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The public finances saw a £3.735 billion surplus in January, the first since July 2008, thanks to New Year tax payments. Three of the nine members of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee voted this month for a rise in interest rates. Barclays Bank paid only £113 million in corporation tax on its profits of £4.6 billion. The government plans to sell off woodland were dropped. Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary, called for an end to ‘fantasy’ defence projects that could never be completed for lack of funds. Liver specialists, writing in the Lancet, warned that ‘fewer people are drinking more’, and recommended the raising of alcohol prices. The NHS sued Reckitt Benckiser, the makers of Gaviscon, over provision of the medicine.
Abroad
Hundreds of Libyans were shot dead when they protested in the streets. Colonel Gaddafi, the country’s ruler, appeared on television to show he had not fled, and called the protesters cockroaches, cowards, traitors and rats who ‘are making your children drunk and sending them to hell’. The day before, his son Saif al-Islam had made a rambling 45-minute speech on television in which he blamed foreigners, drunks, drug addicts, and Muslim extremists for trying to split up Libya and bringing it to civil war. By then the eastern cities of al-Bayda and Benghazi were thought to be under opposition control. The internet and mobile phone networks were suppressed. Foreign mercenaries and aircraft were used to attack protestors. Two pilots flew their aircraft to Malta rather than fire on the people. Libya’s deputy ambassador to the UN call on Colonel Gaddafi to resign. Libya’s envoy to the Arab League said he was ‘joining the revolution’. The price of Brent crude rose to $106 a barrel.
Protestors were allowed to reoccupy Pearl Square in Manama, Bahrain, after a night in which four were shot dead. The Sunni king asked the crown prince to initiate dialogue with the mainly Shia protestors. Thousands continued to march in the streets, and the Bahrain Grand Prix was called off. Thousands protested in the streets of Moroccan cities, calling on the king to allow independent justice. At least five were killed in one day of street protests in Yemen. The Algerian government lifted the state of emergency in force for 19 years. In Egypt about two million gathered in Tahrir Square to mark a week since the deposition of President Hosni Mubarak. President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, who fled the country in January, was said to be in a coma in Saudi Arabia after suffering a stroke.
Christchurch in New Zealand was badly damaged by an earthquake, with scores killed and dozens trapped under ruined buildings. The 200ft spire of the Anglican cathedral toppled, and office buildings collapsed. Two Iranian warships passed through the Suez canal for the first time since 1979, bound for an exercise off Syria. Four Americans were shot dead after Somali pirates captured their 58ft yacht. A man said to have been eating popcorn noisily was shot dead in a Riga cinema during a screening of Black Swan. CSH
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