Definition: In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Input: ATHENS — The government of Prime Minister George Papandreou teetered on the verge of collapse on Tuesday, threatening Greece’s adherence to the terms of a new deal with its foreign lenders and plunging Europe into a fresh bout of financial turmoil. 
  
 Several lawmakers in the governing Socialist Party rejected Mr. Papandreou’s surprise plan for a popular referendum on the Greek bailout, raising the possibility that he will not survive a no-confidence vote scheduled for Friday that depends on his holding together a razor-thin parliamentary majority. 
  
 An emergency cabinet meeting convened by Mr. Papandreou ended at nearly 3 a.m. Wednesday, with the cabinet saying that it unanimously supported the prime minister’s call for a referendum, local news outlets reported. The opposition and some members of his own party, however, were calling for new elections immediately. 
  
 The impasse in Athens seemed likely to delay — and perhaps scuttle — the debt deal that European leaders reached after marathon negotiations in Brussels last week. Financial markets cratered on Tuesday for the second straight day, wiping out the gains since the Brussels deal was announced last week. Some analysts said that Greece was now coming closer to a messy default on its debt, and perhaps a departure from the zone of 17 countries that use the euro as their common currency. 
  
 Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, apparently caught off guard by Mr. Papandreou’s call for a referendum and then by the disarray in his party, said they would hold emergency talks on Greece with euro zone leaders on Wednesday. They said they also planned to meet with representatives of the Greek government before a critical meeting of the Group of 20 advanced and emerging economies on Thursday, and they defended the terms of the bailout package as “more necessary than ever today.” 
  
 The chairman of the euro zone finance ministers, Jean-Claude Juncker, warned that the plan to hold a referendum endangered an $11 billion loan that Greece was to receive under the bailout deal, and that Greece urgently needed to avoid a default. Mr. Juncker, who is also the prime minister of Luxembourg, added that Greece could face bankruptcy if it votes “no” on the bailout. 
  
 The big fear is that a decisive turn against the bailout package in Greece could undermine European efforts to enforce deep budget cuts in other heavily indebted European countries, especially Italy, which is mired in its own political crisis and has a far larger economy and much more debt than Greece. 
  
 Political analysts and several advisers to Mr. Papandreou said the prime minister had decided to announce a popular referendum on Monday night as his last best hope to shore up his eroded political standing. They said he wanted to put Greece’s fate back in the hands of the Greek people and to force his many opponents — both inside his government and in the opposition — to coalesce around the idea that what is at stake is Greece’s membership in the euro. 
  
 He wanted Greek voters “to take a position, to see the choice before us in its starkness, hoping they will back the lesser of two evils, instead of letting irate reactions in the streets dominate the debate,” said one adviser to the prime minister. 
  
 But on Tuesday, it appeared that his move may have backfired. A lawmaker in his governing coalition left the Socialist Party to become an independent, another said she would not vote confidence in the government unless the prime minister formed a coalition government, and an additional six leading Socialists wrote a letter calling on Mr. Papandreou to resign and schedule early elections for a new government with greater political legitimacy. Together, the developments made it doubtful whether his government would survive a confidence vote, because the loss of even two supporters threatened his parliamentary majority. 
  
 Dimitris Bounias contributed reporting from Athens, and Stephen Castle from Brussels. ||||| A high-risk gamble by the Greek government may threaten Greece's financial survival and the cohesion of the euro zone. 
  
 Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou announced unexpectedly on Monday that he would hold a public vote on Europe's latest policy prescriptions for Greece, which if enacted would allow the country to avoid default and remain in the euro zone. Many European leaders and investors were aghast at the gamble, which some economists say increases the likelihood that Greece will default after all, abandoning the euro in the process. 
  
 Such an outcome would consequently put Spain and Italy in danger of default and Europe at risk of a bank run. 
  
 "If they [the Greeks] vote no, then we are back to square one," said Diego Iscaro, senior European economist at IHS Global Insight. "Greece will be without a deal and without a government." 
  
