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Britain decided to send 40 ‘military advisers’ to Mali, 70 more with an RAF Sentinel surveillance aircraft and 20 with a C17 transport plane, and 200 to neighbouring states in a training role; Britain was ‘keen’, according to Downing Street, to aid France there. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, visited Algeria. The British economy shrank by 0.3 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to the Office for National Statistics, meaning that there was no growth at all last year. The FTSE 100 share index went above the 6,300 mark for the first time since May 2008. Qatari Diar, the property arm of the emirate of Qatar, put its £3 billion development project at the Chelsea Barracks under review. The government published its Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill. The Court of Appeal ruled that the law requiring people to disclose all previous convictions to certain employers is a breach of human rights. Someone stole a Chevrolet that the footballer Paul Scholes had left with its engine running to defrost it in the drive of his house at Greenfield, Oldham.
In revenge for the government’s dropping legislation to reform the House of Lords, Liberal Democrat MPs voted with the opposition against legislation to reduce the number of MPs and redraw constituency boundaries, defeating it by 334 votes to 292. Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Democrat party, said that the Conservatives had ‘decided to completely reinvent the wheel and tie the country up in knots’ by seeking to renegotiate the terms of Britain’s membership of the European Union. The Succession to the Crown Bill, sponsored by Mr Clegg, completed its stages in the Commons. The Liberal Democrat MP Chris Huhne and his ex-wife Vicky Pryce are to stand trail in the coming week, charged with perverting the course of justice over allegations that she took speeding points for him so he could avoid prosecution.
The route of the second phase new high-speed rail line, HS2, a fork from Birmingham to Manchester or Leeds, to be opened by 2033, was announced. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, called the £33 billion project an ‘engine for growth’. The Charity Commission wrote to the RSPCA, asking it to review its policy after it spent £326,000 prosecuting the Heythrop hunt, with which David Cameron rode before hunting was made illegal. Rupert Murdoch tweeted an apology, ‘We owe major apology for grotesque, offensive cartoon’, after the Sunday Times published a cartoon by Gerald Scarfe showing Benjamin Netanyahu bricking agonised Palestinians into a wall using bloody mortar; it appeared on Holocaust Memorial Day. The sale of five alien plants is to be a crime from 2014: water fern, parrot’s feather, floating pennywort, water primrose and Australian swamp stonecrop.
Abroad
Dozens died in a week of unrest in Egypt after a court in Port Said sentenced 21 football supporters to death for their part in violence after a game last February in which 74 were killed. Thousands defied a curfew imposed by President Mohammed Morsi. General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, the chief of the Egyptian armed forces and its minister of defence, said on Facebook: ‘The continuing conflict between political forces and their differences concerning the management of the country could lead to a collapse of the state.’ French troops were welcomed in the streets of Timbuktu as their campaign against Islamist forces in Mali continued.
Michel Sapin, the French minister for labour, said in a radio interview that France was ‘a state totally in bankruptcy’, but Pierre Moscovici, the finance minister, responded later by saying, ‘France is a truly solvent country.’ Up to 400,000 demonstrated in Paris in favour of a bill to legalise same-sex marriage, a fortnight after up to 800,000 demonstrated against it. Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, aged 75, announced that she would abdicate on 30 April, ‘Queen’s Day’, in favour of her eldest son, Willem-Alexander, aged 45.
The UN said that, across both sides, 60,000 people had died and more than 670,000 fled the country as a result of the war in Syria. The bodies of at least 70 young men, with tied hands and bullet wounds, were found in Aleppo. Iran said it had sent a monkey into space and brought it back to earth alive. In Brazil a fire in a nightclub called Kiss killed 233 in the city of Santa Maria. Floods in Mozambique drove 70,000 from their homes. Floods in Bundaberg, in Queensland, Australia, drove 7,500 from their homes. Horsemeat was found in two brands of burgers on sale in Spain. – CSH
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