14/07/2013 00:00
TW
0

· by MONITOR LESS then 24 hours after learning that their city would host the 2012 Olympic Games, Londoners came under attack from Islamic terrorists in four separate but coordinated bombings, three on the Underground system and one on the surface near Russell Square. Mr Tony Blair left the G8 meeting of industrialised nations at Gleneagles, Scotland, to return to London but later resumed chairmanship of the summit at which increased aid for Africa and action against global warming/climate change were the main items on the agenda. The Gleneagles meeting had been preceded by Mr Bob Geldof's Live 8 concert in Hyde Park at which many top pop artists appeared to support the Make Poverty History campaign; Mr Geldof also organised a mass march in Edinburgh in support of the campaign. The British government released figures showing that about half-a-million illegal immigrants lived in Britain, apart from the hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers whose applications had been refused but had not been expelled.

Critics pointed out that during the recent general election Mr Blair had said that such figures did not exist and probably could not be compiled. The Home Office continued to try to deport Zimbabweans whose asylum claims had been rejected, but reports of ill-treatment of earlier returnees, public protests and a court decision led it to put a temporary halt to further expulsions. Public support for the government's identity cards fell to 45 per cent, according to a Daily Telegraph; an analysis of the ID proposals by the London School of Economics suggested that the scheme was under-costed, complex and probably unmanageable. IN Baghdad Mr Ihab el-Sherif, the Egyptian ambassador to Iraq, was kidnapped and later killed; diplomats from Bahrain and Pakistan were wounded by gunmen in Baghdad in separate incidents. The Israeli Defence Minister, Mr Shaul Mofaz, said that 45'000 soldiers and police would be employed in August to evict 9'000 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank. Despite strong protests from the Catholic Church, the Spanish parliament passed a law allowing people of the same sex to marry and to acquire the right to adopt children.