Portrait of the week | 28 February 2013

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Moody’s reduced Britain’s credit rating from AAA to AA1. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said: ‘Far from weakening our resolve to deliver our economic recovery plan, this decision redoubles it.’ Sir Mervyn King, the governor of the bank of England, was outvoted on its Monetary Policy Committee when he proposed more quantitative easing in February. Paul Tucker, the deputy governor, said that negative interest rates should be considered. Irfan Naseer, 31, Irfan Khalid, 27, and Ashik Ali, 27, from Birmingham, were found guilty at Woolwich Crown Court of plotting to recruit a team of six or eight suicide bombers to carry out a spectacular bombing campaign. Birmingham launched a city-centre enterprise zone, one of 24 created in England, including a £189 million public library to open in September.

The Food Standards Agency said that of 3,634 tests carried out in the United Kingdom so far, 35 had shown the presence of horsemeat in 13 different products. The European Union ordered Britain to return £85 million for failing to comply with rules on payments to British farmers. The government said that from April, doctors from the European Union wishing to work in Britain must be able to speak English. The BBC published online about 3,000 pages (with 3 per cent ‘redacted’) of interviews, emails and submissions from its executives and journalists to the inquiry headed by Nick Pollard that reported last December on the shelving of a Newsnight investigation into sexual abuse by Jimmy Savile.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien resigned as Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, after three priests and a former priest in Scotland alleged that he had behaved ‘inappropriately’ towards them three decades ago. The Cardinal decided not to join the conclave to elect the next pope.