Greece's finance minister says his country's financial situation is “terribly urgent” and the crisis could come to a head in a couple of weeks. Yanis Varoufakis gave the warning after eurozone finance ministers met in Brussels to discuss the final €7.2bn tranche(援助资金) of Greece's €240bn EU/IMF bailout(紧急援助).

    Ministers said Greece had made “progress” but more work was needed.

The Greek government is struggling to meet its payment obligations（责任）.Earlier, Greece began the transfer of €750m (£544m, $834m) in debt interest to the International Monetary Fund - a day ahead of a payment deadline.

    “The liquidity（资产流动性） issue is a terribly urgent issue. It's common knowledge, let's not beat around the bush,” Mr Varoufakis told reporters in Brussels. “From the perspective of timing, we are talking about the next couple of weeks.”

    Greece has until the end of June to reach a reform deal with its international creditors. Its finances are running so low that it has had to ask public bodies for help. The crisis has raised the prospect that Greece might default（违约） on its debts and leave the euro.

    In a statement, the eurozone finance ministers said they “welcomed the progress that has been achieved so far” in the negotiations,” but added: “We acknowledged that more time and effort are needed to bridge the gaps on the remaining open issues.” Eurogroup chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem said there had to be a full deal on the bailout（紧急财务援助） before Greece received any further payments. “There are time constraints(限制；约束) and liquidity constraints and hopefully we will reach an agreement before time runs out and before money runs out.” he said.

    There had been fears that Greece would default on its IMF debt repayment due on Tuesday. However, a Greek finance ministry official was quoted as saying that the order for repayment had been executed（实施） on Monday. Almost €1bn has been handed over to the IMF in interest payments since the start of May.

    It is unclear how the government came up with the funds, but the mayor of Greece's second city Thessaloniki revealed last week that he had handed over cash reserves in response to an appeal for money.

    Different people use different languages. We Chinese speak Chinese, and, most of us are learning a foreign language. But there is another kind of language we need to know — the language of the body.

    All over the world, people “talk with their hand, with their heads and with their eyes.” When Japanese people meet, they bow. When Indians meet, they put their hands together. What do American and British do? Americans are more informal (不拘小节的) than the British. They like to be friendly. They use first names, they ask questions and they talk easily about themselves. When they sit down, they like to relax in their chairs and make themselves comfortable. British people are more reserved (保守的). They take more time to make friends. They like to know you before they ask your name.

    When British or American people meet someone for the first time, they shake hands. They do not usually shake hands with people they know well. Women sometimes kiss their women friends, and men kiss women friends (on one cheek only). When a man meets a man, he just smiles, and says, “Hello.” Men do not kiss each other, or hold hands. Even fathers and sons do not often kiss each other.

    Awarding wining film Ballad From Tibet(《天籁梦想》) by Chinese director Zhang Wei is scheduled to premiere in New York City on Saturday, March 10.

    The film, which tells the story of four visually impaired kids from China's Tibet autonomous region embarking on a journey for their dreams, will be presented at the Bronx Library Center on Saturday, at Mid-Manhattan Library on Sunday, at Lehman College and Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan on Tuesday, and at the Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday.

    Based on a true story, Ballad from Tibet is about the four 1ibetan kids—Thupten, Sonam, Kelsang and Droma—achieving their dreams against all odds.

    Thupten is a 10-year-old boy partially sighted in one eye and blind in the other. His doctor says that there is a chance he could completely lose his sight, but there is an operation that could offer a 50 percent chance of saving his vision.

    His teacher firmly suggests that he should have the operation right away, but Thupten is afraid and wants to see the world before his life is plunged into total darkness.

    Along with his three friends who also suffer from blindness, Thupten embarks on an exciting adventure. Together they decide to go to Shenzhen in South China's Guangdong province, a city more than 37,000 km away from Tibetan regional capital Lhasa.

    The reason for the children's decision to go to Shenzhen is their love of music. They are all talented and want to sing their hearts out in front of national audience by participating in a Shenzhen-based reality show.

    The foursome's trip is indeed fun, but also turns out to be dangerous as well. Luckily, help is on hand along the way in the form of a wandering family, a shepherd, a motorcycle club, and a TV producer's assistant.

    Ballad From Tibet has won the award for Best Children's Feature at the 13th China International Children's Film Festival in November 2017, and earned nominations at 17 different international children's film festivals in Germany, Canada, Japan, Greece, Australia and India.

