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A government proposal to make marriage open to two people of the same sex was ‘a grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right’, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, said. Steve Hilton is taking a year’s unpaid leave from his post as director of strategy for David Cameron, the Prime Minister. Mr Cameron admitted after days of uncertainty that he had ridden several times a horse called Raisa, lent by the Metropolitan Police to Rebekah Brooks when she was editor of the Sun; Mr Cameron said that he had been sorry to learn that the horse had since died.
Tesco said it would provide 20,000 extra jobs in the next two years. Nissan is to build a new car at Sunderland, creating, it said, 2,000 jobs. The average price of unleaded petrol reached a new high of 137.30p a litre, and diesel continued to reach new heights. Wood Green Crown Court convicted John Kafunda, 22, of Ilford, and Reece Donovan, 24, of Romford, seen on camera during last August’s riots pretending to help a Malaysian student whose jaw had been broken in an earlier assault, but stealing items worth £500 from his bag. They will be sentenced next week. Roman Abramovich sacked Andre Villas-Boas as manager of Chelsea, the seventh in eight years.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, speaking in America, said that his country was ‘determined to prevent Iran having nuclear weapons’ and ‘none of us can afford to wait much longer’. President Barack Obama of the United States, had, a day earlier, warned against ‘loose talk of war’ with Iran. Thousands of refugees crossed from Syria into Lebanon. Syrian forces moved into the heavily shelled district of Baba Amr in Homs. Video footage was circulated of men smashing dozens of gravestones of Christians and at least one Jew at the British military cemetery in Benghazi and the Benghazi war cemetery; ‘This is a grave of a Christian,’ one man is heard to say as he uproots the headstone.
Vladimir Putin was elected as President of Russia, for a term of six years, with 64 per cent of the vote, according to official figures. In a rally in Pushkin Square, Moscow, 20,000 protested against electoral fraud. Mitt Romney won six out of 10 states, including Ohio narrowly, on ‘super Tuesday’ in the Republican primaries. Turkish Airlines began regular flights to Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. An ammunition dump at a military base in Brazzaville, Congo, exploded, killing at least 180 and wounding 1,500. India banned the export of cotton, while China has accumulated millions of tons. Singapore announced that the 200,000 maids in the country must be given one day a week off, from next year.
Leaders of the 27 European Union countries, apart from Britain and the Czech Republic, signed a fiscal compact, requiring countries to incorporate balanced budgets into law. Spain said its deficit would be 5.8 per cent this year, instead of its target of 4.4 per cent. The Netherlands said its deficit would be 4.5 per cent, against a target of 4.1. Geir Haarde, the former Prime Minister of Iceland, went on trial, charged with negligence over the 2008 financial crisis. Allen Stanford, the financier and cricket sponsor, was found guilty by a court in Houston, Texas, of running a $7 billion Ponzi scheme. Thousands of passengers on the Eurostar service from Paris to London were delayed for up to nine hours by an electrical failure. A three-year-old chicken nugget from McDonald’s, Dakota City, Nebraska, said to resemble George Washington, sold for $8,100. CSH
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