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Two men from the Aberystwyth area and a man from West Yorkshire were arrested on suspicion of fraud over the presence of horsemeat in supermarket frozen food. Whitbread, a large hotel chain, found horse DNA in products sold as beef, and horse DNA was also found in cottage pies supplied to 47 schools in Lancashire. In a search for more horsemeat, 2,501 supermarket tests on processed meat products, ordered by the Food Standards Agency, found that none contained more than 1 per cent horse. Tests continued. A French company, Spanghero, through which horsemeat had reached Britain in frozen beef products, had its licence restored to produce ready meals, minced meat and sausages, but not to stock frozen meat. Richard Briers, the actor best known for his role in The Good Life, died aged 79.
Britain is to send 40 soldiers to Mali for up to 15 months as part as an EU training mission for infantry and artillery. In a Harris poll, 50 per cent of respondents said they would vote in a referendum for Britain to leave the EU, with 33 per cent saying they would vote to stay in. The pound reached a 15-month low against the euro. Retail sales fell unexpectedly in January, by 0.6 per cent from December and also by 0.6 per cent from the previous January; snow was blamed. Alistair Buchanan, the chief executive of Ofgem, said British energy reserves would become ‘uncomfortably tight’ through the closure of power stations, a reduction in foreign gas supplies and increased demand. BBC news journalists went on strike for a day, giving audiences a holiday from Today and Newsnight.
Oscar Pistorius, aged 26, the South African double-amputee who runs on blades and won a place in the Olympic Games, winning two golds in the Paralympic Games, was charged with premeditated murder after his girlfriend was shot dead at his house. Armed robbers made off with diamonds worth €50 million as they were being loaded on to a flight to Switzerland at Brussels airport. A Banksy mural of a boy making jubilee bunting on a sewing machine disappeared from a wall in Whymark Avenue, Wood Green, north London, and was listed within days for auction in Miami, with an estimate of £320,000-£452,000.
The United States and the European Union planned formal talks on a free-trade agreement adumbrated in President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. The German economy contracted for only the second time in nearly four years in the fourth quarter of 2012, by 0.6 per cent, slightly worse than expected. The French economy shrank by 0.3 per cent in the same quarter. Mandiant, an American computer security company, said that one of the world’s ‘most prolific cyber espionage groups’ called Unit 61398 was run by a secret branch of China’s military. American Airlines and US Airways announced plans to merge and form the world’s biggest airline. Norwegian state television broadcast 12 hours of wood burning in a fireplace.
Hamadi Jebali resigned as Prime Minister of Tunisia after failing to form a coalition in response to the killing of the opposition leader Chokri Belaid and the demonstrations it provoked. The Iranian supreme court upheld death sentences on a banker and three businessmen, one of whom was alleged to have fraudulently benefited from links to the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. An asteroid 150ft in diameter narrowly missed the Earth, coming within 17,000 miles of a collision. Earlier the same day, fragments from a meteor injured 1,200 people when it broke up over Chebarkul, in the Russian Urals region of Chelyabinsk, breaking two million square feet of windows.
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