the actor, died aged 70. Jeremy Lewis,
the publisher and memoirist, died aged 75.W
onga, the payday loan company,
suffered a data breach which might
have affected up to 245,000 customers, with
names, addresses, phone numbers and bank
account numbers being stolen. The Jaeger
clothes chain appointed administrators
after failing to find a suitable buyer. Poultry
in England was allowed out of doors from
Maundy Thursday after being kept in by law
since December to avoid a strain of bird flu.Abroad
A
fter America fired 59 cruise missiles
at the Shayrat airbase in Syria, on
the orders of President Donald Trump,
following the suspected sarin gas attack
last week, at the rebel-held town of Khan
Sheikhoun near Idlib, which killed 87, the
world wondered what the settled policy of
the United States would be. ‘Even beautiful
babies were cruelly murdered in this very
barbaric attack,’ Mr Trump had said of the
poison gas incident. ‘No child of God should
ever suffer such horror.’ Syria denied it had
ever used any toxic substance, and Russia
said that a Syrian air-strike had hit rebel
chemical warfare munitions. Hamish de
Bretton-Gordon, a former commanding
officer of Britain’s Joint Chemical
Biological Radiological Nuclear Regiment,
said Russia’s assertion was ‘pretty fanciful’.
America gave notice of its raid and four
people were reportedly killed in it. A
statement carried on the military media
arm of the terrorist organisation Hezbollah,
purporting to be on behalf of Russia and
Iran, said: ‘What America waged in anaggression on Syria is a crossing of red lines.
From now on we will respond with force
to any aggressor.’ North Korea said it would
defend itself as America sent an aircraft
carrier and supporting warships to seas off
the Korean peninsula.I
n Egypt, two bombers acting for
the Islamic State killed 45 Coptic
worshippers: 17 in Alexandria when
a bomber blew himself up after being
stopped by police at the gates of St Mark’s
Cathedral, where Pope Tawadros II
was celebrating a Palm Sunday liturgy;
28 in Tanta, where a bomber got inside
St George’s Church. Pope Francis is due
to visit Egypt on April 28.A
lorry was driven at pedestrians in
Drottninggatan (Queen Street)
in Stockholm and then crashed into
the front of a department store. Four
people were killed. A device that did not
explode was found in the driver’s cab.
Swedish police arrested a 39-year-old man
from Uzbekistan, whose application to
reside in Sweden had been refused. The
Basque nationalist terrorists Euskadi Ta
Askatasuna (Eta), which had killed more
than 800 people, began handing over
weapons. A camp of 1,500 migrants near
Dunkirk was destroyed by fire after a fight
between Afghans and Kurds. A man was
violently dragged, bloody-faced, from a
United Airlines flight before it took off
from Chicago after the company booked
too many people on to it. A hacker was
blamed for setting off 156 warning sirens
in Dallas, Texas, at 18 minutes to midnight
on Friday 7 April, lasting for an hour
and a half. CSHHome
B
oris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary,
having cancelled a trip to Moscow over
the Syrian poison gas incident, consulted
other foreign ministers at the G7 summit at
Lucca in Italy about how to get President
Vladimir Putin of Russia to abandon his
support for President Bashar al-Assad of
Syria. The Scottish Medicines Consortium
accepted for routine use by NHS Scotland
a drug called Prep which, at a cost of more
than £400 a month, can protect people at
risk of contracting the HIV virus through
unprotected sexual activity. In England,
57 general practitioners’ surgeries closed in
2016, Pulse magazine found, with another
34 shutting because of mergers, forcing
265,000 patients to move. Eric Monkman,
a fiercely keen Canadian, could not
prevent Wolfson College, Cambridge, being
defeated by Balliol in University Challenge.
T
he RMT union went on strike on
Grand National day on Merseyrail,
Arriva Rail North and Southern services.
It was announced that Charles Horton, the
chief executive of Southern’s parent firm
Govia Thameslink, was paid £495,000 last
year. A recording from 2008 was unearthed
by the BBC that suggested that the Bank
of England had been active in lowering the
Libor (London Interbank Offered Rate); a
senior Barclays manager was heard saying:
‘We’ve had some very serious pressure
from the UK government and the Bank of
England about pushing our Libors lower.’
Brian Matthew, who presented Saturday
Club and Easy Beat on the BBC Light
Programme before the advent of Radio
1 in 1967, died aged 88. Tim Pigott-Smith,