The Libyan National Transitional Council has obtained official recognition from numerous countries this week, but the African Union has refused to acknowledge it. Speaking earlier this afternoon, South African President Jacob Zuma said that ongoing fighting has created a “fluid” situation. The union also said that it wants “an all-inclusive transitional government” incorporating members of Colonel
Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke has signalled that there will be no Quantitative Easing until next month’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting, which has been extened to two days. Markets have been anticipating Bernanke’s speech all day and many traders were expecting some discussion of further easing. But Bernanke has declined them, saying that now is
The Telegraph carries a story that will enrage the right and unnerve businesses. Business Secretary Vince Cable has agreed to introduce a controversial EU directive to award agency workers the same rights as full time employees. This means that agency workers will be entitled to full holiday pay, maternity leave and so forth, as well
Nick Clegg laughed-off the dousing of blue paint he received in Glasgow yesterday, like one of Noel Edmonds’ unwitting victims. Today, Clegg has turned into the grinning douser: drenching his coalition partners in yellow paint by saying that the European Convention on Human Rights will not be watered down. Writing in the Guardian, Clegg says
“It’s not over yet.” That has become the government’s Libyan mantra, delivered with a tone of sombre sobriety. However, James Kirkup reports that, in private, ministers are cock-a-hoop, already dreaming of photo-ops and triumphant flyovers. You wonder what Ed Llewellyn makes of the celebrations. Allegra Stratton has written a revealing profile of David Cameron’s chief-of-staff, ‘the most powerful
The Conservative wing of this government is on a quest to reduce net migration to, in the words of David Cameron, the “tens of thousands from the hundreds of thousands”. Liberal Democrat ministers may have dragged their feet on the issue, but there are serious doubts about whether Cameron’s policies will have any real effect. As Fraser revealed last week, the coalition
First came the Germans and then came the Brits. The UK Treasury has secured an agreement with authorities in Zurich to tax the assets of UK citizens held in Swiss banks to reduce on tax avoidance and stamp out evasion. The deal will follow the lines of that which Switzerland made with Germany last month. The
Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Fillon are delivering emergency economic measures today, in order to ward off the ravening credit rating agencies that are questioning France’s AAA rating. As a prelude to this act of political drama, a group of France’s super-rich sent a letter to the government urging it to tax them more. In the spirit
The Prince of Darkness has made a rare foray into the light of public life. He uses an article in today’s Times (£) to do a little waspish mischief about the coalition and the Liberal Democrats. He writes: ‘The Lib Dems are beginning to behave like an internal opposition. Staking out positions in the media, drawing
Away from the excitement of Libya and Colonel Gaddafi’s singular definition of ‘tactical retreat’, the post-riots debate continues. The government has announced that unemployed offenders will have to work a minimum 28 hours in their communities for four days per week and spend a fifth day looking for a job. This is part of the plan to bolster the Community
It was an eventful day in New York yesterday. The rape case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn collapsed and, soon after, an earthquake struck that corner of the States’ eastern seaboard — thankfully there have been no reported deaths and damage appears to have been light, although there were fears about the safety of an ageing nuclear
Pictures across the world’s news channels currently show hundreds of Libyan rebels standing in the first perimeter of Gaddafi’s compound at Bab al Aziziya. A statute of the colonel has been pulled down, its head decapitated, and rebels are taking pot-shots at the other icons of his tyranny, including a clenched bronze fist clutching a US fighter
As a coda to Robert Halfon’s piece on the relationship between tax and petrol prices, it’s worth noting that a substantial proportion of European sweet crude (the type of crude oil commonly refined into petrol) originated in Libya. Soon after civil war broke out in Libya, Saudi Arabia increased its oil production and the IEA released some of its
The Oxford English Dictionary and the Collins Dictionary have both published their new shorter versions. A crop of words has been defined and introduced, replacing those words that are now deemed to be obsolete. This is the age of the social network. ‘Re-tweet’ has been officially recognised by both dictionaries as a noun and a
This picture from Libya is doing the rounds on the internet this morning. Italian, French and British flags are also being hoisted in Benghazi. This spontaneous display of gratitude suggests that some of the Libyan rebels won’t forget who saved them from annihilation. It’s something of a PR coup for NATO; a sign that there is life in the
The Eurozone’s political crisis is deepening. Further to the news that individual member states were seeking their own bilateral deals with Greece to insure their taxpayers’ money from default, the FT reports that disagreements are emerging over how these deals should be conducted. Holland objects that Finland’s accord with Athens relies on Greece using EU bailout funds
Despite the claims of rebels and the International Criminal Court yesterday, Saif al-Islam is not in captivity, not any longer at any rate. He drove to the Rixos hotel, where western journalists and a handful of US Congressmen are incarcerated, in the early hours to give a press conference. “We’re winning,” he said in that
Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the leader of the National Transitional Council, has indicated his hope that Colonel Gaddafi will be tried in Libya. But the far reaching tentacles of the International Criminal Court may claim Gaddafi from the Libyan people. Judge Richard Goldstone, former chief prosecutor at The Hague, told the BBC World Service earlier this
Reuters is reporting that Libyan rebels have taken control of Libyan state TV – one of the last organs to remain in Gaddafi’s hands. It’s another indication that the dictator’s position is increasingly hopeless; although it appears that one of his sons may have been ‘liberated’ by resurgent loyalist forces. So there’s a glimmer of
Angela Merkel must tire of repeating herself. Eurobonds are “exactly the wrong answer” to the European debt crisis, she said yesterday for the umpteenth time. She added that they would “lead us to a debt union not a stability union”, a free-for-all funded by German taxpayers. She concluded that “greater commitment” from the 27 member