1 No deal for Greece (BBC) The latest round of talks
between Greek and EU officials in Brussels has failed to reach an agreement. A
European Commission spokesman said while progress was made on Sunday,
"significant gaps" remained. Europe wants Greece to make spending
cuts worth €2bn (£1.44bn), to secure a deal that will unlock bailout funds.
Greek deputy prime minister Yannis Dragasakis said
that Athens was still ready to negotiate with its lenders. He said Greek
government proposals submitted on Sunday had fully covered the fiscal deficit
as demanded. However, Mr Dragasakis added that the EU and IMF still wanted
Greece to cut pensions - something Athens has said it would never accept.
The cash-strapped nation is trying to agree a
funding deal with the European Union and IMF before the end of June to avoid a
default. Eurozone finance ministers will discuss Greece when they meet on
Thursday. The gathering is regarded as Greece's last chance to strike a deal.
Greece is seeking to avoid defaulting on a €1.5bn
debt repayment to the IMF due by the end of the month. Creditors have demanded
cuts in spending in return for another tranche of bailout funds. But Greece's
ruling left-wing Syriza party, led by Alexis Tsipras, was elected in January on
promises to ease up on the highly unpopular austerity measures, increase the
minimum monthly wage and create more jobs. However, Mr Tsipras has warned Greek
people to prepare for a "difficult compromise".
2 Delhi stinks, its politicians rotten (Khaleej
Times) Over the weekend — before the strike got called off — TV anchors
reporting from India’s capital, wore green surgical masks and earnestly
reported about the 15,000 tones of waste, and 12,000 sanitation workers on
strike to protest not being paid. The collective salary backlog of the workers
was Rs 4.93 billion. Those funds have now been ‘released’.
Who could blame the poor workers — or soldiers, as
Rahul Gandhi has called them? Why would anyone clean up putrefying semi-solid
meats and rotting vegetables and God knows what other household waste for free?
Compassion for the workers apart — with RG on his garbage tourism trip leading
the charge — let’s spare a thought for the residents and commuters.
Imagine being stuck in traffic for 45 minutes, in
summer. Puns about stinks can’t be avoided when you’re talking about 2,000 to
2,200 metric tonnes of garbage daily generated and not cleared. Worse! Imagine
not having a kerchief in hand, to plug your nostrils.
Rotted cherries on the stink-pile in all this are
the Sambit Patras of the BJP, and the cry-baby, Ashutosh of the AAP going at
each other’s throats saying you pick it up, no ‘YOU’ pick it up. That Rahul Gandhi
should emerge the saviour in the saga is the other thing that smells like
12-day-old fish.
3 A shepherd’s life proves a hit (San Francisco
Chronicle) James Rebanks sits in his stone farmhouse, describing the
hardscrabble mountain life his family has known for six centuries or more. Then
his cell phone rings. It's a big London ad agency, hoping to sign him up for a
project. Rebanks is probably the world's most famous shepherd, with a hit
Twitter account, a best-selling book and TV crews rattling up the lane to his
farm. He's gratified by the attention, if a bit bemused.
"Somebody from Hollywood rang up yesterday,
wanting to make a movie out of my book," the 40-year-old said. "Which
is completely bonkers." Readers around the world have flocked to Rebanks'
dispatches from a way of life that has — against the odds — survived
industrialization, globalization and mass tourism.
On Twitter, his descriptions of lambing and haymaking
have attracted 65,000 followers. "The Shepherd's Life," his book
recounting the rhythms of the rural year and the daily struggle to make ends
meet, is a best-seller in Britain and Canada and is being translated into
German and Swedish. The New York Times called it "captivating." He
belongs to one of the few hundred families who farm the rugged valleys and
mountains, or fells, of the Lake District in northwest England.
Rebanks' memoir describes that way of life, whose
essence has changed little over the centuries. It's also a primal story of
fathers and sons, poverty and struggle. Rebanks left school at 15 to work on
the farm, but clashed with his father and with the brutal economics of farming.
He earned a degree in history from Oxford University in his 20s, came home and
struggled to keep the family farm going. The last few decades have been hard
for small farmers. Most have second jobs; Rebanks works as an adviser on
sustainable tourism to UNESCO.
"We've been going to disappear for 200-odd
years," he said. "That's always been the story. Nearly all books
about shepherds are 'The Last Shepherd.' There's always 'last' in it because it
adds a touch of romance." Rebanks is determined not to be the last of
anything. He lives with wife Helen and three children aged between 3 and 9 in
Matterdale, one of the Lake District's many narrow valleys. The family owns 450
sheep, rising to 1,000 after lambing season.
He said the popularity reassures him that people do
care about the land, even if they're a very long way from it. "I think there's a sort of Harvard
Business School way of looking at the world which is to say, because it's
old-fashioned, because it doesn't make very much money, people should
rationally choose to go off and be IT consultants or bankers in the City of
London," he said. "I think in my early 20s I bought into that. I
thought, we're on the wrong side of history. It'll all disappear. Twenty-something
years later I'm looking at it, and we haven't gone anywhere."
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