The Week V. 1028

What happened The prospect of Greece crashing out of the eurozone receded this week after the country offered some 11th-hour concessions to creditors. Athens submitted the proposals – which included an offer to raise some sales taxes and impose limits on early retirement – to an emergency summit of European leaders on Monday. The plan received a cautious welcome, and raised hopes that it could lead to a deal by the end of the week. Officials representing Greece’s creditors (Eurozone countries, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank) had warned that, until a final deal is signed off, they won’t release the latest tranche of bailout funds. Without that money, Greece will default on a s1.6bn loan repayment to the IMF on Tuesday, an event that could force…

What happened The Chancellor George Osborne this week confirmed his intention to cut another £12bn from Britain’s social security bill. The details will be laid out in next month’s Budget, but Osborne stated that he would make “significant savings” from the £120bn spent on working-age benefits. David Cameron said on Monday that he would like to overhaul the system of tax credits, which top up the wages of low earners, and that companies should pay higher salaries instead. Britain, he argued, should move from a “low wage, high tax, high welfare society to a higher wage, lower tax, lower welfare society”. Last Saturday, tens of thousands of people protested against Government spending cuts in cities across the UK. The biggest event was in London, where thousands marched from the Bank…

Controversy of the week It’s hard to imagine what practical use Isis might have for three “idiot” sisters from Bradford and their nine children. But if nothing else, said Matthew Parris in The Times, the apparent defection to Syria of the Dawood sisters produced some fantastic press coverage for Isis last week. It was front page news everywhere, with journalists waxing hysterical over the radicalisation of British Muslims. Even the Prime Minister himself succumbed, giving a speech in which he warned that Muslim communities must do more to combat the lure of Isis among young people. You can just imagine Isis’s PR director rubbing his hands in glee. All that free publicity – and for what? The number of “ninnies” leaving Britain to fight for Isis is actually pretty small:…

Scottish land reform The Scottish government has set out proposals to widen ownership of land across the country. It has been estimated that 432 people own half of the privately owned land in Scotland, and campaigners had called for a cap on the amount of land one individual or firm can own. This has not been proposed; however, the bill would force owners of shooting estates to pay business rates, ending an exemption in place since 1994; the money raised would go into a fund that helps support community buyouts of land. Onshore wind farms Some 2,500 planned onshore wind turbines are unlikely to be built because of an early end to Government subsidies. New onshore wind farms will be excluded from a subsidy scheme from 1 April 2016, a…

Waterloo, Belgium Bicentenary: Some 60,000 spectators from around the world watched re-enactments at Waterloo last weekend to mark the bicentenary of the battle that ended the Napoleonic wars. A total of 5,000 actors took part in two re-enactments, which also featured 300 horses, 100 cannons and four tonnes of gunpowder. Last Thursday, the actual anniversary, descendants of Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington and other commanders met to shake hands on the battlefield. In his host’s speech, King Philippe of Belgium hailed the EU as a successor to the Concert of Europe, which ushered in a century of fragile peace following Waterloo. Madrid Passports for exiled Jews: The Spanish parliament has approved a law granting citizenship to the descendants of some 200,000 Jews expelled from Spain in 1492, when the country’s…

Owls Head, New York Manhunt lead: Police heading a manhunt for two convicted killers who have been on the run since 6 June had a breakthrough on Monday, when the pair’s DNA was found in a hunting cabin in upstate New York, 20 miles from their maximum-security facility. David Sweat, 35 (above left), and Richard Matt, 49 (above right), cut through cell walls at Clinton jail and crawled through a pipe during their escape, made with the help of a prison seamstress, Joyce Mitchell, 51, who was in a relationship with Matt. After the DNA discovery, residents of the small town of Owls Head were warned to stay indoors as hundreds of police scoured the area. Washington DC Terror toll soars: There was a dramatic surge in terrorist attacks around…