays an official state visit to Israel - the first by a Greek PM since 1993 when the two countries established full diplomatic relations.

August

  • August 1: Temperatures in Cyprus hit an all-time August record of 46C in the shade.
  • August 5: Olympiakos lose 1-0 to underdogs Maccabi Tel-Aviv and are eliminated from European competition.
  • August 5: EU and IMF inspectors give Greece the green light for a fresh 9 billion euro tranche from the bailout.
  • August 6: Olympiakos sack coach Ewald Lienen.
  • August 7: AEK coach, Dusan Bajevic, is attacked and beaten by his team's supporters after a friendly match against Kallithea FC.
  • August 11: Greece play their first match under Fernando Santos: a 1-0 away win against Serbia.
  • August 13: Ethnic Greek, Artistotelis Goumas, is killed in Chimara, Northern Epirus, by a gang of Albanians. Earlier in the day, they had argued with Goumas over his speaking Greek.
  • August 15: His All-holiness Patriarch Bartholomew I officiates at a liturgy at the monastery of Panagia Soumela. The is the first liturgy at the historic monastery since 1923.
  • August 16: PM Benjamin Netanyahu visits Greece - the first ever official state visit by an Israeli PM to Greece.
  • August 24: Greek archaeologists, led by Thanasis Papadopoulos, claim they have found the palace of Odysseus during excavations on the Ithaca island in the Ionian Sea.
  • August 26: Two Hellenic Airforce F-16 jets collide over Crete during a military exercise. One pilot is killed, two are seriously injured.
  • August 26: The three clubs representing Greece - AEK, PAOK and Aris - all draw in their Europa League playoff games and advance to the group stage. The two clubs representing Cyprus - APOEL and Omonia - also draw but are eliminated.

September

October

  • October 4: Greece submits a 2011 draft budget to parliament pledging to cut the 2011 budget deficit faster than agreed in the IMF/EU bailout deal.
  • October 6: Russian PM Dmitriy Medvedev arrives in Cyprus on an official state visit.
  • October 8: Giorgos Karagounis earns his 100th cap as Greece defeat Latvia 1-0 in a Euro 2012 qualifier.
  • October 8: Yiannis Okkas becomes the first Cypriot to earn 100 caps as Cyprus lose 2-1 to Norway in a Euro 2012 qualifier.
  • October 11: Policeman, Epaminondas Korkoneas, is found guilty, by a court in Amfissa, of intentionally shooting 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos on December 6, 2008. He is sentenced to life imprisonment. A second policeman, Vasilis Saraliotis, is convicted of complicity and receives a 10-year sentence.
  • October 11: Cypriot Christopher Pissarides wins a share of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Economics.
  • October 14: Cypriot President, Dimitris Christofias, and Turkish-Cypriot leader, Dervis Eroglu, attend a ceremony opening the Limnitis crossing point in NW Cyprus.
  • October 20: Reversing one of the most infamous court decisions in Greek history, the Supreme Court posthumously acquits six top politicians and soldiers executed nearly 90 years ago for a crushing military defeat that indelibly marked modern Greece. The six - who included three ex-prime ministers (Petros Protopapadakis, Nikolaos Stratos and Dimitrios Gounaris) and a former general-in-chief - were convicted of high treason in 1922, amid a wave of popular discontent after Greece lost the 1919-1922 war against Turkey. The Supreme Court judges accepted evidence for the defense that was not available at the 1922 court martial, and reversed the guilty verdict.
  • October 26: The European Court on Human Rights awards 19 Cypriots the sum of €15,001,498 as compensation for denial, by Turkey, of use and enjoyment of their property in the occupied north.

November

  • November 2: The company that publishes Athens daily Apogevmatini files for bankruptcy.
  • November 3: Greece suspends international airmail for 48 hours after more than 10 suspicious packages are sent to targets within Greece and across Europe.
  • November 7: The first round of local elections are held throughout Greece. They are marked by indifference as a record-breaking 40% of the electorate stay away from the polls.
  • November 8: A Greek bus, on the Tirana-Ioannina line, crashes in Albania. The accident results in nine deaths.
  • November 14: The second round of local elections is held throughout Greece. Giorgos Kaminis is elected mayor of Athens, Yiannis Boutaris prevails in Thessaloniki while Vasilis Michaloliakos is elected in Piraeus. 54% of the electorate stay away from the polls setting a negative record for the post-1974 era.
  • November 15: Panathinaikos sack coach Nikos Nioplias after a string of disappointing League results.
  • November 20: Former Porto and Malaga coach Jesualdo Ferreira signs a one-and-a-half year contract with Panathinaikos.
  • November 26: To Vima newspaper says it is ending its printed daily edition due to declining readership, as the country's debt crisis takes a growing toll on the media sector. An editorial said online visitors had far outnumbered newsstand buyers — selling 8,000 print issues Thursday, while receiving 82,000 online visitors.

December

  • December 1: Aris Thessaloniki defeat Atletico Madrid 3-2 and become the first Greek club to win a European competition match on Spanish soil. AEK also win away 3-1 v. Hajduk Split.
  • December 6: Three injured, 40 detained in Athens in clashes between Greek youth and police in a series of rallies to mark the second anniversary of the fatal police shooting of teenager Alexandros Grigoropoulos.
  • December 14: The eighth edition of the Match Against Poverty is held in Greece. Zidane and Ronaldo's All-Stars draw 2-2 against Olympiakos with the proceeds going to combat poverty in Haiti and Pakistan.
  • December 15: Anti-austerity protests in Athens turn bloody as MP Kostis Hadjidakis is attacked and beaten by protesters as he leaves the Parliament building.
  • December 30: A bomb explodes in front of the Greek embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, causing material damage but no injuries, police say.
  • December 30: A powerful explosion wrecks several cars and damages a courthouse and nearby buildings in central Athens, but no one was hurt according to police.

Deaths

January

February

March

April

June

July

August

September

October

November

December