• Hit F5 for the latest or select the auto-refresh button below • And email your thoughts to katy.murrells@guardian.co.uk First set: Sharapova 0-2 Lisicki* In fact it’s Sharapova who’s showing the nerves at the moment, as she double faults on the first point and then throws in another unforced error. Lisicki then unleashes on the forehand to bring up three break points in double-quick time. 0-40 . And a second double fault hands Lisicki the game. First set: *Sharapova 0-1 Lisicki (*denotes next server) “Boom Boom” hits the ground running, opening up with a fearsome serve, before holding to 15. No sign of nerves yet from the 21-year-old, who’s appearing in her first grand slam semi-final. The players are already out and warming up, leaving me with next to no time to catch my breath, let alone have a comfort break. This could get uncomfortable. Anyway, these two have only met once before, in Miami earlier this year, when Sharapova prevailed 6-2 6-0. “She kind of kicked my butt last time,” said Lisicki. “But it’s a semi-final. I got there playing very good tennis. I have nothing to lose. There are no easy matches at that stage. I’m just going to play the best I can.” Afternoon . Sorry for the rushed preamble, I’ve just scampered over from the Petra Kvitova v Victoria Azarenka game-by-game . So with Kvitova through to her first grand slam final, can Sabine Lisicki do the same, or will Maria Sharapova justify her status as the title favourite and shriek her way into a second Wimbledon final? “Boom Boom” Lisicki, as the German is known, has been blasting opponents off the court this fortnight, and has a huge serve. No surface is better suited to the 21-year-old’s game than grass. Though of course Sharapova’s no stranger to bludgeoning the life out of a tennis ball, and played like a woman possessed in the quarter-finals, so this should be a brutal match. Both have had their fair share of injury problems. This is Sharapova’s first grand slam semi-final since the 2008 Australian Open, after which she had a career-threatening shoulder injury. It’s been a long road back, and many lesser characters would probably have given up, especially if they had her millions in the bank. Meanwhile Lisicki is only playing here by virtue of a wildcard, after missing five months last year when an ankle problem was misdiagnosed. And that’s without mentioning last month’s incident at the French Open, when she had to be carried off court on a stretcher with cramp. Wimbledon 2011 Wimbledon Maria Sharapova Tennis Katy Murrells guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Fourth largest industrial nation set to replace nuclear with renewable energy German MPs have overwhelmingly approved plans to shut down the country’s nuclear plants by 2022, putting Europe’s biggest economy on the road to an ambitious build-up of renewable energy. The lower house of parliament voted 513-79 for the shutdown plan drawn up by Angela Merkel’s government after Japan’s post-tsunami nuclear disaster . Most of the opposition voted in favour. MPs sealed the shutdown of eight of the older reactors, which have been off the grid since March. Germany’s remaining nine reactors will be shut down in stages by the end of 2022. By 2020, Germany wants to double the share of energy stemming from water, wind, sun or biogas to at least 35%. Until this year, nuclear energy accounted for a little less than a quarter of Germany’s power. “Some people abroad ask: will Germany manage this? Can it be done? It is the first time that a major industrial country has declared itself ready to carry through this technological and economic revolution,” the environment minister, Norbert Röttgen, told MPs. “The message from today is this: the Germans are getting to work,” he said. “This will be good for our country, because we all stand together. So let’s get to work.” The government hasn’t put a price tag on the plan to shift to renewable sources. “Of course it will cost something, but it won’t overburden anyone,” Röttgen said. The vote completed a spectacular about-turn on nuclear energy by Merkel’s centre-right coalition. Only last year, it had amended a previous centre-left government’s plan to abandon nuclear power by the early 2020s and extended the life span of Germany’s 17 reactors by an average of 12 years. Merkel said the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant had prompted her to re-evaluate the risks of nuclear power. Opposition leaders taunted the government over its U-turn, which Merkel initiated less than two weeks before two state elections in March. “We are approving this out of full conviction, but you are doing it merely to preserve power,” said Sigmar Gabriel, the head of the centre-left Social Democrats. Renate Künast, the co-leader of the Greens’ parliamentary group, said she didn’t care why Merkel had changed course: “For me, it’s enough of a historical irony that you now have to come close to what you fought for decades,” she said. “Now no one can deny that Germany wants an energy turnaround,” added Künast. Her party has always opposed nuclear energy, which has been unpopular in Germany since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster sent radioactivity drifting over the country. Still, she complained that the government’s renewable energy target was unambitious, arguing that Germany should be aiming for a share of well over 40%. “The world is watching us now, and we will have to do justice to that,” Künast said. “That is the scale of this task: we must show that this works for the fourth biggest industrial country.” Parliament’s upper house, which represents Germany’s 16 states, is expected to endorse the plans next week, but much of the package does not formally require its