 Stock markets around the world tumbled in response to Papandreou's decision, since it called into question the finality of Europe's decision last week to give Greece more bailout money and to force banks to write down 50 percent of Greece's debt. The S&P; 500 plunged 2.79 percent, the German DAX fell 5.00 percent and the French CAC 40 plummeted 5.38 percent on Tuesday. The euro also fell 1 percent against the dollar. 
  
 Meanwhile, the borrowing costs of larger troubled countries, such as Spain and Italy, spiked as investors grew more fearful that those countries could default on part of their debt. Interest rates for Italian sovereign debt reached a record high on Tuesday, according to the Financial Times. 
  
 The Greek Parliament will hold a vote of confidence on the current government this Friday and it is unclear whether the majority Socialist party will prevail. One Socialist party member already has defected and six others asked for Papandreou to resign and schedule early elections for a new "politically legitimate" administration. 
  
 Some economists said that Greece's decision to hold a referendum has substantially raised the possibility that the government could fall and that Greece could be forced to default and abandon the euro if it stops receiving bailouts from Europe. They said that even if the Greek government survives Friday's no-confidence vote, it still could face an uphill battle in winning the referendum. More than half of Greeks have said that they oppose the austerity measures that Europe has forced on Greece, although a majority also have said that they support keeping the euro. 
  
 NYU economist Nicholas Economides said that if the government loses the referendum, it would effectively become powerless and the administration would likely have to resign. He said this would put "tremendous pressure" on Italy and Spain, since their borrowing costs would spike and they would face the same situation that Greece encountered in early 2010. 
  
 "The European Union has missed the opportunity to get rid of the Greek problem once and for all by putting some money there in making Greece an isolated case," Economides said. "Right now the EU has to face the consequences in all the other weak countries." 
  
 If a new Greek government were to come to power and ask to renegotiate the bailout agreement, then top European leaders "would cut off the plug, cut Greece adrift, and we would have a downward-lurching economy," said Jan Randolph, head of sovereign risk at IHS Global Insight. 
  
 The higher likelihood of a Greek default now also raises the possibility that sovereign debt in Spain and Italy will need to be restructured in order to prevent default there, said Jay Bryson, global economist at Wells Fargo. 
  
 "It's too late to isolate Greece," Bryson said. "The contagion has already spread." 
  
 Some experts said that the financial problems in other troubled countries will not be any easier to solve than the debt issues in Greece, where thousands have flooded the streets to protest austerity measures. Joshua Rosner, managing director at the research consulting firm Graham Fisher & Co., said that since Europe has opened the "Pandora's box" of haircuts on Greek sovereign debt, now political oppositions in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland "will be asking for their fair share," resulting in a stalemate in international negotiations driven by each country's domestic discord. 
  
 Some economists said that the center of the drama now is in Italy, where European leaders are hoping to force the Italian government to implement structural economic reforms, but Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi faces stiff opposition. Iscaro said that the Italian government perhaps can finance itself for another year with higher interest rates, until it faces the danger of becoming insolvent like Greece. 
  
 Randolph said that European leaders deliberately are allowing interest rates on Italian debt to rise in order to force the Italian government to implement structural reforms, which may not happen as long as Berlusconi, who has lost his political capital, stays in power. 
  
 "It's a high-risk game," Randolph said. "Whatever happens to the euro and the European economy will focus very intensely on Italy." |||||
Output:
After Greece’s prime minister shocked the world—and his own finance minister—by announcing a public referendum on the EU bailout, the government has entered crisis mode. As leaders hold emergency talks, six members of George Papandreou’s party have called for his resignation, and one has quit, leaving his party’s majority at two, the BBC reports. The opposition party wants an election, while a top MP from Papandreou’s party wants to form a unity “government of national salvation,” to be followed by elections. “In order to save himself, Mr Papandreou has posed a dilemma of blackmail that puts our future and our position in Europe in danger,” the opposition leader says. Papandreou will meet with Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy tomorrow on the sidelines of the G20 summit. He says the referendum is needed in order to put austerity measures in place. The New York Times warns that Friday’s planned confidence vote could lead to a government collapse, ending hopes for a bailout and ultimately prompting a default and the end of the euro in Greece. Click for more.