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Of the 1,179 people who had appeared in court on charges arising from the riots by 15 August, two thirds were remanded in custody. The number of arrests by then had reached 2,772. Seven were arrested in connection with the murder of three Asian men in Birmingham, knocked down by a car. Tariq Jahan, the father of one of them, had appealed for calm after the murder: ‘I lost my son. Blacks, Asians, whites — we all live in the same community. Why do we have to kill one another?’ A 16-year-old boy was charged with the murder of Richard Bowes, aged 68, who had been attacked as he had tried to put out a fire in Ealing. A man was charged over the robbery seen on television of a Malaysian student with a jaw broken in an earlier assault, under the guise of helping him. A man appeared in court charged with setting fire to Reeves furniture store in Croydon. Two men were jailed for four years each for using Facebook to incite disorder in Cheshire.
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‘The broken society is back at the top of my agenda,’ David Cameron, the Prime Minister said in a speech in his constituency. He said he wanted to ‘turn around the lives of the 120,000 most troubled families in the country’ by 2015. Mr Cameron had wanted to make Bill Bratton, the former police chief of New York and Los Angeles, the new Commissioner of the Metropolitan police, but was opposed by Theresa May, the Home Secretary, who wanted a British candidate. Mrs May said she wanted the names of young offenders to be disclosed, but no such thing happened, and MPs went off on holiday again after their single day of debate.
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Sir Hugh Orde, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, rejected criticism by Mr Cameron of police handling of the riots. Police said they had prevented riots at the Olympic site, in Oxford Street and at the Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush by studying Twitter and Blackberry Messaging. David Starkey said on Newsnight: ‘The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion.’ Ed Miliband, the leader of the opposition, called them ‘racist comments, frankly’. Northern Ireland had its own little riot after the annual Apprentice Boys’ march, when petrol bombs were thrown and vehicles destroyed. The phone hacking scandal came to life again when a letter from 2007 came to light from a jailed News of the World reporter, claiming that phone-hacking was often discussed at editorial meetings. A Polish woman, her two children, her father, a friend and her child were stabbed to death in Jersey; her husband was arrested. Robert Robinson, the broadcaster, died, aged 83. The rate of inflation (by CPI) rose to 4.4 per cent from 4.2; it remained at 5 per cent (by RPI). Railway tickets rise by 8 per cent from 2012. Unemployment rose to 7.9 per cent in the three months to the end of June. About 216 tons of oil leaked from Shell’s Gannet Alpha platform off Aberdeen. An iron age wooden causeway built by the Iceni tribe was found in Norfolk.
Abroad
President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany discussed the eurozone crisis, but came up with little beyond a meeting every six months to be chaired by Herman van Rompuy. The European Central Bank spent €22 billion in a week buying government bonds. The German economy grew by only 0.1 per cent in the second quarter. Google agreed to pay $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility. Warren Buffett called on Congress to make those with incomes over $1 million pay more tax.
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Libyan opposition forces advanced to Zawiya, 30 miles west of Tripoli, and Gharyan, 50 miles to its south. The Syrian government continued its assault on its own people with a tank and gunship attack on Latakia. The trial of the former Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, who has appeared in court in a hospital bed, was adjourned for three weeks; it would no longer be televised.
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Indian police arrested Anna Hazare, the anti-corruption campaigner, and 1,300 of his supporters after he had been refused permission to go on hunger strike for more than three days. Pakistan was said to have allowed China to photograph the wreckage of the American stealth helicopter that crashed during the operation to kill Osama bin Laden. Chinese television showed the rescue of a four-year-old boy who had fallen down a well in Guizhou province. A Japanese student fell over Niagara Falls.
CSH
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