approval. Germany Nuclear power Renewable energy Angela Merkel Europe Energy guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Police minister says legislation needed to resolve doubts over 80,000 suspects affected by judgment Emergency legislation is to be introduced to overturn a court ruling that has severely restricted police powers to detain suspects for questioning and plunged police bail laws into chaos. The police minister, Nick Herbert, told MPs the new law was needed because the status of 80,000 suspects currently bailed by police forces across England and Wales had been placed in doubt. Earlier on Thursday the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, warned of serious consequences of the court ruling, adding that there were currently 175 murder suspects out on bail in London. Ministers and police chiefs are in urgent talks over interim measures to deal with the situation in the next fortnight or so before the emergency legislation restores the situation. They have concerns about whether they have enough police cells to detain suspects and worry that they may have to drop cases completely. “In some cases it will mean that suspects who would normally be released on bail are detained for longer. It is likely that in most forces, there will not be enough capacity to detain everybody in police cells,” admitted Herbert. “In other cases, it risks impeding the police to such an extent that the investigation will have to be stopped because the detention time has run out. The judgment will also affect the ability of the police to enforce bail conditions.” The ruling by a district judge in Salford, which was upheld by the high court, overturned 25 years of an interpretation of the law under which suspects could be released on police bail and recalled for questioning weeks and even months later as long as the total time in detention was no more than 96 hours. The ruling means that forces are only allowed to hold suspects for up to 96 hours continuously before they have to either charge or release them. Any time spent out on bail must now be counted towards the 96 hours. Herbert, who was answering an urgent Commons question from Labour on the police crisis, told MPs that the home secretary, Theresa May, was in Madrid at a meeting of the G6 interior ministers. He told MPs that police believed the ruling would have a serious impact on their ability to investigate crime and with 80,000 suspects on police bail around the country they could not wait for an appeal to be heard by the supreme court. “That is why the Association of Chief Police Officers [Acpo] has today advised the home secretary that new legislation is needed. We agree with that assessment. So I can tell the house that we will urgently bring forward emergency legislation to overturn the ruling,” he said. “That emergency legislation will clarify the position and provide assurance that the police can continue to operate on the basis on which they have been operating for many years. We are also seeking urgent further advice on how to mitigate the practical problems caused by the court’s decision in this interim period.” It will take at least eight days for parliament to pass the necessary legislation but Herbert said the ruling had to be reversed because it had upset a careful balance which had stood for a quarter of a century, and that it impeded the police’s work. The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, pledged opposition support but demanded to know why it had taken six weeks since the high court upheld the original ruling on 19 May for ministers to act. Herbert claimed the written judgment had not been available to Home Office lawyers until 17 June. When the scale of the problem “became clear” ministers were informed on 24 June: “If any suspect is released on bail, the judgment means they are, in effect, still in police detention. This means that time spent on bail should count towards any maximum period of precharge detention. It causes us great concern.” Police Liberal-Conservative coalition Alan Travis guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Click here to view this media ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel announced Tuesday a new educational film by Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann. The Minnesota Republican has recently mistaken John Wayne for John Wayne Gacy and insisted John Quincy Adams was a Founding Father. “I like when politicians who screw up go find like a single sentence in the back of a high school history book and then use that as their defense, as if that’s what they meant the whole time,” Kimmel said. “And that’s what she’s doing. And not only is Michele Bachmann sticking to this Founding Father thing, she’s working on — I don’t know if it’s a documentary or some sort of educational film, but it’s something to teach kids about American history.” “In 1775, Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams set sail across the Delaware River to tell the King of England they had enough of his liberal agenda,” an actor posing as Bachmann explained in the film. “King James called Napoleon and together they decided to kill America.” “They sent the Nina, the Piñata and the Santa Maria to fight. But then, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln gathered an army to turn back the big government dictators. They told Paul Revere to ride his horse to Frodo. But then, John Wilkes Booth showed up and killed Lincoln. But there was still hope, because Jesus appeared on the face of the Liberty Bell and he froze John Wilkes Booth in carbonite. And the liberal homosexuals sailed back to their gay country, while Americans claimed their land and drank beer. And that’s how freedom was born.”
