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A teacher who beat a boy on the head with a dumbbell was found not guilty of attempted murder; he had been tormented by pupils and suffered a mental breakdown. Lynn Redgrave, the actress, died, aged 67. The World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association suspended the snooker champion John Higgins after allegations that he had been offered bribes of E300,000 to throw frames in future matches; he denied wrongdoing. A prisoner in Salford prison cut off part of his ear and then escaped when his ambulance was attacked by masked men. Flights to and from Ireland and Scotland were cancelled with the return of an ash cloud from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland. When the first flight for 20 years from Iraq to London landed, the aeroplane was impounded because of a lawsuit by Kuwait.
Eurozone finance ministers agreed to make emergency loans, with the help of the International Monetary Fund, of E110 billion to Greece in the hope of preventing it defaulting and of arresting a collapse of confidence in Portugal and Spain. Even Germany agreed to pay its share, the largest, at E22 billion. Greece was told to reduce its deficit from 13.6 per cent of gross domestic product to below 3 per cent by 2014, and to keep its debt at about 140 per cent of GDP. There was rioting, with protesters trying to storm the parliament in Athens. The markets were not convinced and the euro fell. Unemployment in Spain rose to more than 20 per cent, against a eurozone average of 10 per cent. Shanghai opened its World Expo, estimated to cost £38 million. The Pope went to see the Shroud in Turin and called it ‘an icon written in blood’. The lower house of the Belgian parliament passed a bill to prohibit the wearing of full face-veils.
President Barack Obama of the United States, commenting on the leaking of perhaps 5,000 barrels a day from a well in the Gulf of Mexico, said, ‘BP is responsible for this leak. BP will be paying the bill.’ The company agreed, though it said it was not to blame for the accident in which an oil rig exploded and sank on 22 April. Within 10 days, a slick had spread over an area of 130 miles by 70 miles. Catastrophe for seafood fisheries and nature reserves was feared. Oil prices reached a 19-month high. A car bomb in Times Square, New York, which included three canisters of propane and 10 gallons of petrol, was made safe before it exploded. Police investigating the incident arrested an American citizen of Pakistani origin who, they said, admitted his role. Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab, aged 22, a Pakistani, the only surviving gunman from the terrorist attacks on Mumbai in 2008 in which 174 were killed, was found guilty, after a 271-day trial, of crimes including murder and waging war on India. Hizbul-Islam fighters captured territory in Somalia from pirates. A Russian warship sailed to the aid of a 106,000-ton tanker, the Moscow University, attacked by pirates 500 miles off the Somali coast. Malawi said it was banning polygamy; ‘I have only one wife, my dear wife,’ responded Imran Shareef Muhammed, the secretary-general of the Muslim Association of Malawi, ‘but the moment they proceed with this, I will take a second wife.’ CSH
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