Greece submits reform proposals to eurozone creditors – with a warning

Greece submitted a long-awaited list of structural reforms to its creditors on Friday as its leftist-led government warned it would stop meeting debt obligations if negotiations failed and aid was not forthcoming.

As officials from the EU, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) prepared to pore over Athens’s latest proposals, the country’s international economic affairs minister, Euclid Tsakalotos, raised the stakes, saying while Greece wanted an agreement it was prepared to go its own way “in the event of a bad scenario”.

China Ramps Up Rhetoric on Climate Change

LONDON—Zheng Guogang, head of the China Meteorological Administration, says future variations in climate are likely to reduce crop yields and damage the environment.

In one of the strongest official statements to date on the challenges faced, Zheng told China’s official Xinhua news agency that climate change could have a “huge impact” on the country, with a growing risk of climate-related disasters.

“To face the challenges from past and future climate change, we must respect nature and live in harmony with it,” Zheng said. “We must promote the idea of nature, and emphasise climate security.”

New Federal Data Show Student Loan Borrowers Suffering More Than Previously Believed

About one-third of borrowers with federal student loans owned by the U.S. Department of Education are late on their payments, according to new federal data.

The figures, released by the Education Department on Thursday, are the first comprehensive look at the delinquency plaguing those who hold federal student loans. By the new metric, which the department has never used before, roughly 33 percent of borrowers were more than five days late on one of their federal student loans as of Dec. 31. (Since the department only released individual figures for its four largest contractors, rather than a total percentage, however, the actual figure may be a few percentage points higher or lower.)

Cardinal Raymond Burke: Gays, Remarried Catholics Are Just As Sinful As Murderers

(RNS) When Pope Francis last year effectively demoted U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke by moving him out of a senior post in the Vatican to a largely ceremonial role as head of a Rome-based Catholic charity, it was viewed as a way to sideline one of the pontiff’s most outspoken critics on the right.

But the move seems to have left Burke free to air his conservative — and pointed — views on efforts to change church practices, not that he was ever terribly hesitant about speaking his mind.

Harper's Anti-Niqab Rhetoric Helps Terrorist Recruiters: Philosopher Taylor

OTTAWA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper was accused Saturday of playing into the hands of terrorist recruiters with inflammatory comments about the face-covering veil worn by some Muslim women.

The accusation came from renowned philosopher Charles Taylor, who co-chaired Quebec's 2007 commission on reasonable accommodation of cultural and religious minorities.

Elizabeth Warren Fires Back After Wall Street Threats

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has a blunt message for the big Wall Street banks that may withhold campaign donations to Senate Democrats in hopes of quieting her calls to break up the banks.

"It will not work," Warren said in a statement emailed to The Huffington Post.

Warren has been a vocal advocate for reining in big banks that she says wield too much power in Washington after their recklessness triggered the 2008 financial meltdown.

Ellen Pao Loses Gender Discrimination Suit Against Kleiner Perkins

SAN FRANCISCO, March 27 (Reuters) - Silicon Valley powerhouse venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers was cleared on Friday of claims it short-circuited the career of a former partner because she is a woman, in a gender discrimination trial that shook the tech world.

A California jury also rejected a claim that Kleiner, the firm that backed Google Inc and Amazon.com Inc , had retaliated against its former partner, Ellen Pao, by firing her after she sued in 2012.

Young Jews to ‘Pharaoh’ Netanyahu: ‘Let the Palestinian People Go’

Increasingly, younger Jews are opposing Israeli’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “open racism and obstinate refusal to help create a Palestinian state,” Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun magazine, writes.

U.N. Report: Palestinian Death Toll in 2014 Highest Since 1967

A new U.N. report reveals that Israel was responsible for the deaths of more Palestinians in 2014 than in the previous half-century. The annual report by U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) states that more than 2,300 Palestinians were killed and more than 17,000 were injured last year in occupied Palestinian territory.

How To Kill A Discriminatory ‘Religious Liberty’ Bill: Call The Bluff

Georgia lawmakers have been quickly advancing their own version of a “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” (RFRA), a bill similar to the pro-discrimination legislation that just became law in Indiana. SB 129 has already passed the Georgia Senate — having advanced through votes while Democrats were in the bathroom — but it came to a screeching halt in a House committee on Thursday.