World briefs

GREECE’s international creditors were increasingly aghast yesterday at Athens’ failure to compromise over a bailout deal that’s needed imminently to avoid the country going bankrupt. A day after technical talks broke down with an apparent lack of progress, French President Francois Hollande urged Greece to swiftly resume negotiations with international creditors.

UK  Queen Elizabeth II led commemorations yesterday to mark the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta — but the human rights the document helped enshrine are at the center of a modern political feud. British Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative government wants to replace the Human Rights Act — whose supreme arbiter is a European court — with a British Bill of Rights, a move opponents fear could weaken key protections.

UK Amnesty International urged world leaders yesterday to radically overhaul refugee policies and create a comprehensive global strategy to deal with the crisis, describing it as the worst emergency of its kind since World War II.

GERMANY The Philae spacecraft has been in touch with Earth from a comet for the second time since waking up, though it delivered less data than on its first contact. Sylvain Lodiot, spacecraft operations manager for Philae’s mother ship Rosetta, said Monday that Philae sent back five packets of data on Sunday night — a day after it broke seven months of silence.

FRANCE  A fire ravaged a 19th-century basilica in western France yesterday, starting at the close of morning Mass and leaving just a charred shell of the rooftop. Everyone inside was quickly evacuated without injury, the Rev. Benoit Bertrand of the Nantes diocese told BFM television. Hours later, with 90 firefighters and aircraft on the scene, the blaze was brought under control, according to the Nantes fire department.

YEMEN  U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon presses for a halt to fighting in Yemen at the beginning of Ramadan, which starts later this week, as the world body launched talks aimed at brokering peace.

GEORGIA  Rescue workers in the Georgian capital were still searching yesterday for more than 20 people and an undetermined number of potentially dangerous animals missing after severe flooding ravaged the area around the zoo and left at least 12 people dead.

SWEDEN Prosecutors say their planned interrogation of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange over alleged sex crimes could take place in London within weeks. Lead prosecutor Marianne Ny said yesterday she has submitted paperwork to British and Ecuadorian authorities asking for permission to question Assange at the Ecuadorean Embassy in June or July.

USA The intense manhunt for two escaped murderers in upstate New York hit its 10th day as a woman charged with helping the killers flee from prison headed back to court yesterday. Prosecutors say Joyce Mitchell, a prison tailoring shop instructor who had befriended the inmates, had agreed to be the getaway driver but backed out because she still loved her husband and felt guilty for participating.