US Urges Greece to Work Out Details

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has urged Greece to go through "every line" in its budget to draft a reform plan to satisfy its international creditors.

Lew, speaking in Washington Friday, said he believes that is the level of detail required. "This isn't resolved by speeches; it isn't resolved by rhetoric. It's resolved by the hard technical work,'' he added.

He said after meeting with finance ministers, including Greece's Yanis Varoufakis, that there is an urgent need to come together around a comprehensive approach.

Lew stressed that failure to reach an agreement would "lead to immediate hardship in Greece and increased uncertainties for Europe and the global economy."

Varoufakis had told an audience at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington Thursday that Greece will "compromise, compromise, compromise without being compromised" in order to stay in the eurozone.

G20 meeting

Finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 leading economies wrapped up two days of meetings in Washington Friday. The gathering took place on the sidelines of the World Bank - International Monetary Fund Spring meetings, held from April 17 through the 19th.

The G20 issued a joint communique pledging increased efforts to boost confidence while welcoming modest improvements in the global economy. Although worries about Greece were expressed on the sidelines of the meeting, Greece was not mentioned in the communique.

Last week, Greece made a debt repayment of $495 million to the International Monetary Fund, easing days of uncertainty and bringing relief to investors.

It was a crucial payment that will help Greece move closer to securing a final international bailout package and stay in the eurozone.

Finance ministers of eurozone countries agreed earlier this year to extend Greece's bailout on the condition that the country would present a sound plan of economic reforms.

Athens submitted a number of measures this month to combat tax evasion and fraud. Unemployment in Greece is double that of the rest of the Eurozone countries.

Since 2010, Greece has received two loan packages from the European Union and the IMF, a total of more than $270 billion, in exchange for austerity measures and sweeping economic reforms.

Билет №26

Provide the Kazakh/Russian translation of the newspaper article.

India Builds First 'Smart' City as Urban Population Swells

India's push to accommodate a booming urban population and attract investment rests in large part with dozens of “smart” cities like the one being built on the dusty banks of the Sabarmati River in western India.

So far, it boasts modern underground infrastructure, two office blocks and not much else.

The plan, however, is for a meticulously planned metropolis complete with gleaming towers, drinking water on tap, automated waste collection and a dedicated power supply — luxuries to many Indians.

With an urban population set to rise by more than 400 million people to 814 million by 2050, India faces the kind of mass urbanization seen before only in China, and many of its biggest cities are already bursting at the seams.

Ahead of his election last May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised 100 so-called smart cities by 2022 to help meet the rush.

At a cost of about $1 trillion, according to estimates from consultants KPMG, the plan is also crucial to Modi's ambition of attracting investment while providing jobs for the million or more Indians who join the workforce every month.

His grand scheme, still a nebulous concept involving quality communications and infrastructure, is beginning to take shape outside Gandhinagar, capital of the state of Gujarat, with the first “smart” city the government hopes will provide a model for India's urban future.

“Most [Indian] cities have not been planned in an integrated way,” said Jagan Shah, director of the National Institute of Urban Affairs, which is helping the government set guidelines for the new developments.

Among the challenges to getting new cities built or existing cities transformed are finding experts who can make such huge projects work and attracting private finance.

“To get the private sector in, there is a lot of risk mitigation that needs to happen because nobody wants a risky proposition,” he told Reuters, stressing the need for detailed planning.

To build smart cities, India allocated 60 billion rupees ($962 million) in its annual federal budget for the fiscal year starting April 1, even as it spent just a small fraction of last year's allocation of 70.6 billion rupees, said Shah.

Билет №27

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US Envoy Hails India's Decision to Taper Use of Greenhouse Gas

India's surprise decision to agree to phase down the use of a potent greenhouse gas after years of opposition is a "significant step'' toward global action to address climate change, the U.S. State Department's climate change envoy said Friday.

India on Thursday proposed an amendment to the United Nations' Montreal Protocol, which calls on countries to phase out their use of HFCs — gases used in refrigerators, air conditioners and insulating foams that are a highly potent form of greenhouse gas emissions.

India's amendment calls for a 15-year transition period for developing countries to phase down their use of HFCs in appliances.

For years, India has opposed a phase-out of HFCs under the protocol, which focuses on curbing the use of ozone-depleting substances. It has argued HFCs should be handled instead under the Kyoto Protocol, which places the responsibility only on developed countries to make greenhouse gas cuts.

Negotiations on a climate agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol have been more challenging, as countries disagree over how to share the burden of emissions cuts. Over 190 countries will meet in Paris later this year to try to secure a deal after more than two decades of talks.

President Barack Obama and State Department climate change negotiators had long pressed India to agree to phase out HFCs under the Montreal Protocol, of which every country in the world is a member.

Obama discussed phasing down HFCs with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a bilateral meeting in India in January.

The United States had already secured cooperation in 2013 from China to phase out HFCs under the Montreal Protocol after years of opposition.

Air-conditioner and refrigerator use has been projected to grow by up to 20 percent per year in India, according to the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency, an independent group. That puts India on track to surpass HFC consumption in the United States.

India's decision to phase down HFC use "signals that they share our concern about the growth of HFCs and their impact on the climate system" and "are in agreement that the Montreal Protocol is the right forum in which to address this issue,'' Todd Stern, U.S. special envoy for climate change, told Reuters in an e-mailed statement.

Билет №28

Provide the Kazakh/Russian translation of the newspaper article.