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• Backbenchers tabled a debate on whether a referendum should be held by May 2013 on Britain’s continuing membership of the European Union. Police and bailiffs evicted travellers from an illegal settlement at Dale Farm, Essex. In a YouTube video, the Duke of Cambridge urged people to create or preserve 2,012 open spaces by 2012 to mark the Queen’s diamond jubilee. David, Lord Sainsbury of Turville was elected Chancellor of Cambridge with 2,893 votes, beating Brian Blessed into second place with 1,389. Rangers Football Club said it was ‘withdrawing all co-operation with the BBC’, accusing it of ‘prejudiced muckraking’. The Scottish government said it might ban the spread of coastal fish farms lest parasitic lice spread to wild fish.
Abroad
Markets fell after the spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany made pessimistic noises about the chances of the European Union summit on 23 October solving the euro crisis. Greeks held a two-day general strike against austerities; Portuguese unions called a one-day general strike for November. The population of Spain fell by 28,000 in the first six months of the year, with hundreds of thousands of migrants returning to Latin America. Olympus, the Japanese camera manufacturer, sacked its Liverpudlian president after six months; he then took evidence about company payments that he had questioned to the Serious Fraud Office in London. A woman who had served a sentence for starving a man to death was found to be holding four mentally disabled people chained in a cellar in Philadelphia, so that, it was alleged, she could claim their benefits. Liliane Bettencourt, the 88-year-old L’Oréal heiress, lost a court battle with her daughter over her £15 billion fortune.
• The Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit returned to his home town of Mitzpe Hila from five years’ captivity in Gaza after his abduction by Hamas. In return Israel freed 477 Palestinian prisoners, and promised to free another 550. Kenyan forces pressed towards the town of Afmadow, 75 miles inside Somalia and a stronghold of al-Shabab, the Islamist militant group, which has been abducting foreigners from Kenyan territory. Dozens of protesters were shot dead in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. A new biography of Van Gogh blamed his death on a teenager dressed as a cowboy.
• In Libya attempts by forces of the National Transitional Council to take Sirte went slowly, with the city being left in ruins. Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, visited Tripoli. The Queen began an 11-day tour of Australia. World deaths from malaria fell from 985,000 in 2000 to 781,000 in 2009. Fauja Singh, aged 100, from Ilford, east London, finished the Toronto Waterfront Marathon in eight hours, 25 minutes, 16 seconds. CSH
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