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Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader and deputy Prime Minister, said: ‘People want a louder Liberal Democrat voice in government,’ after his party did very badly in local elections and saw its proposal of the alternative vote defeated in a national referendum. Mr Clegg said there would be ‘substantial and significant changes’ to the stalled NHS reform Bill. Vince Cable, the Lib Dem Business Secretary said that the Conservatives had emerged as ‘ruthless, calculating and thoroughly tribal’. The Conservatives were left controlling 157 councils of the 279 contested (an increase of four), Labour 57 (an increase of 26) and the Liberal Democrats ten (a decrease of nine). In the AV referendum, 13,013,123 voted no and 6,152,607 yes. Only 10 of the 440 voting areas voted yes. The turnout was 42.2 per cent. The standards and privileges committee found that David Laws, the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, had breached six rules on parliamentary expenses.
The Scottish National Party won 69 of the 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament. Iain Gray, the leader of the Scottish Labour party, Tavish Scott, the leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, and Annabel Goldie, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, all resigned their posts. Alex Salmond, the leader of the SNP, said that on no account would there be an early referendum on Scottish independence. The giant Amorphophallus titanum, the world’s smelliest flower, giving off a stench of rotting flesh, came into bloom at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh.
The British Bankers’ Association gave up its legal fight against a judgment on mis-selling of payment protection insurance. The new chief executive at Lloyds, Antonio Horta-Osorio, had already said the bank would abandon legal resistance to claims, and set aside £3.2 billion for possible compensation; the total for all the banks might be £8 billion or more. Annual profits at Sainsbury’s rose by 13 per cent. Theft of cabling from railways cost Network Rail £16.5 million last year. Sir Paul McCartney became engaged to Nancy Shevell, a New Yorker. A boy is taking St Gregory’s Catholic Science College in Harrow, north London, to the High Court, arguing that its ban on cornrow hairstyles was unlawful.
Abroad
The Syrian army surrounded the Damascus suburb of Muadhamiya as protests against the government continued. Tanks shelled Homs, where 15 people were earlier said to have been shot dead after Friday prayers. The UN said it could not get aid to sick people in Deraa. Civil rights campaigners put the number of civilians killed at between 600 and 800, and of security personnel at 120 killed. In Egypt 12 died and 180 were wounded when Salafist Muslims attacked two Coptic churches and set one on fire. Huthaifa al-Batawi, the al-Qa’eda leader of an attack on a Baghdad church last October, died in a mutiny at a counter-terrorism prison in Baghdad along with 10 other inmates and four warders.
Nato bombed targets in Tripoli. In the besieged Libyan city of Misrata, held by rebels, food and water were in short supply. The EU is to open an office in Benghazi. Hundreds drowned when a boat carrying 600 refugees from Libya broke up at sea; 400 were rescued from another boat that hit rocks off Lampedusa, to which 30,000 have already made their way. On another boat, 61 out of 72 on board were said to have died of hunger and thirst. Microsoft agreed to buy the internet phone service Skype for $8.5 billion. The High Court in Allahabad issued notices to the Hindustan Times for publishing photographs showing female models wearing bathing costumes bearing images of the Hindu goddess Laxmi.
Greece would not be able to meet its debts without a ‘further adjustment plan’, according Jean Claude-Juncker, chairman of the eurozone finance ministers. European stock markets fell in response and the credit rating of Greece slipped deeper into junk status. Greek unions held a one-day strike. Two Greek sprinters were given suspended jail terms for staging a motorbike crash to avoid a drug test before the Athens Olympics. Seve Ballesteros, the golfer, died, aged 54. The Mississippi forced people from 1,300 homes in Memphis in the worst floods since 1937. The Irish village of Moneygall (population 298), on the border between Tipperary and Offaly, prepared for a visit by President Barack Obama, whose great-great-great-grandfather left there at the age of 19. Samoa announced that it would move to the other side of the international date line, missing a day later this year. CSH
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