London
Al Qaida–inspired cell: Nine British Muslims have admitted in court to planning terrorist attacks in London in 2010. Four of the men said they had conspired to bomb the London Stock Exchange, while five others pleaded guilty to other terrorism-related offenses. The group also planned to send mail bombs to the U.S. Embassy and London Mayor Boris Johnson. The men were not members of al Qaida, but they said they were inspired by the radical preachings of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born al Qaida propagandist who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen last year. The group was arrested in December 2010 after being under police surveillance for months.
Brussels
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Fiscal pact: Desperate to shore up confidence in the euro, 25 of the EU’s 27 members agreed to a German-inspired pact to impose stricter budget discipline. The countries, including all 17 that use the euro currency, agreed to balance their budgets each year. Countries that fail to do so or that exceed debt limits will incur automatic sanctions. “It is the first step toward a fiscal union,” said Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank. The Czech Republic and Britain refused to join the pact. “To write into law a Germanic view of how one should run an economy and that essentially makes Keynesianism illegal is not something we would do,” one British official said.
Madrid
Judge on trial: Spain’s most famous investigating judge, Baltasar Garzón, found himself on the wrong end of the bench this week. Garzón is on trial for allegedly overstepping his judicial authority by opening an investigation into the killings of thousands of people by Spain’s military dictatorship, which ruled for nearly four decades until the death of Francisco Franco, in 1975. Franco’s crimes have not been prosecuted until now because of an amnesty law. But Garzón argues that other provisions of Spanish law supported his attempts to prosecute former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and Argentina’s military junta, despite similar amnesty laws in those countries. Garzón was charged by two right-wing groups under a Spanish law that allows private citizens to bring criminal charges.
Giglio, Italy
Bodies left to rot: Italian officials have abandoned their search for bodies in the wreckage of the cruise ship Costa Concordia. Seventeen bodies have been recovered, but 16 people are still missing. Officials said there is no chance that anyone could have survived the freezing temperatures in the hull for the more than two weeks since the ship capsized after sailing too close to shore and hitting rocks. And they said rough seas keep shifting the ship’s position, putting divers in danger. The bad weather has also prevented salvage firms from removing the 500,000 gallons of fuel in the ship’s tanks. “Our first goal was to find people alive,” said Franco Gabrielli, the official in charge of managing the shipwreck. “Now we have a single, big goal, and that is that this does not translate into an environmental disaster.”
