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Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, commenting on the public sector wage freeze, said: ‘I can’t promise to reverse that now.’ Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, said it was ‘absolutely right’ to place employment before pay rises. But Len McCluskey of the Unite union called it a ‘Blairite coup’ and Mark Serwotka of the Public and Commercial Services Union, called it ‘hugely disappointing’. Inflation fell in December to 4.2 per cent from 4.8 per cent (by CPI) or to 4.8 per cent from 5.2 per cent (by RPI). Thieves dug a 100ft tunnel to a video shop in Manchester over the New Year, and got away with £6,000; a similar tunnel had been discovered at the same place in 2007.
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David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that he was happy to meet Alex Salmond, the First Minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party, to discuss a referendum on Scottish independence, the date and terms of which were under dispute. The government is to consider proposals for a new airport in the Thames estuary nicknamed Boris Island after the Mayor of London. The government supported a scheme to give the Queen a royal yacht to mark her Diamond Jubilee as long as no public money was used. Police removed the tents of protestors in Parliament Square under the new Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act. A model of the front door of 10 Downing Street, made by Brendan Jamison out of 5,117 sugar cubes, is to go on exhibition inside 10 Downing Street.
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Tesco shares lost 16 per cent of their value after the chain announced poor trading over Christmas. Management at Barratts the shoe chain agreed to buy 89 of its shops to save 1,100 jobs, but another 39 will close, with the loss of 680 jobs. Energy companies purported to cut the price of electricity or gas, on standard-rate tariffs. Abu Qatada, an Islamist convicted in Jordan of terrorist offences, won an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights against deportation to Jordan from Britain, lest evidence obtained through torture be used against him. Harry Redknapp, the manager of Tottenham Hotspur, was robbed outside the Atletico Madrid stadium when two men on their knees tugged at his trousers.
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Abroad
France lost its AAA rating from Standard and Poor’s, which took it down one notch, along with Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia and Malta; four other eurozone countries were brought down two notches — Italy, Spain, Cyprus and Portugal, the last reaching junk status. The European Commission criticised Hungary for taking ‘no effective action’ to contain its deficit. George Osborne, the British chancellor, visited Hong Kong and for talks ‘on establishing London as the new hub for the renminbi market’. The Chinese economy grew by 9.2 per cent in 2011, down from 10.4 per cent in 2010. Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Premier, visited Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, Abdul Latif Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh, a descendant of the 18th-century Islamic revivalist Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, became the new head of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the religious police.
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Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani of Qatar said that Arab countries should send troops into Syria to end the bloodshed there. More than 400 had been killed since the Arab League sent monitors on 26 December. In Iraq, a suicide bomber killed 53 people in Basra in an attack on Shia pilgrims. A bomb killed at least 17 in an attack on a Shia religious procession in the central Pakistani city of Khanpur. Yousuf Raza Gilani, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, faced prosecution on corruption charges and the threat of a military coup, while MPs passed a resolution in support of democracy. United States authorities investigated four US Marines seen in a video apparently urinating on dead Afghans. A village of 72 families was buried by an avalanche in north-east Afghanistan.
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A cruise ship, the Costa Concordia, built in 2006 for £372 million, was holed off the island of Giglio near the Tuscan coast and listed steeply. More than 4,000 passengers and crew reached safety, but 11 were found dead and 24 were missing. The Royal Navy captured 13 Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean. Nigeria restored part of its subsidy on petrol after a week of strikes. A leader of a popular protest in the village of Wukan in Guangdong, China, was made the secretary of the local Communist party. Theo Muller, the German yoghurt makers, agreed to buy Robert Wiseman Dairies, which produces a third of Britain’s milk. CSH
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