    To fight for the conservation of forest ecosystem, several ecologists including Daniel Janzen convinced Del Oro, an orange juice producer, to donate part of their forestland to a national park. In return, Del Oro was allowed to throw large amounts of waste in the form of orange peels (皮) on a 3-hectare piece of land within the national park at no cost. Dealing with tons of leftover peels usually involved burning them or paying to have them poured into a landfill, so the proposal was very attractive.

    But a year later, another juice company challenged the deal in court, arguing that their competitor was “polluting a national park”. They ended up winning, and the deal between Del Oro and the national park fell through.

    Then in 2013, while discussing possible research avenues with Timothy Treuer, Daniel Janzen mentioned the orange story. Feeling interested, Treuer decided to stop by that piece of land that had been covered with fruit waste 15 years earlier. What he found shocked him.

    “While I would walk over exposed rock and dead grass in the nearby fields, I'd have to climb through undergrowth and cut paths through walls of vines (藤) in the orange peel site itself.” said Timothy Treuer.

    Treuer and his team spent months picking up samples (样品), analyzing and comparing them. They found great differences between the areas covered with orange peels and those that were not. The area with orange waste had richer soil.

    The effect that the orange peels had on the land is probably not that surprising to people familiar with composting (施肥), but what is really shocking is that a judge actually thought the waste of orange “mined” a national park and stopped it from going forward. Now that Timothy Treuer's study has received worldwide attention, this type of “ruining” is being seriously considered as a way of bringing forests back to life.

    Shellharbour City Library provides a range of Library Special Needs Services for people who are unable to access our library service in the usual way. As long as you live in Shellharbour City, we'll provide a full range of library services and resources including:

    ● Large printed and ordinary printed books

    ● Talking books on tape and CD

    ● DVDs and music CDs

    ● Magazines

    ● Reference and information requests

You will be asked to complete a "Statement of Need" application form which must be signed by a medical professional.

    Home delivery service

    Let us know what you like to read and we will choose the resources for you. Our staff will deliver the resources to your home for free. We also provide a service where we can choose the resources for you or someone instead of you chooses the things from the library. You can also choose the resources you need personally.

    Talking books and captioned videos

    The library can provide talking books for people who are unable to use printed books because of eye diseases. You don't have to miss out on reading any more when you can borrow talking books from the library. If you have limited hearing which prevents you from enjoying movies, we can provide captioned videos for you at no charge.

    Languages besides English

    We can provide books in a range of languages besides English. If possible, we will request these items from the State Library of NSW, Australia.

    How to join?

    Contact the Library Special Needs Coordinator to register or discuss if you are eligible (合适的) for any of the services we provide­Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday 9am­5pm on 4297 2522 for more information.

    Americans wear black for mourning (哀悼) while Chinese wear white. Westerners think of dragons as monsters. Chinese honor them as symbols of God. Chinese civilization has often shown such polarities (对立)with the West, as though each stands at extreme ends of a global string. Now in the University of California, Berkeley, a psychologist, has discovered deeper polarities between Chinese and American cultures—polarities that go to the heart of how we reason and discover truth.

    His findings go far toward explaining why American cultures seem to be aggressive and Chinese cultures so passive, when compared to each other. More importantly, the research opens the way for the peoples of the East and the West to learn from each other in basic ways. The Chinese could learn much from Western methods for determining scientific truth, said Kaiping Peng, a former Beijing Scholar, who is now a UC Berkley assistant professor of psychology. And Americans could profit enormously from the Chinese tolerance for accepting contradictions in social and personal life, he said.

    "Americans have a terrible need to find out who is right in an argument," said Peng. "The problem is that at the interpersonal level you really don't need to find the truth, or maybe there isn't any." Chinese people, said Peng, are far more content to think that both sides have advantages and disadvantages, because they have a whole awareness that life is full of contradictions. They do far less blaming of the individual than do Americans, he added.

    In studies of interpersonal (人际的) argument, for example, when subjects were asked to deal with contradictory information resulting from conflict between a mother and a daughter or a student and a school, Peng found that Americans were "non-compromising (折中), blaming one side—usually the mother—for the causes of the problems, demanding changes from one side to attain a solution and offering no compromise" in dealing with the conflict. Compared to this angry, blaming American method, the Chinese were paragons (模范) of compromise, finding fault on both sides and looking for solutions that moved both sides to the middle.