Continue reading …
Fears of further civil strife in Lebanon as special tribunal for 2005 car bomb names senior Hezbollah men Lebanon’s senior prosecutor has received criminal indictments for four members of the Shia militant group Hezbollah, who are accused of assassinating the country’s former prime minister, Rafiq Hariri, in a car bomb attack six years ago. The move is a significant step in an investigation into the attack that killed Hariri and 21 others on the Beirut waterfront on 14 February 2005 . Security was immediately tightened in the city after investigators from the Hague-based Special Tribunal for Lebanon visited the offices of Prosecutor General Sayyed Merza, who now has the discretion to name the suspects. Within minutes of the meeting finishing, Lebanese media outlets named the men as Assad Sabra, Hassan Issa, Salim Ayachhe and Moustaf Badredine, all senior members of Hezbollah. Hariri’s son, Saad, welcomed the indictments and called it a “historic moment”. Hezbollah did not respond immediately to the indictments, which if the they lead to convictions, would pose a serious threat to the group’s claim as a nationalist resistance movement. One senior official said this morning that Hezbollah felt it had done enough to prepare for the indictments with a lengthy and vocal campaign to discredit the investigation. Elsewhere, members of Hariri’s political bloc called on the Lebanese parliament to continue support for the tribunal, which Lebanon partly funds. Hezbollah and its supporters, who comprise roughly half the country’s Druze and Christians, had been trying to force a government led by Saad Hariri, to withdraw support for the tribunal and stop funding it. After realising Hariri would not agree, Hezbollah and its allies quit the cabinet in January, causing the collapse of the unity government . The bloc now has a slim majority in government, which it will likely use to target the tribunal. Lebanon’s cabinet will distribute a policy statement on Friday on how to deal with the tribunal. Regardless of its stance, the tribunal will hold hearings in the Hague later this year. The legitimacy of its claims will likely first be contested in districts of Lebanon, which remain deeply split and seemingly implacably aligned behind sectarian banners. Lebanon Middle East Martin Chulov guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
As voters go the polls, officials and senior figures in the SNP and Labour believe the gap between the parties is very small Alex Salmond is close to landing another wounding blow on the Labour party as voters head to the polling stations in the Inverclyde byelection. Officials and senior figures in both the Scottish National party and Labour believe that the battle to win Inverclyde , a once rock-solid Labour constituency west of Glasgow, has gone to the wire with the SNP on the brink of snatching the seat. The byelection was called after the sudden death of its popular Labour MP and former minister David Cairns, 44, shortly after the SNP’s landslide victory in May’s Scottish parliament elections . Despite holding the Westminster seat and its near equivalents for some 80 years, Labour has been struggling to defend its 14,416 vote majority against the SNP, which came within 500 votes of winning the equivalent Holyrood seat in May. Labour admits the result could come down to a few hundred votes, with many predicting a low turnout: the party has pressed its activists into another, late surge of campaigning and drafted in Lord Prescott on the day before polling. Salmond has visited the seat five times during the short campaign. “I think this is earthquake proportions if we win this seat,” he told BBC Scotland on Wednesday. “I think that the political impact of a victory for the SNP in Inverclyde would be absolutely huge.” SNP officials said on Thursday the difference between the two parties was “very tight”. One said: “We’ve closed the gap an awful long way, down to a thousand or a couple of hundred, but it has been very hard to tell over the last couple of days, incredibly difficult.” Anne McLaughlin, the SNP candidate hoping to become the party’s seventh MP at Westminster, accompanied her mother, Betty, to a polling station at a local sailing club on Thursday morning. Raised in the area, McLaughlin no longer lives in the constituency. In her election day address to voters, McLaughlin took inspiration from Winnie Ewing’s famous byelection victory for the SNP in Hamilton in 1967, claiming that and other byelection upsets shocked the UK government into making concessions to Scotland. She said: “I promise you that if elected to serve as MP, I will defend Inverclyde’s interests and promote our future with every bone in my body. “Labour can’t and won’t fight back and take on the Tories and their cuts at Westminster. They stopped listening a long time ago.” Labour’s candidate, Iain McKenzie, the local council leader, cast his vote at a scout hall in Greenock. Stopping