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David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said, with regard to the crisis in Libya, ‘It is right for us to look at plans for a no-fly zone.’ Earlier, during his tour of the Middle East, he had apologised for the slow evacuation of British citizens from Libya. Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, on being asked if he was in charge during Mr Cameron’s absence, said, ‘Yeah, I suppose I am. I forgot about that.’ He hurried back from a family skiing holiday. The British embassy in Tripoli was abandoned. HMS Cumberland, a British frigate on its way back to Britain to be scrapped, rescued 207 people from Tripoli and returned for more. RAF Hercules aircraft made repeated landings in the desert to rescued British and other foreign workers, with the help of special forces. Details were made known of more than 10,000 members of the Armed Forces, some on service in Afghanistan, who are to lose their jobs.
Royal Bank of Scotland reported losses of £1.13 billion for 2010, but paid bonuses of £950 million to investment bankers. The Lloyds banking group made pre-tax profits of £2.21 billion, compared with a £6.3 billon loss in 2009. Revised figures put the shrinkage of GDP in December at 0.6 per cent, not 0.5 per cent as previously estimated. A computer failure at London Stock Exchange stopped trading for a morning. A fox was found living 944ft up on the 72nd floor of the Shard tower at London Bridge; it was trapped and released.
Britain is to stop direct aid to 16 countries, including Russia, China and Iraq, although the aid budget will increase by a third in this Parliament. The European Court of Justice ruled that insurers must not charge different premiums to men and women because of their sex, although young women have fewer motoring accidents and old women live longer than men.
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