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George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that he was in favour of increasing the minimum wage by an amount greater than that of inflation. The International Monetary Fund raised its expectation of growth for Britain in 2014 to 2.4 per cent, from a forecast of 1.9 per cent last October. Unemployment fell to 7.1 per cent. More than 3.3 million people between the ages of 20 and 34 were living with parents in 2013, 26 per cent of that age group, the Office for National Statistics said, and a number 25 per cent bigger than in 1996. London’s share of national output reached 22.4 per cent in 2012, according to official data. Nicolas Anelka of West Bromwich Albion was charged by the Football Association of making the quenelle gesture invented by the French comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala and held by many to be anti-Semitic. Three fans of Tottenham Hotspur were charged with shouting ‘Yid’ in support of their team, nicknamed the Yids. A disease similar to Alabama Rot killed 17 dogs in Britain, mostly in the New Forest.
The Police Federation, according to an independent review that it set up last year under the former Home Office permanent secretary Sir David Normington, needed fundamental reforms. Steve Williams, the chairman of the Police Federation, apologised to Andrew Mitchell, the former chief whip, about whose behaviour a policeman has admitted lying. David Silvester, a councillor in Oxfordshire, was suspended from Ukip because he repeated the widely held opinion that recent floods were God’s punishment for the legalisation of same-sex marriage. A 15,000-ton heap of tyres caught fire at Sherburn-in-Elmet, North Yorkshire, burning for five days and sending a thick plume of smoke 6,000 feet into the air.
Lord Rennard was suspended from the Liberal Democrat party for 14 weeks after refusing to apologise for the distress caused by alleged acts of sexual harassment that he denied committing. Southwark Crown Court heard from Constance Briscoe, a part-time judge being tried on charges of intending to pervert the course of justice, that the disgraced former wife of Chris Huhne, the disgraced former Lib Dem cabinet minister, had wanted to tell the press ‘that Chris had relations with men before they got married’. Lord McAlpine of West Green, the former Conservative party treasurer, died, aged 71, his last months marred by false suggestions by Newsnight and people like Sally Bercow that he had been a child abuser. Sir Christopher Chataway, in 1954 pacemaker to Sir Roger Bannister’s four-minute mile, died, aged 82.
Abroad
A report on Syria by Sir Desmond de Silva, the former chief prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and others, said that 50,000 photographs of 11,000 dead detainees, some emaciated, some with eyes gouged out, constituted ‘compelling evidence’ of war crimes by President Bashar al-Assad. Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the UN, invited Iran to peace talks on Syria in Switzerland this week, and a day later withdrew the invitation. Bombs in Baghdad killed 26 in one day; more than 650 have died in Iraq so far this month. Lightning damaged the right thumb of the 125 foot statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro.
In South Sudan, rebels and government forces fought over Malakal, which has changed hands several times since mid-December. In Bor, patients in hospital beds were shot by rebels. Perhaps 10,000 people have died in the fighting and half a million have fled. Catherine Samba-Panza, 59, the mayor of Bangui, was elected interim President of the Central African Republic. ‘I smoked pot as a kid,’ President Barack Obama of the United States told the New Yorker. ‘I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.’ The ancient wooden village of Laerdalsoyri in Norway burnt down.
A suicide-bomb and gun attack by the Taleban on the Taverna du Liban in Kabul killed 21, eight of them Afghans. Pakistani aircraft bombed suspected Taleban positions in North Waziristan after an ambush on government troops killed 20. In Kiev, police clashed with protesters against the government of Ukraine. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister of Turkey, visited Brussels for revived talks on membership of the European Union. Credit card details of 20 million Koreans have been stolen and sold to marketing firms. Claudio Abbado, the conductor, died, aged 80. After 31 months in hibernation, the space probe Rosetta sent a radio message from 500 million miles away, en route to Comet 67P. Olympic facilities at Sochi, Russia, were found to have two lavatory pedestals in the same cubicle. –CSH
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