A European Commission report warned that Britain would not meet the 2014-2015 deadline for reducing the budget deficit to below 3 per cent of domestic output. Mr Liam Byrne, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said: ‘We think the EU has got the judgment wrong.’ British Airways cabin crew belonging to the union Unite announced strikes for three days from 20 March and four days from 27 March. Lord Adonis, the Transport Secretary, called the strike ‘totally unjustifiable’. Mr Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, then spoke out against it on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour: ‘It is the wrong time, it is unjustified, it is deplorable, we shouldn’t have a strike.’ The parliamentary Northern Ireland affairs committee said that a new investigation must discover whether government intelligence was withheld from detectives seeking the Omagh bombers, who killed 29 people in 1998. The Pope will make a speech in Westminster Hall in the Houses of Parliament during his visit from 16-19 September. A worshipper at St Paul’s church in Brighton called on the Health and Safety Executive to rule on the use of incense there. ‘The first time they burned incense I collapsed,’ said Ronald Caseby, aged 73.
Baroness Stern, a crossbench peer, in her review of criminal justice and rape, called for ‘an end to the widespread use of misleading rape conviction data — in particular the 6 per cent conviction rate figure’ which ‘can make victims feel it is not worth reporting’, although 58 per cent of cases taken to court end in conviction. But Mrs Vera Baird, the Solicitor General, said that she had ‘reservations about ceasing to refer to the widely used 6 per cent figure’. Ashok Kumar, the Labour MP for Middlesbrough South, was found dead, from natural causes, police suggested; he was 53. David Beckham ruptured an Achilles’ tendon on the football field, ending his chances of playing in his fourth World Cup this summer. The Prime Minister wrote to him, and Miss Carol Ann Duffy, the Poet Laureate, wrote a poem on the event, including the lines: ‘Women hid him, concealed him in girls’ sarongs;/ Days of sweetmeats, spices, silver songs.’ Miss Kate Winslet, the actress, and Mr Sam Mendes, the film director, announced that they were separating after being married for seven years.
Mrs Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said that it was an ‘insult’ that Israel’s plans to build 1,600 new homes for Jews in east Jerusalem had been announced during the visit to Israel of Mr Joseph Biden, the US Vice-President, last week. Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Mr Michael Oren, was quoted by the Israeli press as saying that relations between the two countries were in their worst crisis since 1975. The US envoy, Mr George Mitchell, postponed a visit to Israel to try to set up the resumption of indirect peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. President Barack Obama of the United States said he was ‘outraged’ by the drive-by shootings by drug gangsters of three people connected to the US consulate in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez; last year 2,600 drug-related murders were committed in the city. The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall began a visit to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic by laying a wreath at the tomb in Warsaw of Father Jerzy Popeiluszko, murdered by Communist secret police in 1984 and due to be beatified by the Pope in June.
Tens of thousands of protesters in Bangkok called on the Prime Minister of Thailand, Mr Abhisit Vejjajiva, to stand down and allow a general election. The coalition of Mr Nouri Maliki, the Prime Minister of Iraq, was ahead in preliminary results from the general election. Two pedestrian suicide bombers killed at least 43 in Lahore, Pakistan. Another bomb earlier in the week had killed 13 in Lahore. A suicide bomber in a rickshaw killed 13 at a checkpoint at Saidu Sharif in the Swat valley in Pakistan. In Afghanistan a roadside bomb killed nine in the province of Kandahar, and another three in the province of Ghazni. A Sufi group called Ahlu Sunna Wal Jamaa signed an agreement at African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa with the Somali government, such as it is, to fight the al-Shabab movement, inspired by al-Qaida, which controls much of Somalia. Mr Muammar Gaddafi, the ruler of Libya, said that Nigeria should be split into two nations, one Muslim, one Christian. Turkey made it a crime punishable by three years in jail for a woman to go abroad for artificial insemination. European Union finance ministers agreed ‘technical modalities’ by which the EU could come to the aid of debt-stricken Greece if it asked. The China National Offshore Oil Corporation paid £2 billion for a half stake in the Argentine oil group Bridas. He Pingping, from China, the world’s shortest man at 2ft 5in, died in Rome aged 21. CSH
Comments