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Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution Service has announced there is enough evidence to charge one British soldier with murder for the so-called Bloody Sunday killings in Northern Ireland nearly 50 years ago.

Bloody Sunday is the nickname given to an incident that took place during a civil rights march on Jan. 30, 1972. On that day, 13 people were shot and killed as they fled police or tried to help those who were wounded. A 14th shooting victim died months later.

British authorities announced Thursday that a soldier known only as Soldier F will be prosecuted for the murders of protesters James Wray and William McKinney. Soldier F will also face charges for the attempted murders of Patrick O’Donnell, Joseph Friel, Joe Mahon and Michael Quinn.

The director of the Public Prosecution Service, Stephen Herron, said there was not enough evidence admissible in criminal proceedings to charge the other soldiers with the shootings. But the PPS has announced it will begin considering perjury charges against them.

“I am mindful that it has been a long road for the families to reach this point and today will be another extremely difficult day for them,” Herron said. “As prosecutors, we are required to be wholly objective in our approach.”

John Kelly, a representative for the families of the victims, told reporters and onlookers, “There’s a terrible disappointment at the outcome. … The full cost of Bloody Sunday cannot be measured just in those who died that day.”

After Thursday’s announcement, British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson promised the government’s full support to Soldier F, including paying his legal costs. He also promised that the government will pass a new package of safeguards to protect members of the armed forces from unfair treatment.

“Our serving and former personnel cannot live in constant fear of prosecution,” he said.

The families of the victims of Bloody Sunday have hoped for years to have those who fired the fatal shots held accountable for the deaths. 

The original investigation in 1972 concluded by clearing the soldiers and British authorities of blame, accepting the explanation that they shot at armed men.

A second investigation in 1998 concluded that the soldiers had given false testimony and that none of the shooting victims were armed or posed a threat to the soldiers. With that, British authorities began a murder investigation.

At the close of the second investigation in 2010, then-Prime Minister David Cameron made a public apology for the shootings, saying the shootings were “unjustified and unjustifiable.”
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Three days of voting in Britain’s parliament culminates Thursday with lawmakers deciding whether to ask the European Union for a delay in Britain’s exit from the bloc.

The House of Commons overwhelmingly voted against Prime Minister Theresa May’s negotiated terms for Brexit on Tuesday, and it followed that with another vote Wednesday rejecting the possibility of leaving the EU on March 29 with no deal in place.

If Thursday’s extension measure passes, it would need further approval from the other EU members in order to go forward.

EU officials have repeatedly said they would need proper justification to agree to pushing back the deadline. And after Wednesday’s vote they said that while it is one thing for the British government to reject a so-called no-deal exit, at some point they would have to figure out the alternative, a deal they could actually pass.

The EU also prefers any extension be limited, finishing before its own elections in late May. If the process is still ongoing, Britain would take part even though it wants to remove itself from the EU.

May brought what she said was an improved deal to parliament for Tuesday’s vote, one that sought to remove concerns about the border between Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland. Opponents want to make sure Britain is not locked into a long-term customs agreement that subjects the country to EU trade rules.

May hinted Wednesday that she could try for a third time to get lawmakers to approve the deal that negotiators from Britain and the EU worked on for two years.

The Wednesday vote rejecting a no-deal exit does not carry legal weight, only political force, meaning it is still possible that without an extension and without an agreement during the next two weeks, Brexit could proceed with no divorce terms in place.
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Estonia’s president called for continued unity among democratic allies in the face of Russian aggression on Wednesday and expressed a wish for even greater U.S. involvement in the Baltics.

Kersti Kaljulaid, on her second visit to the United States in less than a year, told an audience at the Brookings Institution that membership in the European Union and NATO have served to defend and enhance her country’s sovereignty.

With only 1.2 million people and located on the Baltic Sea near Russia, the former Soviet republic has been especially concerned about growing Russian assertiveness, particularly since its annexation of the Ukrainian region of Crimea and its military support for two breakaway regions in Georgia.

‘Direct involvement in Baltics’

The United States has responded with military exercises along NATO’s borders with Russia and a troop presence in Poland, actions acknowledged by Kaljulaid. While “America’s contribution to enhanced forward presence in Poland is appreciated, we would love to see more U.S. direct involvement in the Baltics as well,” she said.

