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David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said, with regard to the crisis in Libya, ‘It is right for us to look at plans for a no-fly zone.’ Earlier, during his tour of the Middle East, he had apologised for the slow evacuation of British citizens from Libya. Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, on being asked if he was in charge during Mr Cameron’s absence, said, ‘Yeah, I suppose I am. I forgot about that.’ He hurried back from a family skiing holiday. The British embassy in Tripoli was abandoned. HMS Cumberland, a British frigate on its way back to Britain to be scrapped, rescued 207 people from Tripoli and returned for more. RAF Hercules aircraft made repeated landings in the desert to rescued British and other foreign workers, with the help of special forces. Details were made known of more than 10,000 members of the Armed Forces, some on service in Afghanistan, who are to lose their jobs.
Royal Bank of Scotland reported losses of £1.13 billion for 2010, but paid bonuses of £950 million to investment bankers. The Lloyds banking group made pre-tax profits of £2.21 billion, compared with a £6.3 billon loss in 2009. Revised figures put the shrinkage of GDP in December at 0.6 per cent, not 0.5 per cent as previously estimated. A computer failure at London Stock Exchange stopped trading for a morning. A fox was found living 944ft up on the 72nd floor of the Shard tower at London Bridge; it was trapped and released.
Britain is to stop direct aid to 16 countries, including Russia, China and Iraq, although the aid budget will increase by a third in this Parliament. The European Court of Justice ruled that insurers must not charge different premiums to men and women because of their sex, although young women have fewer motoring accidents and old women live longer than men. Lord Patten was named as the government’s preferred candidate to be the next chairman of the BBC Trust. A shop in Covent Garden put on sale ice-cream called Baby Gaga, made from mothers’ milk. Scotland introduced a kind of Asbo for badly behaved dogs.
Abroad
Libyan government forces fired upon protesters in the west of the country as Benghazi and other cities broke free from the rule of Colonel Gaddafi, who remained in Tripoli and insisted ‘All my people love me.’ He said on television that he was a fighter not a quitter. His forces recaptured Brega. The UN referred him to the International Criminal Court. Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, who resigned as justice minister and went over to the rebels, spoke of a new body preparing for elections. General Abdel Fattah Younes al-Abidi, the interior minister, also went over to the rebels. Foreign mercenaries had been used against the people. In the first ten days of the protests, the UN estimated that 1,000 had died, but foreign reporters found it impossible to reach the areas of conflict. In that time some 140,000 foreign workers had left the country by land, and 20,000 Egyptians became stranded on the Tunisian border.
Mohammed Ghannouchi, the interim prime minister of Tunisia, resigned after crowds, despite the use of teargas, repeatedly gathered in Tunis calling for his resignation. Michèle Alliot-Marie, the French foreign minister, resigned because of her contacts with the old regime in Tunisia. A Shia opposition leader returned to Bahrain after the government dropped outstanding charges against him. Police dispersed opposition supporters in Tehran. Zimbabwe arrested 46 people for watching a video of unrest in north Africa, and some were charged with treason. Nine died during a day of street protests in Iraq. Pakistan’s minorities minister, Shahbaz Bhatti, the only Christian in the cabinet, was shot dead after speaking against abuse of the blasphemy laws. In southern Afghanistan, two bombs killed eight at a dog fight, a popular pastime.
Fine Gael won the most seats in the Irish elections and Enda Kenny set about forming a coalition government. Gerry Adams, the President of Sinn Fein, was one of a dozen from the party who won seats. The authorities in Christchurch, New Zealand, put the dead and missing in the earthquake at 200. Fighting broke out in Ivory Coast. Fuel had to be removed from the Bushehr nuclear power station in Iran because of malfunction, which some attributed to the effects of the Stuxnet computer virus. Five men went on trial in South Korea accused of attempted murder during a pirate attack on a tanker off Oman in January. India froze rail fares ahead of state elections. CSH
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