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Tom Hayes, aged 35, a former City trader who rigged the Libor rates daily for nearly four years while working in Tokyo for UBS, then Citigroup, from 2006 until 2010, was jailed by Southwark Crown Court for 14 years for conspiracy to defraud. The government sold a 5.4 per cent stake in Royal Bank of Scotland, for 330p a share, against the 500p or so that it paid six or seven years ago to save the banking group; the government now owns 73 per cent of RBS. Monitor, the regulator for health services in England, sent out letters ‘challenging the plans of the 46 foundation trusts with the biggest deficits’. Kids Company, the charity founded by Camila Batmanghelidjh, appeared likely to close. Dairy farmers protested at the price they are paid for milk by buying it from supermarkets and giving it away. Andrew Hawes, from Leiston, Suffolk, dressed in camouflage and hid in bushes to catch owners who let dogs foul the path.
The Bishop of Dover said that David Cameron, the Prime Minister, had ‘dehumanised’ migrants by saying ‘you have got a swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean, seeking a better life’. Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, said Britain had ‘got a grip’ on the crisis at Calais, where hundreds of migrants attempted each night to stow away in lorries and trains. Manston airport, 28 miles from the Eurotunnel terminal, was set aside as a lorry park during disruption. Haulage companies were found to have paid more than £4 million in fines after migrants were found in their lorries. The London Underground was closed by a strike. RAF Tornado jets, due to have been withdrawn from service last March, would be available for air strikes against the Islamic State until 2017, according to Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary. Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law, half sister and her mother died with the pilot of their private jet when it crashed while attempting to land at Blackbushe airport, Hampshire.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission said it would investigate whether officers failed to pursue allegations of child abuse made against Sir Edward Heath, the former Prime Minister. In the Labour leadership contest, Jeremy Corbyn received nominations from 152 constituency parties, Andy Burnham 111, Yvette Cooper 106 and Liz Kendall 18. The nominations have only indicative value. Dave Ward, the general secretary of the Communications Workers Union, said Mr Corbyn was the antidote to the Blairite ‘virus’. Cilla Black, the singer and game-show hostess, died, aged 72. Robert Conquest, who exposed the Stalinist purges and famine of the 1930s, died, aged 98.
Abroad
When the Greek stock market reopened after five weeks, trading in bank shares was suspended after they fell by 30 per cent; the next day a further fall followed. Cristiano Ronaldo, the Real Madrid football player, gave his agent Jorge Mendes a Greek island as a wedding present. No one was killed when two huge cranes restoring the Juliana bridge over the Rhine at Alphen in the Netherlands toppled from a barge and flattened five houses.
The Taleban in Afghanistan admitted that Mullah Omar, its commander, had died in 2013, but insisted that, far from having been shot in Pakistan, he had died of an illness in Afghanistan. Syed Tayyab Agha, the head of the Afghan Taleban’s political office in Qatar, resigned, complaining that Mullah Omar’s successor, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, had been chosen through the influence of those in Pakistan who favoured peace talks. In Pakistan, Shafqat Hussain, convicted of killing a child in 2004 when he was 14, was hanged; his supporters said his confession had been obtained by torture. India and Bangladesh swapped control of 160 small enclaves in each other’s territory; of the 50,000 people involved, 1,000 chose to keep Indian nationality and will have to resettle in the state of West Bengal.
Pro-government forces in Yemen, backed by Saudi Arabia, retook al-Anad airbase, north of Aden, from Houthi rebels. Wildfires raged north of San Francisco, including one that covered 90 square miles. It was observed that China’s song for its Winter Olympics resembled ‘Let It Go’ from the Disney film Frozen. From a boat that put in at Corsica, French police seized a Picasso, ‘Head of a Young Woman’ (1906), valued at £17 million, which a Spanish court had barred from leaving the country. Italian police stopped Snoop Dogg the singer with $422,000 in his luggage, a week after he accused Swedish police of ‘racial profiling’ when they tested him for drugs. CSH
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