Rachel Ellehuus, deputy director and senior fellow with the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said Estonia and its Baltic neighbors have served as model members of NATO since being admitted to the defense alliance in 2004, but cannot defend themselves without help.

“Due to their small size, they need our and NATO’s help in procuring big-ticket capabilities,” Ellehuus said in an interview.

Quick US response appreciated

The former Pentagon official noted that the United States was the first country to send forces to the Baltics following Russia’s takeover of Crimea.

She said she would like to see “a persistent rotational presence of U.S. forces in the Baltics and possibly funding in the appropriations bill to support regional capability development in areas such as air and maritime surveillance.”

In an age of increasing attention devoted to big-power politics and competition, it is understood that small states like the Baltic countries cannot win a war against a power like Russia, but they can raise the cost of war for their potential adversaries.

“Their strategy is to increase resilience and hold the line until reinforcements, i.e., NATO, regional partners, can come to their aid,” said Ellehuus. She quoted her former boss at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, saying that “even the bear knows to avoid the porcupine.”

In Ellehuus’s words: The Baltics can take steps “to make themselves as indigestible as possible,” even though they don’t have the capacity to win an all-out war against their giant neighbor to the east.

‘Follow-up plan’

In her speech on Wednesday, Kaljulaid said her country was prepared to “hold the line” against an initial assault but that the “follow-on plan” involving sufficient allied forces was not yet in place.

Her visit to Washington comes at a time when the Pentagon made it clear in the latest national defense budget proposal that it is focused on countering rising capacities from both Russia and China and ensuring that potential adversaries know there is “no path to victory” if they choose to fight the United States.
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A proposed permanent U.S. military base in Poland, nicknamed “Fort Trump,” is one step closer to becoming a reality. 

Negotiations on establishing the base are “ongoing this very week,” Kathryn Wheelbarger, the acting assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. 

Wheelbarger’s comments came as John Rood, the undersecretary of defense for policy, met with his Polish counterpart to work out details of what Rood called a “generous offer” from Poland, according to defense officials.  

Warsaw has offered to contribute at least $2 billion to place permanent U.S. forces and assets in Poland, a NATO ally, in an attempt to deter any possible Russian aggression. NATO has expanded its presence near Russia’s borders to reassure its eastern members, a buildup Russia has described as a threat to its security. 

“We’ve come forward with, we think, a very serious, robust offer, and we’re working out some of the technicalities this very week,” Wheelbarger said. “We hope to have a very solid foundation to work from coming out of this meeting today.” 

She added that it would most likely take six months to a year for any base agreement to be finalized. 

Permanent base seen as ‘helpful’

The U.S. military would not need to start budgeting for the base for at least two or three years, according to Army Gen. Curtis “Mike” Scaparrotti, the head of U.S. European Command. 

Asked about making rotational U.S. forces permanent in Poland, Scaparrotti told lawmakers he’s “perfectly content with the large forces that we are rotating,” but a more permanent base would be “helpful.” 

Negotiations on the proposed base with Warsaw come amid reports that the Trump administration is considering a plan in which wealthy nations such as Germany, Japan and South Korea would be required to pay the full cost of U.S. soldiers deployed on their territory, plus 50 percent more for the privilege of American defense. 

Wheelbarger denied that the “cost plus 50” idea was being discussed for European allies, telling lawmakers, “My understanding is that rhetoric came from conversations from the Pacific; it’s not a conversation we’ve had in my portfolio at all.”
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British lawmakers are set to vote Wednesday on whether Britain should leave the European Union without agreeing on any of the details of its departure.

The so-called “no-deal” Brexit is opposed by Prime Minister Theresa May, but lawmakers have resoundly rejected the agreement her government struck with the EU.

The House of Commons voted 391-242 against the latest version of May’s plan on Tuesday, setting up the Wednesday vote. 

If lawmakers reject a no-deal Brexit as well, a third vote will come Thursday on whether to ask the EU for more time beyond the March 29 deadline to figure out how to conduct the divorce. EU member states would have to approve any extension.

