Greek finance minister resigns after decisive referendum against bailout ADVERTISING Greek finance minister resigns after decisive referendum against bailout ATHENS, Greece — Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis resigned Monday, saying he was told shortly after Greece’s decisive referendum result that
Greek finance minister resigns after decisive referendum against bailout
ATHENS, Greece — Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis resigned Monday, saying he was told shortly after Greece’s decisive referendum result that some other eurozone finance ministers and the country’s other creditors would appreciate his not attending the ministers’ meetings.
Varoufakis said Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had judged that his resignation “might help achieve a deal” and that he was leaving the finance ministry for that reason.
“I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride,” Varoufakis said in his announcement.
Greeks voted overwhelmingly to reject creditors’ proposal of more austerity measures in return for rescue loans, in the country’s first referendum in 41 years Sunday.
The referendum “will stay in history as a unique moment when a small European nation rose up against debt-bondage,” Varoufakis said.
Details may be tripping points as South Carolina lawmakers return for Confederate
flag debate
COLUMBIA, S.C. — While it appears there is broad support in the South Carolina Legislature to bring down the Confederate flag, the depth of that support will get its first test this week as lawmakers return to Columbia to come up with a specific plan.
The General Assembly returns Monday to discuss Gov. Nikki Haley’s budget vetoes and what to do with the rebel flag that has flown over some part of the Statehouse for more than 50 years.
Several bills have been filed, but details like when to bring down the flag that currently flies on a pole by a monument to Confederate soldiers in front of the state Capitol, whether to put another flag in its place and what kind of ceremony should mark the removal aren’t specified.
And if South Carolina takes any lesson from the 2000 debate that brought the Confederate flag off the Statehouse dome and to its current location, it is that minor details can trip things up.
Haley, business leaders, the Legislative Black Caucus and civil rights leaders are against flying any flag that flew over the Confederacy on the pole.
South Korean violinist pushes for emotional border concert with rival North Korea
SEOUL, South Korea — Violinist Won Hyung Joon wants to bring North and South Korean musicians together next month to perform on each side of the world’s most heavily armed border. Standing in the way is the rivals’ long, frustrating inability to move past their painful shared history.
Won says North Korean diplomats in Berlin have tentatively signed off on a plan for a renowned German conductor to lead a 70-member South Korean orchestra through Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and the Korean folk tune “Arirang” while accompanied by a choir of 70 North Koreans just across the border on Aug. 15, the 70th anniversary of the 1945 liberation of a single Korea from Japan’s 35-year colonial rule.
Wary South Korean officials, however, want a more formal endorsement from Pyongyang before they give their agreement to a concert at the border village of Panmunjom, where an armistice ended the three-year Korean War in 1953. Won and his German partners are pushing for that formal go-ahead from Pyongyang.
Dozens of Korean musicians joining their instruments and voices in harmony across the border, Won says, could dramatically illustrate the continuing tragedy of the Korean Peninsula, which, after liberation from Japan, was divided into a pro-U.S South and Soviet-backed North and remains in a technical state of war because a peace treaty formally ending the eventual Korean War has never been settled.
“We won’t be able to talk to each other or hug each other. We’ll just stand face to face and commune through music,” Won said. “We want to do something meaningful at a meaningful place on a meaningful day.”
As trading pits give way to computers, a culture will vanish
NEW YORK — Pete Meegan had every intention of going back to college, but then he got a summer job in the Chicago trading pits and fell in love with the “roar” of the floor, the excitement of “4,000 people yelling, ‘Buy! Buy! Buy!’” and decided no more classroom for him.
That roar will soon go silent. On Monday, most futures pits in Chicago and New York, where frenzied buying and selling once helped set prices on cattle and corn, palladium and gold, and dozens of other commodities, are expected to close for good. Traders yelled and shoved and flashed hand signals, just as they did in the movie “Trading Places.” But now the computer — faster, cheaper and not nearly as noisy — has taken over.
It will be a sad day for Meegan, still in the pits 34 years after dropping out of college, donning a trading jacket and mustering the courage to tell his dad.
“I thought he was gonna kill me, but he was like, ‘I don’t care if you pick up garbage or you’re a dog groomer. If you are happy doing what you are doing, you’re ahead of 99 percent of the people in the world,’” recalls Meegan, now 54.
The few dozen jobs that will be lost when the pits shut down is just part of it, veterans say. What’s also disappearing is a rich culture of brazen bets, flashy trading jackets and kids just out of high school getting a shot at making it big. The pits were a ruthless place, but they were also a proving ground where education and connections counted for nothing next to drive and, occasionally, muscle.
More than 1 million expected at pope’s first public Mass in Ecuador
QUITO, Ecuador — Pope Francis travels to the Ecuadorean port of Guayaquil on Monday for a Mass expected to draw more than a million people, as Latin America’s first pontiff tours his home continent with a message of compassion for the weak and respect for an ailing planet.
Francis is taking it relatively easy on his first full day in Ecuador, making the quick flight to Guayaquil for the Mass at the Shrine of the Divine Mercy and then a lunch with a group of fellow Jesuits.
The highlight of the encounter will likely be his reunion with the Rev. Francisco Cortes, a Jesuit affectionately known as “Padre Paquito,” to whom the Argentina-born pope, then the Rev. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, entrusted his seminarians on study trips to Ecuador years ago.
In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Cortes couldn’t fathom that Bergoglio remembered him, much less made a point of coming to have lunch.
“I don’t know what to ask him,” the soon-to-be 91-year-old Cortes said. “He said he wanted to see me and I’m amazed that he’s coming. For the first time, I have known a pope.”
