The Week In Two Minutes
Big Ben broke at 12.45am on Friday, and will take a week to be fixed. Parents were accused of being "to blame for truancy" (Headteachers' Union) and "turning children into drunks" (Institute of Alcohol Studies).
The Royal Mail loses 14.5 million letters a year, mostly by delivering them to the wrong address, claimed PostWatch. MOD police seized the files of the arms firm BAE, amidst allegations that prominent Saudis received payments of up to £60m. £500,000 has been awarded to Scientists at King's College, London, to help them develop human teeth from stem cells.
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Cyprus, Slovakia, Hungary and Malta joined the EU, which now has 380 possible language combinations. Air France won a successful take-over bid for KLM. Turkish police arrested nine people in connection with a suspected plan to bomb next month's NATO summit in Istanbul. Violence escalated in the Pattani region of Southern Thailand, as government troops killed more than 100 protestors, who were suspected of being Islamic militants.
As the US military filed criminal charges against six soldiers accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners, the Daily Mirror published photographs depicting a British
soldier assaulting and urinating on an Iraqi captive. Sources close to the Queen's Lancashire Regiment questioned the authenticity of the photos. Their veracity is being investigated.
It was not only Sting who was left a tad sheepish after The Sunday Times revealed his innocuous alphabetical slip (boasting about tantric sex, when really meaning 'frantic sex'); the president of New Zealand left his diplomatic lunch with the Chilean leader to meet Shrek, a sheep who shot to international fame by evading capture for six years, before having his 27 kg fleece sheared live on TV.
6th May 2004