Ahead of Tuesday’s defeat, May implored lawmakers to adopt the deal she negotiated Monday with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker for “legally binding changes” to ensure that the border between EU member Ireland and Britain’s Northern Ireland would remain open after Brexit.

But the outcome mirrored a January vote on an earlier plan, which May lost even more decisively, by 230 votes.

After losing again, May, the Conservative Party leader, told the House of Commons, “I continue to believe the best and only way” to quit the EU is “in an orderly way.”

​She said the next options “are unenviable choices” — leaving without a deal, or asking for more time to negotiate after already spending months to reach terms of the now-defeated pacts.

Jeremy Corbyn, leader of Britain’s main opposition Labor Party, told the parliamentarians, “The government has now been defeated by an enormous majority. The prime minister has run down the clock, and the clock has run out on her.” He called for a new election.

Before Tuesday’s vote, May told lawmakers, “The danger for those of us who want to deliver, to have faith in the British public and deliver on their vote for Brexit, is that if this vote is not passed tonight, if this deal is not passed, then Brexit could be lost.”

Key opponents to her plan quickly emerged.

Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party said May had only made “limited” progress in negotiating the new terms, and said its 10 members in parliament would vote against her plan.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the EU had made “clear, far-reaching proposals” to address Britain’s concerns about the deal. But she deflected a question about whether she was willing to delay the British exit from the EU if British lawmakers could not agree on a plan.

The original deal, rejected two months ago, called for a backstop agreement that would keep Britain and the EU in a customs union until they agree on a new trade agreement. Opponents in Britain’s parliament said they were concerned about being locked into EU rules instead of being able to gain full control of trade policies.

​May said the new terms agreed to on Monday would ensure the backstop deal is not a permanent part of Britain’s exit from the EU.

The Labor Party rejected the plan, saying it still does not go far enough to allay its concerns.

Juncker warned that Britain is running out of options. 

“It is this deal, or Brexit might not happen at all,” he said.
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Rome, the heart of Christianity now has its own Mormon temple. The entire leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for the first time gathered outside of the United States for the dedication of their temple in the eternal city. VOA’s Sabina Castelfranco has more from Rome.
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Now that British lawmakers overwhelmingly rejected Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit divorce deal for a second time, the country’s planned March 29 departure from the bloc is an open question. 

Lawmakers now have two starkly different choices: no deal or delay. 

A look at what might happen in the days ahead:

Destination no-deal 

The House of Commons voted 391-242 against May’s EU withdrawal agreement Tuesday, snubbing changes she secured from the bloc the night before to allay concerns about the deal’s Irish border provisions. Lawmakers voted down the deal in January by an even bigger margin.

After the tally, May said Parliament would  vote Wednesday on whether to abandon efforts to secure an agreement and to leave the EU as planned in a little more than two weeks without a deal.

A phalanx of pro-Brexit politicians supports that idea. They argue it would free the U.K. from  EU rules and red tape, allowing the country to forge an independent global trade policy.

But economists and businesses fear a so-called “no-deal Brexit” would hammer the economy as tariffs and other trade barriers go up between Britain and the EU, its biggest trading partner.

In the short term, there could be gridlock at British ports and shortages of fresh produce. In the long run, the government says a no-deal scenario would leave the economy 6 percent to 9 percent smaller over 15 years than remaining in the EU.

Last month, Parliament passed a non-binding amendment ruling out a “no-deal” Brexit, and it is unlikely they will support it now. May said lawmakers would be free to follow their consciences rather than party lines when they consider the question Wednesday.

Delay, delay, delay

If lawmakers give leaving the EU without an agreement a thumbs down, they have one choice left: seeking more time. A third vote scheduled for Thursday is on asking the EU to delay Brexit day by up to three months.

This option is likely to prove popular, since politicians on both sides of the Brexit debate fear time is running out to secure an orderly withdrawal by March 29.

Extending the timeframe for Brexit would require approval from all 27 remaining EU member countries. They have an opportunity to grand such a request at a March 21-22 summit in Brussels. But the rest of the EU is reluctant to postpone Brexit beyond the late May elections for the EU’s legislature, the European Parliament.

The EU said Tuesday that Britain needs to provide “a credible justification” for any delay.

