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Theresa May, the Home Secretary, blamed Brodie Clark, the head of the UK Border and Immigration Agency’s ‘border force’, for ‘relaxation of border controls without ministerial sanction’. Mr Clark left the agency, declaring that what Mrs May had said in parliament was wrong. An online petition urging ministers to reduce immigration gained more than 100,000 signatures, making it eligible for a Commons debate. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are to live in the apartment at Kensington palace once occupied by Princess Margaret. A road-cleaning crew found a pot of gold jewellery in a drain in Slough.
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The News of the World was found to have hired private investigators last year to follow lawyers representing people whose telephones it had hacked, and a string of celebrities. James Murdoch, who was executive chairman of News International at the time, faced further questioning from the Commons Culture, Media and Sport select committee. Salman Butt, the former Pakistan cricket captain, was jailed for 30 months for conspiracy to bowl no-balls at a test match last year at Lord’s; Mohammad Asif was sentenced to a year in jail, Mohammad Amir to six months and Mazhar Majeed, the cricket agent, to 32 months. Government departments were found to have spent £743,100 on tickets for the Olympic Games next year. Network Rail said that thefts of cables had cost it £43 million in the past two years.
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Seven were killed in a multiple crash and vehicle fire on the M5 near Taunton, Somerset; smoke from a firework display at Taunton Rugby Club was said to have been a factor. A heavy lorry fell off a bridge on to the M56 motorway near Warrington in Cheshire, killing the driver. Lord Gould — Philip Gould, the architect of New Labour — died, aged 61. From April 2012 it will be illegal to sell alcohol for less than the tax due on it: £10.71 for a litre of vodka.
Abroad
Italy replaced Greece as the member of the eurozone in the sharpest crisis. The cost of its ten-year borrowing rose above 7 per cent. When rumours circulated that Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, was resigning, shares rose; but when he said he wasn’t, they went back down. George Papandreou was persuaded to resign as Prime Minister of Greece after cancelling the referendum he had suddenly called on internationally agreed austerity measures. The opposition agreed to form a coalition until elections could be held in 2012. Olympus, the Japanese camera company, admitted hiding losses on securities investments for decades. Samdup Taso, the last hereditary shaman of the Lepcha tribe in Sikkim, died, aged 83, leaving no one to lead prayers before mount Kanchenjunga, from whose snows they claim descent.
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Syrian government forces were reported to have been shelling residential areas of Homs for days. Scores were killed. The IAEA suggested that Iran was working towards building nuclear weapons. Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said that an attack by Israel on nuclear sites in Iran would be a ‘very serious mistake’. A conversation at the G20 summit about Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, was reported in the French press: ‘I can’t stand him any more, he’s a liar,’ Nicolas Sarkozy said. ‘You may be sick of him,’ replied President Barack Obama of the United States, ‘but I have to deal with him every day.’ Joe Frazier, the heavyweight boxing champion, died, aged 67. Conrad Murray, Michael Jackson’s physician, was found guilty of his involuntary manslaughter. Oklahoma’s strongest ever earthquake, of 5.6 magnitude, shook a football stadium; ‘No one had any idea,’ said Brandon Weeden, a quarterback.
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Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, a 62-year-old Venezuelan known as Carlos the Jackal, went on trial in Paris over four bomb attacks in the 1980s that killed 11 people; ‘I’m a professional revolutionary,’ he told the judge. President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua won a third term after the Supreme Court, controlled by his Sandinista party, overturned a ban on consecutive terms. Otto Perez Molina, a former general, who promised to combat violent crime, was elected President of Guatemala. In Honduras, which in 2010 saw the world’s highest murder rate, 176 policemen were arrested in a campaign against organised crime. A sudden inspection of a prison in Acapulco, Mexico, found 19 prostitutes, 100 plasma televisions, two sacks of marijuana and 100 cocks kept for fighting.
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