far short of predicting a victory, he said: “This is a beautiful sunny day in Inverclyde and there’s a great feeling in the air.” He added: “I am proud to be the Labour candidate and I am proud to be the local candidate and I will be working every minute of today until polls close to earn the trust of my friends and neighbours in Inverclyde.” Sophie Bridger, for the Liberal Democrats, was out in the constituency urging party supporters to vote. The Scottish Lib Dem leader, Willie Rennie, who won a shock byelection victory in Dunfermline and West Fife byelection in 2006, a Westminster seat in Gordon Brown’s backyard, said turnout on Thursday would be crucial. “When I won Dunfermline and West Fife, I didn’t know I would, so I think a lot of these things are very fluid, especially with low turnouts – which I suspect, so soon after the Holyrood election, this will be. It’s quite difficult to tell,” he said. General election 2010 result: Inverclyde David Cairns (Labour) 20,933 votes (56.0%) Innes Nelson (SNP) 6,577 votes (17.5%) Simon Hutton (Liberal Democrat) 5,007 votes (13.3%) David Wilson (Conservative) 4,502 votes (12%) Peter Campbell (Ukip) 433 votes (1.2%) Majority: 14,416 (38.4%) Turnout: 37,512 (63.4%) Inverclyde byelection candidates: Labour: Iain McKenzie SNP: Anne McLaughlin Conservative: David Wilson Liberal Democrats: Sophie Bridger Ukip: Mitch Sorbie Scottish politics Scotland Labour Scottish National Party (SNP) Alex Salmond Byelections Severin Carrell guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
US told to stop drone attacks from Shamsi, in western Pakistan, and leave airbase Pakistan has stopped US drone flights from a remote airbase in the western province of Balochistan and ordered US personnel to vacate it, the defence minister has said. “We have told them to leave the Shamsi airbase,” Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar said on Wednesday night, adding that US personnel had already started to shift equipment from the base. A US embassy spokesman declined to comment, referring queries to Washington. Shamsi is located in a remote valley 350 miles south-west of Waziristan, where most of the CIA-directed Predator and Reaper drone strikes against al-Qaida and Taliban targets take place. The closure of the base is a blow to a covert programme that has killed up to 2,500 people since its inception seven years ago and forms a cornerstone of President Barack Obama’s strategy to flush al-Qaida from its Pakistani havens. The US insists it will press ahead with the strikes. In unusually direct comments, Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan said on Wednesday that the US would continue to “deliver precise and overwhelming force against al-Qaida” in the tribal areas. The attacks are likely to continue from CIA bases in Afghanistan – the latest took place on June 20 in Kurram tribal agency. A senior Pakistani military official said the US had not used Shamsi for “several months” and was already flying drones across the border. Senior civilian officials said they closed Shamsi in retaliation for an American reduction of coalition support funds, a multibillion-dollar subsidy for Pakistani military operations. The defence minister said US forces had already vacated Ghazi airbase, 40 miles north-west of Islamabad. A US official in Pakistan accused the government of engaging in “diplomacy by headline” but refused to comment further. The spat marks another low point in Pakistan-US relations after the raid to kill Osama bin Laden on 2 May and the furore over a CIA agent, Raymond Davis, who shot dead two men in Lahore in January. Pakistan’s military and the ISI intelligence service have sought to restrict CIA activities by seeking lists of spies, closing intelligence cooperation centres, and restricting visas for US personnel. The US, meanwhile, is trying to repair the relationship, recognising Pakistan’s importance in fighting al-Qaida and, perhaps, reaching a peace settlement in Afghanistan. Although at least 120 military trainers have been ordered to leave the country, the US recently agreed to replace two Orion surveillance planes that were destroyed in a militant assault on a Karachi naval base in May. The CIA use of Shamsi is controversial in Pakistan, where drone strikes are extremely unpopular. A recent Pew poll found 97% of respondents viewed them negatively. Shamsi was built by Arab Sheikhs from the United Arab Emirates to facilitate hunting falcon trips for the houbara bustard, a rare bird some Arabs believe has aphrodisiac properties. The CIA presence was detected in 2004, when the first drone strikes occurred. Google Earth images showed Predator drones parked on the runway. Since then CIA contractors have been stationed at Shamsi, fuelling and arming Predator and the newer Reaper drones. Operators at the base control the pilotless planes during takeoff but control quickly passes to a “reachback operator”sitting at a video screen thousands of