Athens

GREEK pensioner Dimitra says she never imagined a life reduced to food handouts: some rice, two bags of pasta, a packet of chickpeas, some dates and a tin of milk for the month.

At 73, Dimitra - who herself once helped the hard-up as a Red Cross food server - is among a growing number of Greeks barely getting by. After seven years of bailouts that poured billions of euros into their country, poverty isn't getting any better; it's getting worse like nowhere else in the EU.