Greece is broke
(CNN) — The aid package being negotiated to bail out Greece is worth 120 billion euros (about $160 billion) through 2012, according to Vassilis Papadimitriou, a spokesman for Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou.
But the International Monetary Fund and European Union are demanding further austerity measures as a price for the bailout, according to a top Greek labor union official.
Greece will be required to cut civil servants’ salaries, freeze their pay increases, reduce their pension payments, change tax rates and increase the value-added tax consumers pay on purchases, according to Ilias Iliopoulos, the general secretary of the public sector union ADEDY.
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A subway motorman had a fatal heart attack operating a G train yesterday morning, just days after a track worker was electrocuted on the job.
Domenick Occhiogrosso had just pulled the train out of the Court Square station in Long Island City, Queens, when he was stricken shortly after 8 a.m., transit officials said.
The train’s emergency brakes were activated when Occhiogrosso stopped applying pressure to the throttle, a safety mechanism grimly known as the “dead man’s switch.”
The train’s conductor discovered Occhiogrosso, 50, of Brooklyn, unconscious when the train stopped. Efforts to revive the father of a teenage daughter failed, and the veteran transit worker was pronounced dead at Elmhurst Hospital Center, authorities said.
“He was an unsung hero,” said motorman Richie Borish, a former union official, recalling how Occhiogrosso evacuated passengers from his train through a dark tunnel during the 2007 flood that crippled the system. “He was a good guy.”
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