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Working parents were promised up to £1,200 a year per child towards child-care costs. Unemployment rose by 7,000 to 2.52 million between November and January. The Department for Communities predicted that 12,769 Romanians and Bulgarians would enter Britain after restrictions are lifted on 31 December. Eric Joyce, the MP for Falkirk, was ‘prohibited from purchasing and being served alcoholic beverages’ in Parliament after spending a night in a police cell after a brawl during at the Commons Sports and Social Club.
MPs voted for a Bill bringing in regulation of the press under a royal charter. Newspapers that did not join the new scheme would be vulnerable to exemplary damages if they were found to be at fault in future. This was all agreed upon by tripartite talks in the middle of the night and adopted by David Cameron, the Prime Minister, who had previously described statutory regulation as ‘crossing the Rubicon’. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, visited Chichester rather than attending the inauguration of the Pope, two days before his own enthronisation; he was represented in Rome by Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York. The largest civil service union went on strike for a day. Two men went on trial, charged with plotting to kidnap and behead the singer Joss Stone. Pork DNA was found in halal chicken sausages at a Church of England primary school in Westminster, the council said.
Banks in Cyprus faced insolvency when the government announced a levy on money held in accounts in order to meet German demands that an EU bailout for the country should be reduced from €17 billion to €10 billion. The government said that a levy of 9.9 per cent would be imposed on balances of more €100,000, and 6.75 per cent on those of less. Not a single Cypriot MP voted for the measure. The banks had to be kept closed for several days to avoid a run.
Pope Francis, formerly Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, said during his inaugural mass in St Peter’s Square that all human beings, not Christians alone, had a vocation of ‘protecting all creation’. The National People’s Congress made Li Keqiang the premier of China in succession to Wen Jiabao by 2,940 votes to three, and confirmed Xi Jinping as the new president, in succession to Hu Jintao. President Barack Obama of the United States visited Israel. Australian scientists found that lorry drivers who drank coffee had fewer crashes.
At least 48 were killed in a series of bombings in Baghdad on the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Computers belonging to banks and broadcasters in South Korea were simultaneously paralysed in a suspected cyber attack. Two Italian marines, charged with murdering two Indian fishermen, whom they said they’d mistaken for pirates, were allowed to return to Italy to vote, but did not return. The Indian Supreme Court then ruled that the Italian ambassador, Daniele Mancini, who had stood surety for the accused, had no diplomatic immunity in the case and must remain in India. –CSH
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