Greece faces intense pressure from creditors to back a deal or contemplate leaving the euro
BRUSSELS — Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and skeptical European leaders negotiated past a self-imposed deadline into the early hours of Monday, with talks stuck on how Greece would guarantee austerity measures in exchange for a rescue package to prevent its banks from collapsing.
If the talks don’t succeed, some of Greece’s eurozone partners warned, the country could be temporarily forced out of the euro, the European single currency that Greece has been a part of since 2002. No country has ever left the joint currency, which launched in 1999, and there is no mechanism in place for one to do so.
It wasn’t entirely clear what a temporary exit would entail, but the threat put intense pressure on Tsipras to swallow politically unpalatable austerity measures, as his people overwhelmingly want to stay in the eurozone.
The leaders are discussing Greece’s request for a three-year, $59.5 billion financial package. But other leaders in Brussels say Greece needs even more than that, and are demanding tough austerity measures in exchange. It would be Greece’s third bailout in five years.
Several officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the negotiations while they were ongoing, said the terms of the austerity package and the timing of its implementation remained serious obstacles.
Negotiators plan to announce Iran nuke deal today
VIENNA — Negotiators at the Iran nuclear talks plan to announce today that they’ve reached a historic deal capping nearly a decade of diplomacy that would curb the country’s atomic program in return for sanctions relief, two diplomats told The Associated Press on Sunday.
The envoys said a provisional agreement may be reached even earlier — by late Sunday. But they cautioned that final details of the pact were still being worked out. Once it is complete, a formal, final agreement would be open to review by officials in the capitals of Iran and the six world powers at the talks, they said.
Senior U.S. and Iranian officials suggested, however, there might not be enough time to reach a deal by the end of Sunday and that the drafting of documents could bleed into Monday.
All of the officials, who are at the talks in Vienna, demanded anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the negotiations publicly.
“We are working hard, but a deal tonight is simply logistically impossible,” the Iranian official said, noting that the agreement will run roughly 100 pages.
Speaking up for disenfranchised, Pope Francis reaches out to all
ASUNCION, Paraguay — Pope Francis reinforced his place as spokesman for the world’s disenfranchised Sunday by visiting a flood-prone slum to encourage its landless and insisting the Catholic Church be a place of welcome for all — sick and sinners especially.
Francis ended his South American pilgrimage with a huge Mass and words of hope and faith for young and old. But the political, anti-capitalist message he left behind may have a more lasting punch.
On the final day, Francis sought to offer a message of hope to the residents of the Banado Norte shantytown and to an estimated 1 million people gathered for his farewell Mass on the same swampy field where St. John Paul II proclaimed Paraguay’s first saint nearly 30 years ago.
“How much pain can be soothed, how much despair can be allayed in a place where we feel at home!” Francis said.
Then he outlined his vision of the church: “Welcoming those who do not think as we do, who do not have faith or who have lost it. Welcoming the persecuted, the unemployed. Welcoming the different cultures, of which our Earth is so richly blessed. Welcoming sinners.”
NASA spacecraft to fly by Pluto Tuesday
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Pluto, reveal thyself, and Earthlings, enjoy the show.
On Tuesday, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will sweep past Pluto and present the previously unexplored world in all its icy glory.
It promises to be the biggest planetary unveiling in a quarter-century. The curtain hasn’t been pulled back like this since NASA’s Voyager 2 shed light on Neptune in 1989.
Now it’s little Pluto’s turn to shine way out on the frigid fringes of our solar system.
New Horizons has traveled 3 billion miles over 9½ years to get to this historic point. The fastest spacecraft ever launched, it carries the most powerful suite of science instruments ever sent on a scouting and reconnaissance mission of a new, unfamiliar world.
By wire sources