Photo: Panayiotis Tzamaros/ZUMA
GREECE TALKS RESTART IN BRUSSELS
Eurozone leaders and Finance Ministers are meeting today in Brussels to reopen negotiations on the fate of cash-strapped Greece, two days after a resounding “No” to austerity from Greek voters. Angela Merkel declared that “time is running out” and gave Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras hours to present new proposals at today’s emergency summit. Wide divisions remain about potential debt relief. Greek banks will remain closed at least today and tomorrow, after Monday’s decision from the European Central Bank not to lift its freeze on emergency liquidity assistance, despite mounting concern that Greek banks are about to run out of cash. Read more from The Daily Telegraph‘s live blog.
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While European leaders publicly say they want to avoid a Grexit, newspaper E Kathimerini quotes sources in Brussels as saying that “16 of the other 18 countries in the Eurozone are in favor of letting Greece leave the Eurozone.” One of the two countries opposed to it could be France. In an interview with RTL, Prime Minister Manuel Valls insisted that “France will do everything to keep Greece in the Eurozone.”
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The Guardian meanwhile reports that both the U.S. and Japan are closely monitoring the situation in Europe and are pushing for a swift resolution to the years-long crisis.
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“Stop all this chatter about me looking at my telephone all the time. I am texting, as they say in Franglais, with the Greek prime minister,” an irritated Jean-Claude Juncker told European MPs who were heckling him.
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Here’s a Worldcrunch Take 5 on the Greek crisis to help understand what might happen next.
AL-SHABAB MILITANTS STRIKE IN KENYA
An attack carried out by Al-Shabab Islamist militants in a northeastern Kenyan village near the Somali border has left at least 14 people dead, most of them quarry workers, and 10 wounded, Daily Nation reports. The terrorist group, which is based in Somalia but has carried out extensive attacks on Kenyan soil over the past two years, told the BBC they were behind last night’s attack.
VERBATIM
“I won’t fall,” Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff told Folha de S. Paulo, as her opponents smell blood and up calls for her to resign, amid the ongoing corruption probe at state oil giant Petrobras, which she once led. “They don’t intimidate me,” she added, explaining about her possible impeachment that “if there’s one thing that doesn’t scare me it’s this.”
U.S. ANTI-ISIS CAMPAIGN “INTENSIFYING”…
Washington is “intensifying” its efforts against terrorist group ISIS in Syria and Iraq, U.S. President Barack Obama told reporters after a visit to the Pentagon. “This will not be quick — this is a long-term campaign,” he warned, before insisting that the group “can be defeated.” “It will take time to root them out, and doing so must be the job of local forces on the ground, with training and air support from our coalition,” The New York Times quotes Obama as saying. The first step in this anti-ISIS strategy is to help Iraqi troops retake the town of Ramadi, which fell into ISIS hands seven weeks ago.
… SO TOO ARE SAUDI-LED STRIKES IN YEMEN
The Saudi-led coalition of Sunni Muslim states have stepped up their airstrikes in Yemen with more than 100 dead over the past three days alone, The New York Times reports. At least 80 people were killed in two strikes yesterday, one of them on a market near the southern port city of Aden. According to UN figures, at least 3,000 people have died in the three-month long conflict with the Houthi rebels.
7,401
More than four years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster forced them out, 7,401 Japanese people will soon be allowed to return to their homes in Naraha, in the biggest homecoming so far.
CHINA SEEKS STRATEGIC BOMBER
China might be about to develop “a next-generation strategic bomber” capable of carrying heavy weaponry and of striking opponents far away in case of an emergency or conflict, the government-run China Daily reports, quoting defense experts. This comes as a tense situation with the U.S. is showing little signs of improving. President Barack Obama has shifted attention recently to improving relations with Vietnam, which the US hopes can be a strategic partnership against China, according to The Washington Post.
WORLDCRUNCH-TO-GO
Euthanasia is now legal in Colombia, but putting it into practice is a delicate process, for both families and doctors, reports Bogota daily El Espectador. “Take the case of 79-year-old José Ovidio González. Days ago, after five years of cancer that required a range of painful treatments that have destroyed parts of his face, he wrote down on paper that he no longer wanted to live and that his family supported his decision to be put to death.” Read the full article: Euthanasia In Colombia, Legal But Still Denied
HUNGARY’S ANTI-MIGRANT BORDER FENCE
Hungarian lawmakers have overwhelmingly backed a controversial plan to build a four-meter high fence along its 175-kilometer-long border with Serbia in a bid to keep out migrants and asylum seekers from Africa and the Middle East, Euronews reports. The MPs also voted new, tougher regulations for migrants, a move the Interior Minister Sandor Pinter justified saying that “Hungary is confronted with the biggest surge of migrants in its history, its capacities are overloaded by 130%.” Meanwhile, in the poorer parts of Germany, anti-migrant anger and protests are growing.
ON THIS DAY
Twenty years apart, two notable events happened in London on July 7. See On This Day, our 57-second shot of history
WORLD’S OLDEST MAN DIES
The world’s oldest man, Sakari Momoi, has died at the ripe old age of 112 in Japan’s Saitama City, north of Tokyo.
HOW TO DEFEAT ISIS? ASK MR BOMBASTIC
Troops, ammunition and airstrikes will never stop ISIS, but music and Jamaican weed might, according to Shaggy. “If they’re listening to Shaggy music or reggae music, they’re not going to want to cut somebody’s head off,” the singer told The Miami New Times.