The European Central Bank capped the amount of emergency funding it is providing to the Greek banking sector at €88.6 billion on Wednesday, in a sign that the central bank is awaiting the outcome of this weekend’s crunch talks on Greece before deciding whether to extend a further financial lifeline to the indebted country.
Mainland Chinese shares continued to head lower on Thursday, leading the rest of Asia down as concerns over the market's steep slide spread. The benchmark Shanghai Composite was down 3.6% to 3,380.31 points despite aggressive measures by regulators such as banning big investors from selling stocks to boost the flagging market.
Trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Wednesday restarted after being suspended for more than three hours due to a technical fault. The NYSE has yet to give full details of the problem, but emphasized that it was not the result of a cyber hack. Other exchanges, including Nasdaq, reported no problems and were trading normally.
Parliament in London is hosting a week-long historic photographic exhibition dedicated to the Welsh settlement in Argentina, entitled: “Y Wladfa: Celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Welsh settlement in Argentina” which was officially inaugurated on Tuesday by Argentine Ambassador to the UK, Alicia Castro, and David T.C Davies MP, chairman of the House of Commons Welsh Affairs Committee.
Pope Francis called for dialogue in front of nearly one million people at an outdoor mass in Ecuador's capital, before launching an appeal for better care of the Amazon. The pope addressed over 900,000 faithful who braved the cold and rain to hear his homily in Bicentennial Park, Quito -- a city recently rocked by anti-government protests.
Carnival Corporation, the world's biggest travel and leisure firm, plans to launch cruises to Cuba in May, following the historic thaw between the Castro brothers nation and the United States. US Treasury Department and Commerce Department granted the company approval for the plans, Carnival announced Tuesday, though it has yet to receive Cuban authorization.
Euro zone members announced on Tuesday that they have given Greece until the end of the week to come up with a proposal for sweeping reforms in return for loans that will keep the country from crashing out of Europe's currency bloc and into economic ruin.
President Barack Obama on Tuesday analyzed the Greek situation in separate telephone calls to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the White House said. Obama began his day with a phone conversation with Merkel, followed by another call to Tsipras.
The World Bank’s Vice-President for Latin America and the Caribbean, Jorge Familiar, praised the region’s implementation of economic reforms, claiming that they had led to poverty reduction in the last few years, but he also warned that its pace was decreasing.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said in an interview published Tuesday in the daily Folha de Sao Paulo that there's no reason she should be ousted, so she has no fear being removed. Rousseff went further and accused certain sectors of the opposition of being a bunch of coup mongers.