Photo: Ahmad Halabisaz/ZUMA
IMF URGES MORE GREEK DEBT RELIEF
The Eurozone must “go well beyond what has been under consideration to date” to relieve Greek debt, and it could even eventually forgive a part of it, IMF officials wrote in a report obtained by Reuters.
- The IMF report was submitted to Eurozone authorities late Monday, hours after a new bailout agreement averting a “Grexit” was signed between Greece and the 18 other Eurozone members.
- The Greek parliament will vote on the new bailout plan today. As The Guardian reports, parliament members will be asked to back an overhaul of the VAT system and an increase in the retirement age. Such measures had been rejected in the July 6 referendum.
- The vote is seen as a test of leadership for Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.
- At least 35 members of the prime minister’s Syriza party said last night that they would vote against the measures, arguing that the bailout agreement would only worsen poverty and unemployment.
U.S. President Barack Obama has hailed the Iran nuclear deal reached yesterday between the Islamic Republic and the “P5+1” (the U.S., Russia, China, the UK, France and Germany). “History shows that America must lead not just with our might but with our principles,” he said in a televised address. “Today’s announcement marks one more chapter in our pursuit of a safer, more helpful and more hopeful world.” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani also described the talks as promising, Reuters reports. “This is a reciprocal deal,” he said. “If they stick to it, we will. The Iranian nation has always observed its promises and treaties.”
WORLDCRUNCH-TO-GO
Belarus will hold presidential elections in October, and President Alexander Lukashenko will face Tatiana Karatkevich, the first-ever female candidate. That is, of course, unless the all-powerful ruler changes his mind, writes Kommersant‘s Nikolai Anishenko. “Since Belarus gained independence in 1991, only one woman had ever flirted with presidential aspirations, and even then she didn’t make it past the signature-gathering stage,” Anishenko reports. “Karatkevich instead is determined to go farther. ‘First and foremost, what we want to achieve is for the state to respect the opinions of the people,’ the candidate says. ‘To ensure that the authorities do not divide us into good and bad, into enemies, into the capable and the incapable.'”
Read the full article, A First Female Presidential Candidate In Europe’s Last Dictatorship.
MY GRAND-PÈRE’S WORLD
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AUSCHWITZ GUARD SENTENCED TO 4 YEARS
Former “Auschwitz bookkeeper” Oskar Gröning, 94, was sentenced by a German court today to four years in prison for being an accessory to the murder of at least 300,000 Jews at the Nazi concentration camp during World War II, Die Welt reports. Gröning, who has previously admitted “moral guilt,” was responsible for counting the belongings confiscated from prisoners. He is expected to be the last Nazi to face trial.
VERBATIM
“With this mission, we have visited every single planet in the solar system,” NASA administrator Charles Bolden said Tuesday, as the space agency received confirmation from its New Horizons spacecraft that it survived its historic encounter with Pluto. The probe passed only 12,400 kilometers (7,700 miles) away from the dwarf planet, after a 9-year and 5 billion-kilometer journey, NASA reports. The confirmation message took four hours 25 minutes to traverse 4.7 billion kilometers of space.
YEMEN REBELS LOSE GROUND
Loyalists of exiled Yemen President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi recaptured the airport and some districts of Aden, a critical port city in southern Yemen, from Houthi rebels who had held it since March. The president fled the country for Saudi Arabia March 25 after the Houthis, Shia rebels hailing from the country’s north, advanced on Aden after capturing the capital of Sana’a. Saudi Arabia and a coalition of mainly Arab states began a heavy campaign of airstrikes the same day, and three months of war have sparked a humanitarian crisis in the country.
ON THIS DAY
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Today is Arianna Huffington’s birthday. Get more July 15 trivia in today’s 57-second shot of history.