ECB 'to end Greek bank lifeline'
- 28 June 2015
- Europe
The European Central Bank is expected to end emergency lending to Greece's banks on Sunday, the BBC understands.
The country's banks depend on the ECB's Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA). Its governing council is meeting later.
Greece will probably have to "announce a bank holiday on Monday, pending the introduction of capital controls", a source told the BBC's Robert Peston.
The bailout for heavily indebted Greece expires on Tuesday and talks have broken down.
Greek banks would find themselves in serious straits as soon as Monday if the ECB went ahead and cut the lifeline, the BBC economics editor says.
Capital controls are restrictions on how much customers can withdraw from banks. Until now, the Greek government has signalled that it does not want to impose such controls.
Pope Francis recruits Naomi Klein in climate change battle
Social activist ‘surprised but delighted’ to join top cardinal in high-level environment conference at the Vatican
She is one of the world’s most high-profile social activists and a ferocious critic of 21st-century capitalism. He is one of the pope’s most senior aides and a professor of climate change economics. But this week the secular radical will join forces with the Catholic cardinal in the latest move by Pope Francis to shift the debate on global warming.
Naomi Klein and Cardinal Peter Turkson are to lead a high-level conference on the environment, bringing together churchmen, scientists and activists to debate climate change action. Klein, who campaigns for an overhaul of the global financial system to tackle climate change, told the Observer she was surprised but delighted to receive the invitation from Turkson’s office.
“The fact that they invited me indicates they’re not backing down from the fight. A lot of people have patted the pope on the head, but said he’s wrong on the economics. I think he’s right on the economics,” she said, referring to Pope Francis’s recent publication of an encyclical on the environment.
Isis, a year of the caliphate: How powerful is the ‘Islamic State’ and what threat does it really pose to West?
We pose the big questions to eight experts in the first in a four-part series
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Hassan Hassan is the co-author of Isis: Inside the Army of Terror and associate fellow in the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House
Isis’s strength and popularity are fluid and vary from one place to another – in Syria, they are far less entrenched than they are in Iraq. The group’s defeat in Tal Abyad is a clear sign of that.
North Korea’s tale of two front pages
Why did North Korea change its newspaper from the day Kim Jong Il's promotion was announced?On April 20, 1992 Kim Jong Il was promoted to his first military rank – that of marshal of the DPRK. The next day, on April 21, Rodong Sinmun published the government decree to this effect on the first page. That however, was not the only promotion that took place. On the same day, O Chin U, Minister of the People’s Armed Forces, was promoted to marshal of the DPRK – a truly unique event, since no one else in North Korean history shared a rank with a Kim after the latter was formally anointed as a successor.
This was an unusual day, since eight other officers were given a lesser rank of vice marshal. That was a mark of the beginning of Kim Jong Il’s era, in which the value of high military rank was to be inflated: under Kim Il Sung, he himself was the only marshal, with no more than one person holding the next rank of vice-marshal simultaneously. Under Kim Jong Il, almost two dozens vice-marshals and three marshals were created.
In just four days, a military parade took place in Pyongyang – actually, the very military parade where, as I wrote before, a group of conspirators planned to kill Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. But the important thing now is that North Korean television broadcasted a documentary about the parade, where the first page of April 21 Rodong Sinmun issue was shown, and clearly legible. As soon as I saw it, I realized that it was not the page I saw before.
Argentina to seize assets of Falklands firms
Clarity awaited on how country will enforce court order seeking confiscation of money and oil exploration equipment.
| Politics, Latin America, Argentina
An Argentine judge has ordered the seizure of $156m and other assets from British and US oil companies looking for crude oil in waters off the disputed Falkland Islands.
Judge Lilian Herraez, based in the Tierra del Fuego region of southern Argentina, on Saturday ordered the firms to stop their exploration activities.
Argentina claims sovereignty over the UK-controlled islands in the South Atlantic and the two countries went to war over them in 1982.
The war lasted 74 days and left nearly 1,000 people dead.
It ended when a British expeditionary force sent by the government in London expelled the Argentine troops.
The 'Afghan Rambo' fighting the Taliban
On Monday, military security guards at the Afghan parliament building in Kabul thwarted a terrorist attack, later claimed by the Taliban. Local media reported that one of the guards, Isakhan Laghmani, stood out because of the courage he showed while fighting off assailants. Since then, Isakhan has achieved hero status, something new in a country where, up until now, soldiers have rarely been publically praised.The attack on June 22 began with a powerful explosion at the building entrance, then six assailants attempted to penetrate the interior of the building. Though there was an exchange of fire, the Taliban terrorists were stopped almost immediately by military security guards. One of the guards, Isakhan Laghmani, said he picked off six of the seven assailants one by one, a claim backed up by his comrades. An Afghan television station shared images seeming to show that certain assailants were gunned down before even having had time to remove the pins from the grenades they wanted to launch.
A soldier payed 100 dollars a month
Isakhan’s heroic story, supported by his fellow guards, has earned Isakhan the nickname "Afghan Rambo" on social media and photos of him have been shared widely.
Afghan politicians have been jostling shoulders to pose for a picture with Isakhan. Many of them have also been showering the soldier—who normally earns just 100 dollars a month—with gifts and checks. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani gifted Isakhan with an apartment, while an Afghan MP gave him a Toyota ATV.
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