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Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, told Parliament that Britain reserved the right to supply arms to Ukraine, as ‘We could not allow the Ukrainian armed forces to collapse.’ The Prince of Wales, embarking on a six-day tour of the Middle East, said on Radio 2 that he ‘particularly wanted to show solidarity really, deep concern for what so many of the Eastern Christian churches are going through in the Middle East’. John Longworth, the head of British Chambers of Commerce, called for a referendum on membership of the European Union to be held in 2016, a year earlier than David Cameron, the Prime Minister, has promised, in order to end uncertainty. Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, said the same. Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP, decided not to stand for election as Mayor of London: ‘I actually think the time is right for us to have a non-white mayor.’ Marks & Spencer put on sale boxes of eggs guaranteed to have double yolks.
Lowell Goddard, a High Court judge from New Zealand was named as the head of an inquiry, with statutory powers and a new panel, into historical child sex abuse in England and Wales. Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, said that guarding the embassy of Ecuador, where Julian Assange (wanted by the Swedish police) took refuge more than two years ago, was ‘sucking our resources’, with a cost estimated at £10 million. Four people, one a girl of four, died when a truck loaded with sand crashed on a hill in Bath. The Premier League sold television rights to its games to Sky and BT for a record £5.136 billion. A.P. McCoy, aged 40, 19 times champion jump jockey, announced he would retire by the end of the season. Ziferblat, a chain of cafés, opened a branch in Manchester, with free coffee but a charge of 5p a minute for customers.
Ed Miliband the leader of the Labour party, wrote to Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies threatening them with being put on a blacklist by a future Labour government because their ‘affairs are still shrouded in darkness’ with ‘wealth hidden away’. Gibraltar’s chief minister, Fabian Picardo, the leader of the Socialist Labour party, responded with fury, saying that Gibraltar was no tax haven and that Spain was already using Mr Miliband’s letter ‘as a rod with which to beat us’. Public Health England wrote to supermarkets warning them to keep daffodils well away from produce areas lest customers mistake them for onions or Chinese vegetables and be poisoned.
Abroad
Fighting continued in eastern Ukraine between government forces and Russian-backed separatists. President Barack Obama of the United States said that America was studying the option of supplying lethal defensive arms to Ukraine. Russia, he said, had violated ‘every commitment’ made in the Minsk agreement last September. He was speaking after Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, had reported to him on talks held by her and President François Hollande of France with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. The anti-corruption Aam Aadmi party won 67 of the 70 seats in the Delhi state elections, routing the BJP led by Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister.
President Bashar Assad of Syria said that his government had been receiving information via third parties about sorties against the Islamic State by American and Arab warplanes over Syria. In an interview with the BBC he denied using barrel-bombs: ‘There is no barrel bombs, we don’t have barrels.’ America confirmed the death of Kayla Mueller, an aid worker held hostage by Islamic State, which claimed she had died in a Jordanian air strike. Bashar Warda, the Chaldean Archbishop of Irbil, on a visit to London, begged for western military action to protect Christians in Iraq. Some 200 migrants drowned when their boats sank after setting off from Libya. At least 22 fans died in a stampede when police fired teargas as a crowd was forced through a fenced-in passageway to a stadium in Cairo.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, charged with procuring prostitutes, told a court in Lille that his behaviour was not unbridled, as his ‘licentious evenings’ amounting to only ‘four per year over three years’. The families of two French girls who were accidentally switched shortly after birth 20 years ago were awarded nearly €2 million euros in damages. Gauguin’s ‘Nafea Faa Ipoipo’ (‘When Will You Marry?’) was sold for £197 million, the highest for any painting, to a museum in Qatar. Australia is to compete in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. CSH
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