10 things you need to know today: June 17, 2012

Greeks vote in a critical election, the Syrian opposition requests armed peackeepers, and more in our roundup of the stories that are making news and driving opinion

A Greek woman casts her vote at a polling station on June 17 in Athens. The Greek electorate goes to the polls in a re-run of the general election after no combination of political parties we
(Image credit: Milos Bicanski/Getty Images)

1. GREEKS VOTE IN ANOTHER CRITICAL ELECTION

Greeks turned out Sunday to vote in an election that is seen as a referendum on the country's membership in the euro. Elections on May 6 failed to yield a government and brought the Greek economy to a standstill. Greek political leaders say they understand "the need to form a government as quickly as possible, no matter what the election results." The last official polls in Greece, by law published two weeks ago, had the leftist party Syriza, whose leader Alexis Tsipras has called for a rejection of Greece's loan deal with its foreign creditors, in a tight race with conservative New Democracy, which calls for a renegotiation of the deal and is led by Antonis Samaras. "With unemployment at 22 percent and per capita income shrinking rapidly, the economic collapse has also exacerbated longstanding divisions between right and left." [New York Times]

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