Topic: Welfare

Greece has stopped various benefits, including pensions, to 200,000 people who lied to get their monthly checks or were in fact dead, a Greek Labor Ministry official said on Wednesday.

Plans by the chancellor to take £10 billion a year, or almost £1 in £20, out of the welfare budget are being openly resisted by the department for work and pensions in the first sign of government infighting over the coming spending round.

Euro zone finance ministers dropped plans on Tuesday for a special face-to-face meeting on Greece's new international bailout, saying political party chiefs in Athens had failed to provide the required commitment to reform.

Europe gave Greece until Wednesday to convince skeptical international creditors that it would stick to the punishing terms of a multi-billion-euro rescue package, endorsed by parliament as rioters torched downtown Athens.

Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles easily won a primary election on Sunday to become the unity candidate against President Hugo Chavez, vowing to end 13 years of socialist rule that he said has left the OPEC nation in crisis.

The United States faces a "true revolution" in the choices it will have to make to secure its fiscal future now that the welfare state has run up against a "brick wall of economic reality", former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said on Wednesday.

Workers claiming state help with childcare and housing costs will be expected to seek longer hours, or risk sanctions that could include loss of benefits or a requirement to undergo training, in a radical shift in Britain’s welfare system, the Financial Times reports.