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Mr David Laws resigned as Chief Secretary to the Treasury after it was revealed that he had used parliamentary allowances to pay £40,000 rent over five years for a room in the house of a man with whom he had long had a sexual relationship. ‘My motivation throughout has not been to maximise profit,’ Mr Laws said, ‘but to simply protect our privacy and my wish not to reveal my sexuality.’ Mr Danny Alexander, also a Liberal Democrat, replaced Mr Laws in the Cabinet. Mr Michael Moore, a Liberal Democrat too, replaced Mr Alexander as Scottish Secretary. A new code of conduct stipulated that ‘where practicable, ministers are encouraged to use public transport’. Mr Graham Brady was elected chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench Conservatives after David Cameron backed down on admitting ministers to its deliberations. Mr John Prescott, the Rev Ian Paisley, Mr Michael Howard, Mr John Gummer, Mr John Maples, Sir Michael Spicer, Mr Quentin Davies, Mr John Hutton, Mr John Reid, Mr Paul Boateng, Sir Ian Blair, Sir Ken Macdonald, Mr Guy Black and Miss Sue Nye (blamed by Gordon Brown for letting Gillian Duffy speak to him) were among 56 made life peers in the dissolution honours.
Stephen Griffiths, aged 40, was charged with the murders of three prostitutes in Bradford, and, when asked his name at a magistrates’ court hearing, answered: ‘The Crossbow Cannibal’. Lee Murray, a cage fighter by profession, was jailed in Morocco for his part in the £53 million Securitas robbery in Kent in 2006. Two teenagers whose deaths in March were linked to mephedrone had not taken the drug, toxicology tests revealed; in April, mephedrone was classified as a Class B drug. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the retired Archbishop of Westminster, will join the archbishops of Boston, New York, Toronto and Ottawa in an Apostolic Visitation of Ireland, to report to the Pope about sex abuse. Prudential’s plans to buy AIA, the Asian insurance branch of AIG, for £24 billion went awry amid rebellion by shareholders. Strikes by British Airways cabin crews belonging to the union Unite lumbered on for another week. Hundreds of runners and spectators defied a ban to chase a large round cheese down Cooper’s Hill, near Brockworth, Gloucestershire.
Ten people died when Israeli troops boarded six ships manned by pro-Palestinian campaigners carrying aid for Gaza. The soldiers, who boarded by night in international waters, had been attacked with iron bars before they opened fire, Israel said. The flotilla had been organised by two groups: Free Gaza, and a Turkish group called the IHH (the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief). Six hundred and thirty-seven of the campaigners, including 41 Britons, were held in Israeli prisons until they could be deported. Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, cancelled a meeting with President Barack Obama of the United States and flew home to Israel. The United Nations Security Council condemned the ‘acts’ which led to the deaths. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt ordered the Rafah border crossing to be opened for aid to the Gaza Strip. The Turkish Prime Minister, Mr Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told parliament that the raid was a ‘bloody massacre’. A day earlier, Mr Erdogan had cancelled a trip to Argentina after the unveiling of a statue of Kemal Atatürk in Buenos Aires was cancelled, which Turkey blamed on Armenian lobbyists.
BP failed in an attempt to ‘top kill’ with pumped mud and junk an oil well that has been leaking perhaps 5,000 barrels a day into the Gulf of Mexico since 20 April. President Obama said: ‘If our laws were broken, leading to this death and destruction, my solemn pledge is that we will bring those responsible to justice.’ BP shares lost 14 per cent of their value on one day. The volcano Pacaya, 20 miles from Guatemala City, erupted, sending hundreds fleeing and leaving aeroplanes at the airport capped with a layer of ash. The tropical storm Agatha then killed scores in Central America. The volcano Tungurahua erupted in Ecuador. Temperatures on the Mexico City underground railway, used by 1.4 billion people a year, rose to 32°C. A stand-up comedian was elected mayor of Reykjavik. Lawyers acting for the estate of Hergé called legal attempts to ban Tintin in the Congo (1931) for racism a form of ‘book burning’. Louise Bourgeois, the French-born sculptor, died in New York, aged 98. Dennis Hopper, a star of Easy Rider (1969), died, aged 74. Britain and France opposed a European Union plan to put money from a levy on banks into a fund to insure against their failure. President Horst Köhler of Germany resigned after saying that the country’s military efforts in Afghanistan protected Germany’s commercial interests. A 19-year-old German schoolgirl won the Eurovision Song Contest, in which Britain came last of 25. CSH
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