Vox Sentences: Greek leader Alexis Tsipras offers lenders a deal he’s urging voters to reject

You're hot, then you're cold, you're yes, then you're no

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsirpas delivers a televised address to the nation. (Greek Prime Minister's Office via Getty Images)

• Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras sent a letter to the country's Troika of lenders — the European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund — agreeing to almost all their policy demands.

  [NYT / Alexis Tsipras]

• Tsipras agreed to pension reform and an overhaul of the country's value-added tax (VAT), but requested slower phase-in of the pension reforms and an exemption to VAT changes for Greek islands.

  [FT / Peter Spiegel]

• That met with a cool reaction from Eurozone policymakers; German chancellor Angela Merkel and Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem (who leads the Eurogroup of European finance ministers) both insisted that talks wait until after Sunday's planned referendum.

  [NYT / Suzanne Daley and Niki Kitsantonis]

• It's a fair point; it's bizarre for Tsipras to accept a deal just before putting it to a national vote — and urging Greek voters to reject it!

• Hours after offering the olive branch, Tsipras totally reversed course and told Greeks in a televised address that EU leaders were "extremist conservative forces … blackmailing you to say yes to everything without any prospect of exiting the crisis."

  [FT / Peter Spiegel, Kerin Hope, and Claire Jones]

• Bottom line: don't expect a deal until after the referendum.

• My preferred resolution: Europe becomes a super-state, Germany and France and other rich countries pay off Greece's debt, everyone lives happily ever after.

  [Vox / Dylan Matthews]

• Not up on the Greece story? Try "9 questions about the Greek crisis you were too embarrassed to ask."

  [Vox / Dylan Matthews]

• Or "11 facts about the Greek crisis you need to know."

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• Or "12 charts and maps that explain the Greek crisis."

  [Vox / Ezra Klein]

Foreign Service: Havana Nights

Raúl Castro and Barack Obama shake hands at the Summit of the Americas. (AFP/Getty / Mandel Ngan)

• The US and Cuba are officially opening embassies in Havana and Washington, DC, respectively.

  [NYT / Julie Hirschfeld Davis]

• You can read the letters Barack Obama and Raúl Castro sent formally reestablishing diplomatic ties here.

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

• The embassies are set to open July 20.

  [LA Times / Christi Parsons]

• Obama's thaw with Cuba is supported by the public; two thirds of Americans want the embargo against Cuba to end.

  [Chicago Tribune / Alejandra Cancino]

• Not sure about how the thaw started? Try this Max Fisher explainer.

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

Fire

A fire at Mt. Zion AME Church in Greeleyville, SC, on June 30. Investigators say the fire was likely not intentionally set. (Clarendon Fire Department)

• There have been five mysterious fires at black churches in the South since the shooting at Emanuel AME Church last month.

  [Vox / Dara Lind and German Lopez]

• At Mount Zion AME and Glover Grove Baptist in South Carolina, the cause is unclear, but investigators suggested it likely wasn't arson.

  [CNN / Ralph Ellis, Eliot McLaughlin and Ashley Fantz]

• College Hill Seventh-day Adventist in Knoxville, Tennessee and Briar Creek Baptist in Charlotte, North Carolina are believed to be arsons, but not hate crimes.

  [Vox / Dara Lind and German Lopez]

• It's unclear if the burning of God’s Power Church of Christ in Macon, Georgia was due to arson or another cause.

  [LA Times / Matt Pearce]

• There is a long history of white attacks on black churches in the South.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• Mount Zion AME, for example, was the victim of a KKK attack in 1995.

  [NBC News / Alex Johnson]

• From 2007 to 2011, an average of 31 houses of worship burned every week; only about five of those are arson.

  [AP / Bruce Smith and Ray Henry]

• The federal government tends to get involved when the cases involve hate crimes. Fifty-eight percent of federal convictions for church arsons from 1995 to 2000 were for crimes "motivated by bias."

  [Vox / Dara Lind and German Lopez]

Misc.

• The biggest ice company in Sierra Leone is called "Ice Ice Baby." That is a true fact about the world we all inhabit.

  [Innovations for Poverty Action via Jeff Mosenkis]

• Kiss cams are always terrible, but they were particularly terrible for David Horton. Turns out it's bad to be caught on camera if you're a wanted fugitive.

  [Now I Know / Dan Lewis]

• Facebook had 4,263 US employees as of 2013. Only 45 were black.

  [The Guardian / Rupert Neate]

• You can go to therapy online now — and it works as well as if you go in person.

  [NYT / Tina Rosenberg]

• A Virginia high schooler got major coverage from Korean media for getting into Harvard and Stanford and getting a phone call from Mark Zuckerberg lobbying her to go to Cambridge. Then it turned out she made it all up.

  [Washington Post / T. Rees Shapiro]

Verbatim

• "In some ways, it is actually more expensive to be poor than not poor. If you can’t afford the first month’s rent and security deposit you need in order to rent an apartment, you may get stuck in an overpriced residential motel."

  [The Atlantic / Barbara Ehrenreich]

• "Do you want to impress me with your moral backbone? Then go and find a group that almost all of your Facebook friends still consider it okay, even praiseworthy, to despise and mock, for moral failings that either aren’t failings at all or are no worse than the rest of humanity’s."

  [Scott Aaronson]

• "Although the recent Mad Max: Fury Road movie featured a number of central female characters who had experienced rape and lived in sexual slavery, one of the most remarkable things about their depiction was that their rapes were not depicted on screen; instead, the movie trusted that we could simply believe what they were saying."

  [Wired / Laura Hudson]

Video of the day

• What it's like to have no sense of taste or smell

  [YouTube]