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The Food Standards Agency said that of 3,634 tests carried out in the United Kingdom so far, 35 had shown the presence of horsemeat in 13 different products. The European Union ordered Britain to return £85 million for failing to comply with rules on payments to British farmers. The government said that from April, doctors from the European Union wishing to work in Britain must be able to speak English. The BBC published online about 3,000 pages (with 3 per cent ‘redacted’) of interviews, emails and submissions from its executives and journalists to the inquiry headed by Nick Pollard that reported last December on the shelving of a Newsnight investigation into sexual abuse by Jimmy Savile.
Cardinal Keith O’Brien resigned as Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, after three priests and a former priest in Scotland alleged that he had behaved ‘inappropriately’ towards them three decades ago. The Cardinal decided not to join the conclave to elect the next pope. Several women alleged impropriety by Lord Rennard, the former chief executive of the Liberal Democrats, which he denied. Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Lib Dems, said he had heard general concerns, but no specifics. A retrial was ordered for Vicky Pryce, the former wife of Chris Huhne, on charges of perverting the course of justice, after the judge at Southwark Crown Court discharged the jury for showing a ‘fundamental deficit in understanding’ after tabling ten written questions to him. The retrial revealed that Constance Briscoe, Britain’s most prominent black judge, had been arrested on suspicion of lying to police about her part in exposing Huhne’s scheme to avoid speeding points. Ray Cusick, the man who designed the Daleks for Doctor Who, died, aged 84.
Pope Benedict XVI turned into Benedict XVI, Emeritus Bishop of Rome, when his resignation became effective. The Italians elections produced a stalemate with Pier Luigi Bersani’s centre-left bloc narrowly beating Silvio Berlusconi’s but failing to gain a majority in the Senate; a protest movement led by the comedian Beppe Grillo won a quarter of the vote. Horse DNA was found in six tons of minced beef and 2,400 packs of lasagne bolognese seized from a company in Bologna. Dirk Niebel, Germany’s development minister, suggested that horsemeat mislabelled as beef should be given to the poor; ‘We can’t just throw away good food,’ he said.
Oscar Pistorius, the South African Paralympic champion who faces murder charges over the shooting of his girlfriend, was granted bail on the fourth day of a hearing by a magistrate who took two hours to deliver his finding in a courtroom crowded with news cameras. Detective Hilton Botha, who faces separate allegations of attempted murder, was removed from the case. Oscar Pistorius’s brother Carl was facing separate charges of culpable homicide over the death of a woman motorcyclist in a traffic accident.
A car bomb attack on the ruling Baath party’s headquarters in Damascus killed about 100 people. It was described by Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN special envoy to Syria, as a war crime. A series of Scud missile attacks on rebel positions in Aleppo was condemned by the US State Department. Israel granted Genie Energy, a New Jersey company, a licence to explore for oil and gas in the occupied Golan Heights. Egypt, the world’s largest wheat importer, reduced overseas purchases as its currency weakened against the US dollar. Egyptian authorities suspended hot air balloon flights near Luxor after the deaths of 19 tourists in a crash. Burka sellers in Kabul reported a decline in trade, through a decline in demand and cheap Chinese competition. –CSH
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