miles away at the CIA headquarters in Langley Virginia. The drones use different warheads, from Hellfire missiles that travel at supersonic speeds to laser-guided Stingers and other missiles using thermobaric warheads that create percussion waves which can penetrate deep bunkers and caves. According to the New America Foundation, which tracks drone strikes, there have been 253 since 2004, with 42 so far this year. Various press reports put the death toll from the strikes at between 1,557 and 2,464. The varying figures highlight the difficulty of obtaining accurate information from the tribal belt, which is out of bounds to foreigners and most local reporters, and where Taliban fighters take control of drone attack sites immediately after the strikes occur. The most contentious issue is civilian casualties. The New American foundation, based on press reporters, estimates non-militant deaths at 20% of the total, although in 2010 this fell to 5%. Pakistan’s military has previously tried to distance itself from Shamsi by claiming that the airbase was the territory of the United Arab Emirates. However base security and other logistics have been provided by Pakistani forces. Pakistan US military United States al-Qaida Declan Walsh guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Fifteen US troops killed in June, the highest toll in two years, with latest strike blamed on Iranian-backed militia A rocket attack on a US base near Iraq’s border with Iran has killed three American soldiers, according to an official who blamed the strike on a Shia militia linked to Tehran. The deaths came at the end of the bloodiest month for US troops in Iraq in two years, and with six months before the American military is scheduled to leave after more than eight years of war. Wednesday’s rocket attack struck a US base in southern Iraq that is located a few miles from Iran, the official said, saying the Iranian link was evident from the type of rockets used. American intelligence officials believe the Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah, or Hezbollah Brigades, is one of the only militias to use weapons known in military jargon as Irams, or improvised rocket-assisted mortars, against US troops. They are made in Iran. Kataib Hezbollah has links to the Lebanon-based Hezbollah group and is solely focused on attacking US troops and other American personnel. The US military is preparing to leave Iraq by the end of the year, as required by a 2008 security agreement between Baghdad and Washington. But as both governments consider extending the deadline to have thousands of troops remain in Iraq into 2012 – in part to counter Iran’s influence – at least three major Shia militias have stepped up attacks on soldiers to force the military out. Kataib Hezbollah claimed responsibility for a 6 June rocket attack on a US base in Baghdad that killed five soldiers. Fifteen US troops have died this month in Iraq, all but one in hostilities. It is the highest number of American military deaths in Iraq since June 2009. There have been 4,469 American troops killed in Iraq since the invasion, according to an Associated Press count. Iraq Middle East Iran US military United States US foreign policy guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
British man jailed in 2008 for shooting his wife Rachel and their nine-month-old Lillian has filed an appeal A British man serving a life sentence in the US for murdering his wife and baby daughter at their Massachusetts home has filed an appeal against his conviction. Neil Entwistle, 32, was jailed in June 2008 for shooting Rachel, 27, and nine-month-old Lillian in Hopkinton on 20 January 2006. He is now arguing he should receive a new trial because police searched his home without a warrant when they came to check on the wellbeing of his family. In his appeal brief filed at the state’s supreme judicial court, his lawyer Stephen Paul Maidman argued that evidence taken from the home was seized illegally. Maidman argues in the appeal that two searches were done without warrants and that the evidence seized as a result should have been suppressed during Entwistle’s trial. “The two warrantless entries into the defendant’s house by the police violated the federal and state constitutions,” he wrote in the brief. But prosecutors have said police were justified in entering the home because they were responding to the pleas of concerned relatives and friends. They say Entwistle had become despondent after accumulating tens of thousands of dollars in debt and had complained about his sex life with his wife. Entwistle’s lawyer also argues that judge Diane Kottmyer did not thoroughly question potential jurors to determine whether they were biased against Entwistle after the case received intense local and international news coverage. “That there was extraordinary prejudicial pre-trial publicity in this case that was both saturating and inflammatory, by Massachusetts and even national