28/04/2013 00:00
TW
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by MONITOR l The British nation, with few exceptions, celebrated the 80th birthday of Queen Elizabeth II. Tributes to her emphasized her sense of duty, her wisdom and steadfastness and many insisted that she should not contemplate abdicate. l As Britain's local elections drew near prime minister Blair took tea with pensioners in London while the Conservative leader David Cameron flew to Norway to be photographed with huskies in order to demonstrate his commitment to combatting climate change. l President Bush began to reshape his White House team in preparation for the mid-term Congressional elections in November. One change he refused to make was to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense despite public criticisms of him by several retired generals. l The first engagement of the President of China, Hu Jintao, on his visit to the United States was a dinner party at the West Coast home of the Bill Gates, the founder of Google and said to be the richest man in the world.

Later President Hu had a formal lunch with President Bush in Washington where his speech was interupted noisily by a Falun Gong activist; Mr Bush apologised for the disturbance. l In Italy the top appeals court confirmed that Roman Prodi's centre-left coalition had won a narrow victory in the general election but his opponent the former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi still refused to accept defeat. l A Palestinian suicide bomber killed nine people in Tel Aviv.
Although the new Hamas government chose not to condemn the attack, the interim Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said that no immediate military retaliation would take place. l The London Stock Exchange's share price reached a new high as rumours of a renewed bid from the New York Stock Exchange began to circulate.