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The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill was given its second reading in the Commons by 400 votes to 175. Of Conservative MPs, 127 voted for it, and 136 against. David Cameron, who did not attend the debate, called the result ‘an important step forward’. The bill does not apply to Scotland, which has its own plans, or to Northern Ireland, which does not. A provision of the bill prohibits the Church of England and the Church in Wales from conducting same-sex weddings, which are against canon law (itself part of English law). On the day of the confirmation of his election as Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Revd Justin Welby said: ‘I support the Church of England’s position on this.’ Europol said that a Champions League match played in England was among 380 European matches suspected of having been fixed; a Danish paper said it was Liverpool’s 1-0 win over Debrecen, the Hungarian team, in 2009. Horsemeat was found by the Food Standards Agency at a Freeza Meats cold store in Newry, Co. Down.
Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat politician, and energy secretary until last year, pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice over allegations that his ex-wife, Vicky Pryce, took speeding points for him in 2003. He resigned as MP for Eastleigh, Hampshire. Bitter text messages to him from his son, when aged 18, were published. The trial of Mrs Pryce on similar charges continued. About 250,000 Twitter users’ passwords were stolen by hackers along with other data. Government wine-cellars, run by the Foreign Office, sold £44,000 of stock as part of their programme of running as a self-financing unit.
George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said regulators would have the power to split up any bank deemed to be undermining the separation of high-street banking from riskier investment operations; this provision is known as ‘electrification of the ring-fence’. John Hourican resigned as the chief executive of markets and international banking at the Royal Bank of Scotland, which faces fines of £400 million over the rigging of interest rates. The average household water bill in England and Wales is to rise by 3.5 per cent to £388, the regulator Ofwat said. Manganese Bronze, which makes London taxis, was bought by the Chinese motor-manufacturers Geely. Jessops, the collapsed camera retailers, was bought by a group including the entrepreneur Peter Jones. An inquiry reported on scandalously bad treatment of patients in Mid Staffordshire between 2005 and 2009. A woman in her eighties died in hospital after being left at home in Banstead, Surrey, without food or drink for nine days when her care agency, Carefirst24, closed following a raid by the UK Border Agency. A skeleton found beneath a Leicester car park, the site of the former Greyfriars church, was confirmed by DNA to be that of Richard III.
Abroad
Israel bombed a convoy in Syria believed to contain Russian-made anti-aircraft weapons bound for Hezbollah in Lebanon. Tokyo lodged a formal protest after a Chinese vessel locked its weapon-targeting radar on a Japanese ship near the Senkaku islands in the East China Sea. In China, dozens of people were infected with hepatitis C from injections at a varicose-vein clinic in Liaoning province. Reykjavik District Court ruled that a 15-year-old girl could use the name Blaer (‘light breeze’) even though it was not on Iceland’s list of 1,853 approved names for girls.
Standard and Poor’s, the credit ratings agency, said it was being sued by the United States government over its assessment of mortgage bonds in 2007. A consortium led by Michael Dell offered $24.4 billion to buy back the computer company he founded. An explosion at the Mexico City headquarters of the oil company Pemex killed 37. Ed Koch, mayor of New York City from 1978 to 1989, died, aged 88. The Greek government ordered seamen to return to work after six days on strike. Canada withdrew the one-cent coin from circulation and prices were rounded to the nearest five cents.
About 1,800 soldiers from Chad entered Kidal, the last major town in northern Mali under rebel control, according to French forces. President François Hollande of France, in a speech to the European parliament, called for a ‘multifaceted Europe that would be neither a two-speed Europe nor an à la carte Europe’. The French government decided to repeal a law that made it illegal for a woman to wear trousers unless she was ‘holding a bicycle handlebar or the reins of a horse’. –CSH
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