The MH17 disaster

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David Cameron, the Prime Minister, told Parliament that President Vladimir Putin of Russia should end his country’s support for separatists in Ukraine, some of whom it had provided with a training facility in south-west Russia. Licences to export arms to Russia were found still to be in place. Theresa May, the Home Secretary, announced a public inquiry into the death of the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB officer who died in 2006 in a London hospital after he was poisoned with polonium. Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, was criticised by some MPs from rival parties for appearing on television sampling tequila instead of somehow doing something about the crisis. Prince George of Cambridge celebrated his first birthday.

Peter Clarke, the former counter-terrorism chief, in his report on the so-called Trojan Horse affair, said there had been ‘co-ordinated, deliberate and sustained action, carried out by a number of associated individuals, to introduce an intolerant and aggressive Islamic ethos into a few schools in Birmingham’, and that officials failed to act on what they knew two years ago. The Home Office does not know if more than 175,000 people who have no right to be in Britain have left, according to a report by the National Audit Office. Home Affairs Select Committee chairman Keith Vaz asked why 20 officers were used to arrest, at her daughter’s wedding in London, a Colombian woman who had worked for seven years as a cleaner for Mark Harper, the former immigration minister. Nick Griffin resigned as leader of the British National Party after 15 years.

After its defeat by India in the second Test, England began to look around for a captain to replace Alastair Cook. Steven Gerrard announced his retirement from international football.