standards, cannot be legitimately disputed,” Maidman wrote in the appeal. Kottmyer denied Entwistle’s request to move the trial out of Middlesex county. “The defendant is entitled to a new trial utilising a jury selection process where there can be no question that the seated jurors are fair and impartial,” Maidman wrote. Middlesex district attorney Gerry Leone, whose office prosecuted Entwistle, said he received a “true and just” trial however. “The crimes committed by Neil Entwistle against his wife Rachel and daughter Lillian Rose are to be condemned as horrific and unspeakable acts,” Leone said in a statement. “He received a commendable defence and a fair and just trial under our laws.” Entwistle, a former IT consultant from Kilton, Worksop, left the US the day after the killings and later told police he had departed because he wanted to be consoled by his parents in the UK. He said he found his wife and daughter cuddled together in bed, dead of apparent gunshot wounds, after he returned home from running errands. Friends giving evidence said that the couple appeared to have had a happy marriage and were both thrilled with their daughter. Entwistle was sentenced at Middlesex county superior court in Woburn, Massachusetts, for what Kottmyer described as “incomprehensible” crimes. She imposed a 10-year probation sentence for two firearms offences and ordered that Entwistle should not profit from his crimes by writing a book. United States Massachusetts Crime guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Greek parliament expected to approve next stage of cuts despite violent protests in Athens The battle to prevent Greece lurching into disorderly default continues as lawmakers return to the Athens parliament on Thursday to approve the next stage in the hugely unpopular austerity package. Having approved the €28bn (£25bn) programme of fresh taxes and cutbacks in principle on Wednesday , Greek MPs will vote on an enabling bill giving the government authority to implement the new measures speedily. Analysts are broadly confident that the legislation will pass but are still unconvinced that George Papandreou’s administration can actually implement the tough measures in the face of deep public hostility. “If we wanted to be cynical, or realistic, we could say that the disaster scenario has been averted for now but we may well be revisiting in three or six months,” predicted Gary Jenkins of Evolution Securities in a research note on Thursday morning. Jenkins fears that Greece will fail to make enough progress to placate its European neighbours and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which it relies on for its funding. The financial markets were broadly calm on Thursday, following strong gains on Wednesday. The FTSE 100 index opened 22 points higher at 5878, after Asian markets recorded gains. The euro gained around 0.7 cents against the US dollar, to $1.4505. European leaders have hailed Wednesday’s vote, by 155 votes to 138, as a key moment in the debt crisis that has gripped the region for many months. “The country has taken an important step forward along the necessary path of fiscal consolidation and growth-enhancing structural reform. But it has also taken a vital step back – from the very grave scenario of default. This was a vote of national responsibility,” said Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, and European commission president José Manuel Barroso in a joint statement. Attention may shift to Italy, as the Italian cabinet meets on Thursday to approve its own austerity budget. This includes about €47bn of spending cuts and tax increases, and is rumoured to include a Robin Hood-style tax on financial transactions. Clashes Wednesday’s vote took place against a backdrop of clashes between protestors and police in Athens. About 100 people were treated in hospital, according to Reuters. Several people reported that police officers had fired stun grenades and tear gas at peaceful crowds . But there were also images of individuals, some wearing gas masks, throwing stones or wielding sticks at police officers . Further demonstrations are expected on Thursday. A new EU/IMF rescue package for Greece worth about €110bn is expected to be agreed in the next few weeks. Some form of Greek debt restructuring is seen as inevitable – the challenge is to find a method that will not be treated as a default by credit rating agencies. Eurozone finance ministers will meet on Sunday to consider a proposal from France under which lenders would agree to roll over their maturing Greek debt and buy new bonds. John Lipsky, acting chief of the IMF, said on Wednesday that the private sector will have to be involved in the second Greek bailout. “Eventually there will be on a voluntary basis some degree of contribution by private-sector creditors,” Lipsky said. European debt crisis European banks Greece Europe Graeme Wearden guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …