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George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, visited Glasgow to cast doubt on the probability of an independent Scotland being allowed to continue to use the pound: ‘Why would 58 million citizens give away some of their sovereignty over monetary and potentially other economic policies to five million people in another state?’ The government borrowed £120.6 billion in the financial year 2012–2013, £300 million less than in the previous year. Fitch became the second agency to downgrade Britain’s credit rating by a notch from AAA. The Co-op pulled out of buying 632 branches of Lloyds Banking Group, put up for sale to meet European competition rules. The government planned to sell its one-third stake in Urenco, the uranium enrichment company. The Football Association charged Luis Suarez, the Liverpool striker, with violent conduct after he bit Chelsea’s Branislav Ivanovic on the arm during a game.
James McCormick was convicted of fraud at the Old Bailey after making £50 million out of selling so-called bomb detectors that were nothing but novelty toys to countries such as Iraq and Thailand. PC Osman Iqbal, aged 35, of the West Midlands Police, was charged with conspiring to manage a brothel, conspiring to launder money and possession of Class A drugs with intent to supply; nine others were charged with him. Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, undertook to assuage opposition on his own benches by amending proposed legislation to allow house extensions without local authority permission. Stoke-on-Trent put on sale 35 run-down houses at £1 each to people earning between £18,000 and £30,000. A poster depicting Margaret Thatcher as the Blessed Virgin Mary in Rubens’s Assumption was banned from the London Underground, not on grounds of blasphemy but because of ‘public controversy’ over the late prime minister’s reputation.
The number of cases in the South Wales measles outbreak rose above 886, and a man of 25 who caught the disease died. Thousands of people marched through Stafford, protesting at plans to remove services such as an accident and emergency department from Stafford Hospital. London councils warned that the capital would be short of 118,000 school places by 2016, when it will have 1.25 million children to educate. A law is to be passed against discrimination on grounds of caste, Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, announced. Eleven horses from the Maktoum family’s Godolphin stable tested positive for anabolic steroids. The Conservators of the River Cam issued stab vests to water bailiffs, after tempers ran high between punt operators.
Abroad
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, aged 26, wanted by police for his part in the bombing at the Boston Marathon, which killed three and left many people missing limbs, died in a shootout after the people of Boston had been confined to their homes for 24 hours. His brother Dzhokhar, aged 19, was arrested hiding in a boat in a back yard, and suffered bullet wounds to the throat. Ethnically Chechen, the brothers had come with their family from Kyrgyzstan to America via Dagestan. Dzhokhar, a medical student, gained US citizenship in 2012. At the request of the Russian government, the FBI officials had interviewed Tamerlan in 2011 about his radical Islamist connections.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said it had thwarted a plot hatched with the help of al-Qa’eda elements in Iran to derail a train from Toronto to New York; two men were arrested. General Salim Idris, the head of the Syrian rebel military council, appealed for western aid to take back oilfields from Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qa’eda affiliated militia. Brigadier General Itai Brun, an Israeli military official, said that the Syrian government was believed to have used sarin against rebel forces. Spanish police arrested an Algerian in Zaragoza and a Moroccan in Murcia suspected of links with al-Qa’eda in the Islamic Maghreb. A car bomb at the French embassy in Tripoli injured two guards. Richie Havens, the folk singer and guitarist who became widely known after opening at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, died, aged 72.
An earthquake in Sichuan left 100,000 without food or shelter. Giorgio Napolitano, aged 87, became the first Italian president to be sworn in for a second term, and berated MPs for failing to form a government eight weeks after the general election. In the face of large street demonstrations the French parliament approved the legalisation of same-sex marriage. Bill Gates was criticised in the South Korean press after shaking hands with President Park Geun-hye with one hand in his pocket. The Dalai Lama said he would be happy if his successor was a woman because ‘biologically, females have more potential to develop affection or love’. CSH
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