Crisis deferred 

Whatever Parliament decides, it will not end Britain’s Brexit crisis. Both lawmakers and the public remain split between backers of a clean break from the EU and those who favor continuing a close relationship through a post-Brexit trade deal or by reversing the June 2016 decision to leave.

May is unwilling to abandon her hard-won Brexit agreement and might try to put it to Parliament a third time, although the latest margin of defeat makes that tricky.

Some lawmakers want her to have Parliament consider different forms of Brexit to see if there is a majority for any course of action.

Some think the only way forward is a snap election that could rearrange the forces in Parliament and break the political deadlock. May has ruled that out, but could come to see it as her only option.

And anti-Brexit campaigners haven’t abandoned efforts to secure a new referendum on whether to remain in the EU. The government opposes the idea, which at the moment also lacks majority support in Parliament.

However, the political calculus could change if the paralysis drags on. The opposition Labour Party has said it would support a second referendum if other options were exhausted.

It all means more twists are coming in the Brexit drama.

“No one really believes this is the last chance saloon,” said Oliver Patel, a research associate at the European Institute at University College London.

 
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The BBC, Britain’s public broadcaster, is to be investigated over suspected discrimination following complaints that women have been paid less than men, the country’s equality watchdog announced on Tuesday.

The issue made headlines last year when senior broadcaster Carrie Gracie quit her job as BBC China editor in a highly public protest at being paid less than her male counterparts.

This followed an outcry in 2017, when the BBC published a list of its best-paid on-air staff, revealing two-thirds were men, some of whom were paid far more than their female peers.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which is looking at records dating back to January 2016, said the BBC had provided a large amount of information on its pay policies.

“Having reviewed all of the information … we suspect that some women at the organization have not received equal pay for equal work,” the EHRC said in a statement.

The equality regulator, which acknowledged that the BBC had begun making reforms, will examine formal and informal pay grievances raised by staff and look at how they were resolved.

“Paying men and women the same salary for the same job has been a legal requirement for almost 50 years,” EHRC chief executive Rebecca Hilsenrath said in a statement.

The EHRC said it hoped to finish the investigation by the end of 2019.

Lawmaker Damian Collins, chairman of parliament’s media committee, welcomed the inquiry, saying it had been “a very distressing time for many BBC employees”.

BBC Director General Tony Hall said the organization had been through a “tremendous period of reform” and improvements had already been made.

“We try to be the gold standard of what everyone wants from society – openness, respect and equality,” he was quoted as saying on the BBC’s news site.

“We may not always succeed, but I am confident that we are a decent and fair employer.”

The BBC said in January 2018 it would implement “substantial” pay reductions for some men and pay increases for some men and women, following a report by auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Britain enacted legislation outlawing sex discrimination in the 1970s and this was followed by an equality act in 2010.

But Sam Smethers, head of the Fawcett Society, a women’s rights charity which campaigns on equal pay, said pay discrimination was still common.

“We hope this results in lasting change at the BBC and acts as a warning to other employers too,” she said.
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At the ripe old age of 30 and with half the globe using it, the World Wide Web is facing growing pains with issues like hate speech, privacy concerns and state-sponsored hacking, its creator says, trumpeting a call to make it better for humanity.

Tim Berners-Lee on Tuesday joined a celebration of the Web and reminisced about his invention at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, starting with a proposal published on March 12, 1989. It opened the way to a technological revolution that has transformed the way people buy goods, share ideas, get information and much more.

It’s also become a place where tech titans scoop up personal data, rival governments spy and seek to scuttle elections, and hate speech and vitriol have thrived — taking the Web far from its roots as a space for progress-oriented minds to collaborate.

As of late 2018, half of the world was online, with the other half often struggling to secure access.

Speaking at a “Web@30” conference at CERN, Berners-Lee acknowledged that a sense among many who are already on the Web has become: “Whoops! The web is not the web we wanted in every respect.”

His World Wide Web Foundation wants to enlist governments, companies, and citizens to take a greater role in shaping the web for good under principles laid out in its “Contract for the Web.”

Under the contract, governments are called upon to make sure everyone can connect to the internet, to keep it available and to respect privacy. Companies are to make the internet affordable, respect privacy and develop technology that will put people — and the “public good” — first. Citizens are to create and to cooperate and respect “civil discourse,” among other things.

