BBC news 2015-07-03 加文本

BBC news 2015-07-03

Hello, I'm Sue Montgomery with the BBC News.

Eurozone finance ministers have decided to break off talks with Greece over a possible new bailout, until after a referendum on Sunday. The Greek Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, called the decision blackmail, and said it was very dark moment for Europe. But the European Central Bank will maintain emergency liquidity funding for Greek banks. Damian Grammaticas reports from Brussels.“Barring a major change of heart by Greece now seems highly unlikely that any deal can be done with its Euro area partners to avert the referendum on Sunday. European finance ministers said they saw no ground at this point to extend Greece's old loan programme, which expired on Tuesday, or to discuss terms for a massive bailout.”

Reports say Greece's tourism industry, one of the largest and most profitable sectors of its troubled economy, is already being affected by the economic crisis. A senior Greek travel industry official has said that hotel bookings are down by about fifty thousand a day. He said the blow was expected to have a knock-on effect on employment in the country if the trend continues.

Dozens of combatants have been killed in heavy fighting between Egyptian security forces and Islamic State militants in the Sinai Peninsula. Intense clashes continued for hours around the town of Sheikh Zuweid, with government forces deploying fighter jets and detect helicopters. Maha Lyaya has more.“It all started a bit under twelve hours ago, with the IS-affiliated members or militants firing mortars, using rocket-propelled grenades, suicide car bombs, attacking simultaneous outposts and military positions at the same time, and even anticipating where the help would come, and booby trapping or bomb trapping the roads, where the help would come, so that they wouldn't be able to supply them.”

President Obama has formally announced plans for the United States and Cuba to reopen embassies in their respective capital cities, 54 years after they closed. Mr. Obama said engagement with Cuba was the best way to advance the interests of the United States and show support for democracy and human rights. It's the latest step in a process of thawing relations, as Will Grant reports.“Keenly pressing the reset button on five decades of bad feeling and distrust takes time. Among the difficulties on the U.S. side were human rights issues, questions of the freedom of movement for diplomats and issues of security around the embassy building. For the Cubans, the lack of a normal bank arrangement delayed any possibility of reopening their embassy, as well as ongoing arguments over the U.S. economic embargo on the island and the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay.”

The Dominican Republic has said it would cooperate fully with an investigation into its migration policies. A team from the Organisation of American States is to visit the country, following the departure of thousands of people over the past two weeks. World news from the BBC.

Sir Nicholas Winton, a British humanitarian, who saved hundreds of Jewish children from the holocaust, has died at the age of one hundred and six. Born to German Jewish parents, he was in Nazi-occupied Prague in 1938, when he realised that Jews in Czechoslovakia would be sent to concentration camps. Almost single-handedly, he found homes in Britain for Jewish children and arranged their safe passage by train, an operation known as the kinder transport.

Austrian scientists say they've developed a method for determining the exact time of death of a person accurate for up to ten days. Victoria Gill reports.“At the scene of a possible murder, forensic investigators can pinpoint the time of death only if it was one or two days earlier. The somewhat grisly problem is that once a body is cooled down, there is no accurate measure. But this University of Salzburg team took samples from muscle tissue from dead pigs and found that the proteins broke down in a reliably constant and trackable way. This gave a chemical signature of the age of a body in hours for up to ten days after death.”

A Saudi Arabian billionaire, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, has pledged thirty-two billion dollars to charity over the coming years. Prince Alwaleed is a flamboyant businessman and an outspoken Africa in his home country. He said his pledge should had been inspired by Bill Gates and his charitable foundation. The money, he said, will promote disease eradication, disaster relief and women's rights.

The Brazilian Football Confederation is setting up a council of former national team coachers to try to improve the team's performances. The move follows a series of disappointing results, from last year's humiliating World Cup exit, to last week's defeat in the Cup of America. A Confederation official said they wanted a complete diagnosis of Brazil's failings and with them, devise a plan of action to ensure that the team could again challenge for honours.

BBC News.