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At a conference on Libya held in London, representatives of more than 40 nations and international bodies declared that Colonel Gaddafi’s regime had ‘lost legitimacy and will be held accountable for their actions’. Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, told delegates that attacks would continue until Colonel Gaddafi met UN terms, and that supplying arms to the rebels was not prohibited. Outside, 100 protesters chanted: ‘Go to hell, Cameron.’ HMS Ark Royal was advertised for sale online. In Northampton a cat called Smokey was found to purr at 73 decibels.
About 250,000 people marched through London in a TUC demonstration against spending cuts. Ed Miliband, the leader of the opposition, told them: ‘I am proud to stand with you.’ But by the end of the day there were 201 arrests as a few hundred people lit fires in the street, smashed bank windows, ran riot in Fortnum & Mason and sprayed graffiti on the base of Nelson’s Column. Theresa May, the Home Secretary, said she was willing to grant the police extra powers. Mr Miliband put Peter Hain in charge of a project called Refounding Labour, which sought to gain party supporters. Mr Miliband is to marry Justine Thornton, the mother of his two children, on 27 May. H.R.F. Keating, the detective novelist, died, aged 84. Thirty-eight patients who had undergone operations in South Wales and 21 in Essex were told they ran an extremely small risk of contracting Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease from instruments.
Councils hoping to sell off libraries found that the Literary and Scientific Institutions Act 1854 directed that land should be returned to donors. The Competition Commission ordered BAA to sell two airports. Liberal Democrat ministers floated the idea of a tax on expensive houses to make up for future abolition of the 50p tax rate. The facade of an end-of-terrace house in Swansea with a sloping roof was found to resemble Adolf Hitler.
Abroad
Nato took over responsibility for military action over Libya under the UN Security Council resolution 1973, as the United States withdrew to a supporting role, continuing to mount bombing missions. In a television broadcast, President Barack Obama said: ‘I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.’ After ten days of coalition air-strikes against Libyan government forces, rebel forces moved westward again from Benghazi along the coast, retaking Ajdabiya, Brega and Ras Lanuf, but after a short time in control of Bin Jawad were pushed back. In the west of Libya, the rebel-controlled town of Misrata underwent days of bombardment from government forces. Qatar recognised the rebel council, which gained control of most oil production, as the legitimate government of Libya. More than 7,000 migrants from North Africa were living in camps on the Italian island of Lampedusa.
In Yemen, thousands demonstrated against the rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. An ammunition plant in southern Yemen exploded, killing at least 150, as local people looted it after a raid by anti-government militants. The Syrian cabinet resigned after dozens of people were shot dead in demonstrations. Israeli attacks killed at least 10 Palestinians in a week when more than 80 missiles and mortar bombs were fired from Gaza into Israel, and a British woman on a bus in Jerusalem was killed by a bomb. Seventy codices of lead leaves apparently found in a Jordanian cave were said to shed light on the early years of Christianity. Jose Socrates resigned as Prime Minister of Portugal after opposition parties rejected cuts designed to reduce the country’s debts. Standard & Poor’s downgraded Portugal to one notch above junk ratings and Greece to below the creditworthiness of Egypt.
In Ivory Coast, 30,000 took refuge in the compound of a Catholic church at Duekoue, as forces loyal to the UN-backed President-elect Alassane Ouattara advanced against the army loyal to President Laurent Gbagbo. Workers at the ruined Fukuyama nuclear plant in Japan tried to prevent radioactive water from seeping into the sea. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat party lost control after 58 years of Baden-Wuerttemberg to the Greens and Social Democrats. Census officials in the United States said that more than 50 million people had identified themselves as Hispanic in 2010. The day after her death at the age of 79, Dame Elizabeth Taylor was buried in the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn, California, following a reading of ‘The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins.
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