“The Contract for the Web is about sitting down in working groups with other people who signed up, and to say, ‘Ok, let’s work out what this really means,’” Berners-Lee said. It was unclear, however, how such rules would be enforced.

Berners-Lee cautioned it was important to strike a balance between oversight and freedom but difficult to agree what it should be.

“Where is the balance between leaving the tech companies to do the right thing and regulating them? Where is the balance between freedom of speech and hate speech?” he said.

The conference, which brought together Internet and tech experts, also gave CERN the chance to showcase its reputation as an open-source incubator of ideas. Berners-Lee worked there in the late 1980s, and had been determined to help bridge a communications and documentation gap among different computer platforms.

As a young English software engineer at CERN, Berners-Lee, who is now 63, came up with the idea for hypertext transfer protocol — the “http” that adorns web addresses — and other building blocks for the web.

The “http” system allowed text and small images to be retrieved through a piece of software — the first browser — which Berners-Lee released in 1990 and is considered the start of the web. In practice, the access to a browser on a home computer made the internet easily accessible to consumers for the first time.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Berners-Lee recalled how his research was helped his former boss at CERN, Mike Sendall, who wanted a pretext to buy a then-new Next computer by Steve Jobs’ Apple needed for his research.

Berners-Lee said Sendall told him to ”‘pick a random program to develop on it … Why don’t you do that hypertext thing?’”

Berners-Lee has since become a sort of father figure for the internet community, been knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and named as one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century by Time magazine.

While he now wants to get the debate going, other panelists expressed concerns like the increasing concentration of control of the internet by big corporate players, and fretted about a possible splintering of cyberspace among rival countries.

“The challenges come from the same things that make it (the Web) wonderful, and that’s the difficulty,” said conference panelist Zeynep Tufekci, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science.

“The openness is wonderful, the connectivity is wonderful, the fact that it was created as a network for academics who are kind of into trusting each other…” she said.

Now with the Web, “there’s an enormous amount of centralization going on, with a few big players becoming gatekeepers. Those few big players have built, basically, surveillance machines,” she said. “It’s based on surveillance profiling us and then targeting us for ads — which wasn’t the original idea at all.”
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The influential speaker of Chechnya’s parliament has declared a blood feud against a popular exiled blogger in what appears to be another example of intimidation of critics in Chechnya.

Magomed Daudov, a close ally of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, on Saturday called blogger Tumso Abdurakhmanov “an enemy to me and my brothers” after Abdurakhmanov criticized Kadyrov’s late father, the former Chechen leader, on his YouTube channel.

In a video published last week, Abdurakhmanov called Akhmat Kadyrov, who switched sides in Russia’s separatist wars in Chechnya in the 1990s, “a traitor” of the Chechen people.

Daudov’s response, in Chechen, was translated into Russian and reported on Tuesday by several Russian news outlets.

During a live broadcast on his Instagram which is now unavailable, Daudov said that he is “not going to kill” the blogger but pledged to track him down and retaliate.

“Let’s settle this according to Muslim laws,” the official said. “From now on, when you go to bed, make sure that you lock the door with a key. When you go outside, be vigilant. If you get a kick in the back, know that it’s no accident.”

Speaking from Poland, Abdurakhamnov said on Tuesday that he does not feel safe due to his complicated, ongoing asylum case although he now lives far from Chechnya.

“I take Daudov’s words very seriously,” he told The Associated Press. “He is a person who has the power to follow through on his threats.”

Abdurakhmanov, 32, who fled Chechnya in 2015, is seeking asylum in Poland, from where he continues to criticize Kadyrov and his rule. His YouTube channel, which has over 140,000 subscribers, focuses on human right violations and endemic corruption in this predominantly Muslim region in Russia’s North Caucasus.

With his first asylum application rejected, and his second case hanging in the balance, Abdurakhmanov is now facing deportation from Poland, despite strong opposition from human rights activists who warn he will face torture or death if he returns to Chechnya.

This is not the first time Daudov has publicly threatened the blogger. Last year, he allegedly phoned Abdurakhmanov to try to coax and threaten him to return to the Chechen capital, Grozny. The blogger later released the recordings of his conversation with Daudov.

