ATHENS:

Greece on Thursday morning repaid 3.4 billion euros ($3.8 billion) to the European Central Bank after having received its first tranche of bailout money from the European Stability Mechanism, media reports said. The repayment has been considered a key step in the Greek debt crisis, in which a failed money transfer was seen as forcing the ECB to shut off emergency lending to Greek banks. But after the ESM approved Greece's €86-billion bailout program late on Wednesday, the rescue fund disbursed €13b to help Athens repay bonds.