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David Cameron, the Prime Minister, reversed the suggestion by Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary, that prisoners who had pleaded guilty at an early stage should have their sentences halved. Earlier he had said that he saw no reason why Britain should be ‘dragged in’ to support a Greek bailout. Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, proposed that Greece should be allowed to default and to leave the EU. Air Chief Marshal Sir Simon Bryant, in a briefing for MPs leaked to the press, said that the RAF’s capacity for future missions was under threat if Britain’s intervention in Libya continued beyond the summer. In response Mr Cameron said: ‘There are moments when I wake up and think “You do the fighting, I’ll do the talking”.’ The Royal College of Psychiatrists said people over 65 should drink no more than half a pint of beer a day.
Dave Prentis, the leader of Unison, the union representing 1.3 million public-sector workers, said there could be protracted strikes if negotiations with the government over pension reform failed. Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor of the exchequer, said: ‘The trade unions must not walk into the trap of giving George Osborne the confrontation he wants to divert attention from a failing economy.’ Two thirds of applicants for tickets for the 2012 Olympic Games failed to get any. Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, said: ‘It has become easier to get an A at A-level or GCSE than it used to be, and that’s a problem.’ Police arrested a teenager in Essex after claims appeared online that the 2011 census database had been stolen and would be published in full.
The Church of England declared: ‘Someone in a sexually active relationship outside marriage is not eligible for the episcopate,’ but it countenanced homosexual candidates in civil partnerships if they were celibate. The BBC Trust found that it was ‘more likely than not’ that part of a Panorama film showing boys in Bangalore stitching garments for Primark was ‘not authentic’. There was rioting in east Belfast, with some shooting. Police blamed the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force. Rory McIlroy, the 22-year-old golfer from Holywood, Co. Down, won the US Open.
Abroad
Members of the EU grew jittery about Greece, which faces debts of €340 billion. Riots against austerity raged outside parliament, but the government survived a vote of confidence, its first hurdle in securing international loans of €120 billion. Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, and Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of France, proposed that private-sector creditors should ‘voluntarily’ roll over loans when they became due. Eight survived and 44 died when a Russian aeroplane crashed at Petrozavodsk. Hundreds of flights were again cancelled in Australia because of an ash cloud from the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcano in Chile. Ash from the Nabro volcano in Eritrea poisoned water and ruined crops for 5,000 Ethiopian villagers. American astronomers announced that sunspot activity was decreasing, as it had in the 17th-century ‘Little Ice Age’. An emperor penguin from the Antarctic became lost and ended up on a beach in New Zealand.
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria said in a televised message that street demonstrations were the fault of a small group of saboteurs. Demonstrations continued, as did violence and arrests by the security forces; human rights monitors have estimated that 1,300 demonstrators and 300 soldiers and police have been killed since March. A wild fire in Arizona burnt for a week, covering 27,000 acres and destroying 60 houses. Amy Winehouse was booed in Serbia and cancelled the rest of her European tour to ‘sort herself out’.
Ayman al-Zawahiri emerged as Osama bin Laden’s successor as head of al-Qa’eda; American intelligence sources put it about that the Egyptian former physician was ‘an irritable micro-manager’. A Nato missile hit a civilian building in Tripoli in error and nine people were reported killed. The Libyan opposition complained that money pledged by friendly governments had not arrived. A Tunisian court sentenced former President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and his wife Leila, who now live in Saudi Arabia, to 35 years in jail for embezzlement. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers said it would be possible in future to set up internet domains ending with corporate names instead of the present .com; but the fee would be $185,000 for each assignment. CSH
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