The speaker of the Chechen parliament has been described as Kadyrov’s right-hand man and has been named as one of the main perpetrators of the 2017 crackdown on gay people in Chechnya. He and other Chechen authorities denied the crackdown ever happened.

International rights groups have accused Kadyrov and his security forces of extrajudicial arrests, torture and killings. Kadyrov has denied these claims. In 2016, Kadyrov warned in a report broadcast on Chechen state television that any Chechen residents who fled abroad would pay dearly for their criticisms of his rule if they return home.

Asked about Daudov’s threat, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday said that there is “no such thing” as blood feuds in Russian law, although it is still widespread in Chechnya, but stopped short of directly criticizing the Chechen official.
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French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday sought to reassert the importance of France in its former colony Djibouti with Paris increasingly fearing China’s muscular role in Africa as it expands economic and military influence across the continent.

Djibouti, strategically located at the southern entrance to the Red Sea on the route to the Suez Canal, hosts France’s largest naval base on the continent and is home to some 1,400 personnel used to train African troops as well as to monitor the Horn of Africa and Yemen.

While it was seen as a vital outpost in the past, French administrations have disregarded it in recent years with Macron only the second French leader to visit the East African country in the last 20 years.

“France considered Djibouti for too long to be a territory that was won,” said a senior French diplomat based in the region. “But now the competition from China is fierce.”

Those comments echoed President Ismail Omar Guelleh’s public criticism in 2015 accusing France – from which it gained independence in 1977 – of abandoning Djibouti and investing very little.

Djibouti also hosts a U.S. military base used as a launch pad for operations in Yemen and Somalia, but in 2013, China opened its largest overseas military base in the country rivaling Paris and Washington directly.

In recent years, Beijing has provided economic aid, developed industrial production in the country and invested massively in high-profile public infrastructure projects, including restoring a French-made railway from 1917 linking Djibouti to Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa.

With a population of less than a million, it also handles 95 percent of the goods imported by Ethiopia, its landlocked neighbor with 100 million people.

“Strategically we need to strengthen the French presence threefold: economically, culturally and militarily,” Marielle de Sarnez, the head of France’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, said after being dispatched by Macron last May. “It’s urgent. Otherwise we will lose ground.”

The unexpected peace accord between Ethiopia and Eritrea in 2018 has also reshuffled the cards for Djibouti.

The lifting of the United Nations Security Council’s arms embargo on Eritrea and other sanctions in November sparked Djibouti’s ire. It accuses Eritrea of occupying part of its territory and holding 13 Djiboutian soldiers.

French officials say they have raised this at the U.N. and see it as a way for Paris to assert its diplomatic influence in the region.

“What the Djiboutian authorities are expecting from us is that we remain active so that Djibouti fully has its place in the recomposition of the region,” a French presidential source said.
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Eurozone ministers on Monday held back granting Greece debt relief because the government failed to implement reforms promised during the massive bailout that ended last year, officials said.

Greece exited its third and final international bailout in August, a turning point in its progress out of the catastrophe that engulfed the country during the financial crisis.

The Greek government has still failed to complete housing insolvency rules that have raised fears in Greece for families threatened with foreclosure on their homes.

European officials, however, played down the delay, not wanting to rekindle memories of the eurozone debt crisis that nearly destroyed Europe’s single currency.

“It’s too early to decide formally on the disbursement today,” said EU Economics Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici ahead of a Eurogroup meeting of eurozone finance ministers.

“The signal given to the markets is decisive, the message of today’s Eurogroup will be and must be positive,” he added.

The debt relief measures are mainly profits made by the European Central Bank (ECB) and other EU central banks on Greek government bonds during the bailout period.

Greece could receive just short of one billion euros from its eurozone partners in the debt relief scheme.

The delay comes days after Greece issued a 10-year bond, the country’s first since its 2010 debt crisis.

The bond was hailed as a major milestone marking Greece’s return to normalcy after almost a decade of being avoided by the markets.

The country hopes to raise a total of around nine billion euros in the markets this year to boost investor confidence in the Greek economy.

Growth is expected to reach 2.4 percent in 2019 after an estimated 2.1 percent in 2018, according to the latest International Monetary Fund (IMF) projections.
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