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The International Monetary Fund said the British economy was on the right path. A day earlier, a group of left-wing economists had written to the Observer describing the government’s ‘breakneck deficit-reduction plan’ as ‘self-defeating’. William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, visited Benghazi and held talks with the leader of Libya’s National Transitional Council. For the first time British helicopters attacked government positions in Libya. An explosion at Chevron’s oil refinery at Pembroke Dock killed four. A large fire took hold in a waste oil depot at Kingsnorth industrial estate, Hoo, Kent. Pour Moi won the Derby by a head from Treasure Beach, with Carlton House, the Queen’s tenth attempt in the race, half a length behind.
Theresa May, the Home Secretary, said some of the £63 million annual budget of the government’s anti-terrorism programme, called Prevent, had reached the extremist organisations that it should have been confronting; a revised strategy would insist on ‘fundamental British values’ and cost £36 million. The Commons Public Accounts Committee said that there could be a gap of hundreds of millions of pounds in the funding of universities because more than expected were to charge close to the maximum of £9,000 a year. In Oxford, Congregation, the 3,700-strong body of academics, passed, by 283 to five votes, a motion of no confidence in David Willetts, the universities minister. An oriental plane planted in 1760 at Corsham Court, Wiltshire, was identified as the tree with the greatest spread in Britain, its branches reaching out to an average 210ft.
Abroad
President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen was wounded by missile fragments in an attack on his compound in Saana, and was flown off for treatment in Saudi Arabia. His opponents rejoiced and Saudi Arabia was said to have arranged a week’s truce. Syria claimed that 120 members of the security forces had been killed at the town of Jisr al-Shughour, near the Turkish border; residents of the town posted messages on Facebook saying they feared an attack by government troops. Syrian television said that Israeli troops had shot dead 20 protestors trying to force their way across the border into the Golan Heights. Ilyas Kashmiri, a leading commander in al-Qa’eda, was said to have been killed in Pakistan by an American drone. Volcanoes in the Puyehue-Cordón Caulle range, 500 miles south of Santiago in Chile, erupted, and ash clouds caused flights to be cancelled.
In an outbreak of Escherichia coli infection that killed 23 in Germany, evidence pointed to dirty German beansprouts as the culprit, not Spanish cucumbers as the Germans had claimed. The European Commission proposed aid worth €150 million for farmers whose products have been shunned. Jose Socrates, the former prime minister of Portugal, resigned as leader of the socialist party after social democrats and conservatives won most seats in a general election. After meeting Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, President Barack Obama of the United States said that the European debt crisis must not be allowed to threaten the global economy. Russia and Norway agreed to divide up the Barents Sea for oil and gas exploration. The Pope visited Croatia.
Nato carried out daytime raids on Tripoli on Colonel Gaddafi’s 69th birthday. Japan said that twice the amount of radioactivity that had been previously estimated was released by the destruction of the Fukushima power station by a tsunami in March. Government forces quelled an army mutiny in Burkina Faso and at least seven were killed. Julian and Adrian Riester, identical twins and Franciscan friars, died in Florida hours apart, aged 92. New Zealand mourned a 16-year-old sheep called Shrek, which had eluded shearing for six years by hiding in caves. CSH
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