The Week V. 1029

What happened Greece faced the prospect of economic collapse this week when it became the first developed country to default on a loan repayment to the International Monetary Fund. The missed payment followed a breakdown in talks between Athens and its creditors. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras threw a spanner into those negotiations last week by calling a snap referendum on the creditors’ bailout offer, and closing the country’s banks until after that poll is held on Sunday. Withdrawals from cash machines were capped at just s60 a day, leading to long queues at ATMs. Tsipras accused lenders of trying “to stifle the will of the Greek people” with excessive austerity demands. He called for a “No” vote in the referendum, arguing that it would give him leverage to strike…

What happened David Cameron insisted that Britain would not “cower in the face of terrorism” after up to 30 British holidaymakers were shot dead by a jihadi gunman last week at the Tunisian beach resort of Sousse (see page 20). The Prime Minister told MPs that Isis, which claimed responsibility for the massacre, must be “crushed” militarily and that Britain should become “more intolerant of intolerance”. The gunman, 23-year-old student Seifeddine Rezgui, was killed by police at the scene, and the Tunisian authorities later arrested a group of alleged accomplices. Earlier last week, an Isis spokesman had declared that the month of Ramadan should be one “of calamities for the infidels... Shias and apostate Muslims”. Later on in the week, Isis fighters gunned down more than 200 civilians, including women…

Controversy of the week “The numbers pushing north have never been greater,” said The Times. More than 100,000 migrants have sailed to Italy and Greece in smugglers’ boats this year; some 2,000 have died en route. Still more have come to Europe over land. The new arrivals “have overwhelmed processing facilities from Lesbos to Lampedusa”, and created “choke points” further north – in Milan, and along Hungary’s border with Serbia, and France’s with Italy. Some 3,000 people are living in camps outside Calais, all hoping to board vehicles bound for England (right). They are “propelled by war and terror in Syria, Afghanistan and Eritrea”; the UN estimates that there are now more displaced persons than ever before, including four million refugees from Syria alone. Others are “pulled from sub-Saharan Africa”…

Heathrow expansion The Airports Commission has backed the building of a third runway at Heathrow. The independent panel said the £17.6bn expansion could generate up to £147bn for the economy and 70,000 jobs by 2050. However, it said the expansion – which would require the demolition of 783 homes – should only go ahead if Heathrow meets legally binding targets on pollution and noise. It also recommended a legal ban on a fourth runway being built. The Government must now decide whether or not to act on its recommendations. In 2009, David Cameron ruled out a third runway, and several senior Tories, including Boris Johnson and Theresa May, are strongly opposed to the idea. Railway projects halted Ministers have shelved promised upgrades to major railway lines in the Midlands and…

Paris Taxi protests turn violent: Riot police armed with tear gas were deployed in Paris last week after taxi drivers blocked the city’s ring road with burning tyres in a protest against the cab-hailing service UberPop. Courts have already decreed that the unregulated service is illegal in France, but cabbies in Paris – who pay up to £170,000 for a licence – claim that many Uber drivers are flouting the ban, and that police are not doing enough to enforce it. The California-based firm, which argues that the ban is unconstitutional and violates EU treaties, says it has one million customers in France. Last week’s protest appeared to have its intended effect, however: French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve subsequently ordered police and prosecutors to shut down Uber; two of Uber’s…

Constable, New York State Prison break over: The most high-profile US prison break in recent history came to an end last Sunday, with the recapture of the escaped murderer David Sweat less than two miles from the Canadian border. His fellow escapee, Richard Matt, 49, had been shot dead by police two days earlier in the town of Elephant’s Head, New York. The two had split up, apparently because Sweat, who is 35, felt that the older man was slowing him down. Matt holed up in a derelict camper van in the woods, while Sweat continued north. Following his recapture, Sweat told investigators the original plan had been to head by car to Mexico with their female accomplice – prison worker Joyce Mitchell – as their getaway driver. But she…