Greek Pensions Reform Sparks Protests in Test for Tsipras

With farmers blocking highways, about 40,000 workers joined the protests in Athens on Thursday as unions held the first one-day general strike of 2016 against Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras's pension proposals. Greek police used stun grenades and teargas to disperse a group of protesters throwing Molotov cocktails in Syntagma square, in front of the parliament. Self-employed doctors, taxi drivers and civil engineers have thrown their lot in with the protesters, while traffic is set to be disrupted with metro, buses, ferries and flights within Greece affected. The Athens Stock Exchange Index fell 4 percent to 512.88 at 2.19 p.m., reaching the lowest since June 2012. The pension reform, needed to fulfill demands of the country's institutional creditors, is becoming a thorny issue for the 41-year-old premier elected by the Greeks just over a year ago for his anti-austerity promises. Hanging onto a thin parliamentary majority and facing a revived opposition party that has leaped ahead in opinion polls by electing a new leader last month, the reform poses the biggest test to Tsipras's political survival since last year's bailout negotiations threw Greece's euro-area membership in doubt.