The week at a glance...Europe

London

Brit killed in China was spy: Neil Heywood, the British businessman whose murder in China last year led to the downfall of a top Chinese official, was apparently an informer for MI6. The Wall Street Journal reported that Heywood passed information to British intelligence about the family of Bo Xilai. Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, was convicted in August of poisoning Heywood, and Bo himself has been stripped of his posts as Chongqing governor and Politburo member. The British government had previously denied that Heywood was an MI6 employee, but that doesn’t preclude his working as a civilian informant. Flashy and self-promoting, Heywood drove a Jaguar with 007 on the license plate, cultivating a persona the Journal said could have been a “double bluff.”

Athens

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Half the country on strike: Two million of Greece’s 4 million workers went on strike this week to protest more cuts to services. Greece will run out of money within two weeks unless it gets another $39 billion in bailout funds from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, but it must slash another $17 billion from its budget to qualify. Cuts include government layoffs, a drop in severance pay for the laid off, pay cuts and tax hikes for those who were spared, and a rise in the retirement age from 65 to 67. The strike shuttered schools and cut off road and rail services for two days, while hospitals ran on skeleton staffs.