Events in January 2009 Jan. 1 |
A Hamas field commander Nizar Rayan is killed in an Israel air attack on his home in the Gaza Strip even as the conflict enters the sixth day. |
At least 60 persons are killed and 243 injured in a fire mishap during New Year festivities at a nightclub in the Thailand capital Bangkok. | |
The Sri Lankan Army captures two LTTE bastions Iranmadu junction and Paranthan town in Kilinochchi district. | |
Cuba celebrates the 50th anniversary of its Revolution. | |
Jan. 2 | Sri Lankan troops capture Kilinochchi, the LTTE's administrative and political headquarters. |
Jan. 3 | A senior Hamas commander Abu Zakaria Al-Jamal is killed during an Israeli attack. The toll in the eight-day strikes touches 435, including 75 children and 21 women. Tel Aviv launches ground offensive too. |
The Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy wins vote of confidence in Parliament. | |
John Evans Atta-Mills wins Ghana presidential runoff. The first round of voting was held on December 7, 2008. | |
Jan. 4 | Heavy fighting between Israeli ground troops and the Hamas as the Gaza offensive enters the ninth day. |
Pakistan rejects India's demand to hand over terror suspects linked to the Mumbai strikes. | |
The New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson withdraws as President – elect Barack Obama's nominee for Commerce Secretary. | |
Thirtyfive persons are killed as a suicide bomber blows herself up near a Shia Shrine in the Kadhimiyah district of Baghdad. | |
Jan. 5 | The toll in the Gaza offensive touches 530. |
Jan. 6 | Sheikh Hasina is sworn in Bangladesh Prime Minister. |
At least 42 Palestinians are killed after Israeli tank shells explode at a United Nations school in the Gaza Strip. | |
Sardar Attiq Khan is removed as Pakistan occupied Kashmir Prime Minister through a no-confidence motion. | |
At least 40 people are killed in Israeli shelling on a U.N.–run school in the Gaza Strip. | |
Jan. 7 | Islamabad acknowledges the Pakistani nationality of Mohammad Ajmal Amir Kasab the lone surviving Mumbai attacker. The National Security Adviser Major General (Retd.) Mahmud Ali Durrani is sacked. |
Sri Lanka proscribes the LTTE for holding civilians human shields in the north. | |
Israel announces opening of three-hour humanitarian corridor to bring in aid to Gaza residents. | |
Jan. 8 | Lasantha Wickramatunga, editor of the Sri Lankan English Weekly Sunday Leader is assassinated by gunmen in Colombo. |
Jan. 9 | Israel, Hamas reject United Nations ceasefire plan. |
The Illinois House votes to impeach Governor Rod Blagojevich for trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat. | |
At least 778 Palestinians, including 200 children have been killed since the Gaza offensive began on December 27, 2008. | |
The Sri Lankan Army captures Elephant Pass, a crucial base of the LTTE at the gateway to Jaffna linking the peninsula with Wanni. | |
Jan. 10 | The U.N. calls for probe into possible Israeli war crimes. The toll surges to 821 and more than 3,300 people injured. |
USS George H.W. Bush a new aircraft carrier named after the former U.S. President George H.W. Bush a decorated World War II pilot is commissioned at a function in Norfolk. | |
Jan. 11 | Scores of people are feared drowned after a ferry carrying more than 260 passengers and crew sinks in stormy seas off Indonesia's Sulawesi Island. |
British director Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire based on Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup's novel Q and A emerges big winner at the 66th annual Golden Globes Awards in Beverly Hills, California. Composer A. R. Rahman bags best composer honours, the first Indian to win the award. It also bags the Golden Globe for Best Director, Best Drama and the Best Adapted Screenplay. | |
Australian actor Health Lodger earns a posthumous Golden Globe for his role in Batman blockbuster The Dark Knight, while British star Kate Winslet wins two awards for best drama actor in Revolutionary Road and supporting actor in The Reader. | |
Jan. 12 | Israeli troops surround Gaza city. |
'e6', a purely electric car with a range of 400 km on a single charge made by Chinese automaker BYD Co. Ltd. Is launched at the North American International auto Show in Detroit. | |
Jan. 13 | Canada-based global telecom equipment major Norfel Networks Corp files for creditor protection. |
Jan. 15 | All 155 people on board a US Airways Pilot jetliner have a miraculous escape after the plane is 'landed' in the Hudson river near Manhattan's commuter ferry terminals following a bird hit after take off from New York's Laguardia Airport. |
Israel fires phosphorus shells in an attack on the main U.N. compound and the al-Quads hospital in Gaza City. | |
Jan. 16 | Citigroup reports loss of $ 8.29 billion and splits into Citicorp and Citi Holdings. The "financial supermarket" created a decade ago is to be dismantled. |
Bank of America, the largest U.S. bank posts its first quarterly loss in 17 years and slashes dividend. Wins $ 20 billion lifeline to help absorb Merrill Lynch. | |
Jan. 17 | Cambridge University turns 800. Universities across the world celebrate by ringing church bells in a synchronised salute. |
Israel declares a unilateral ceasefire. | |
Jan. 18 | Hamas announces a conditional ceasefire. |
Jan. 19 | Israeli forces begin pullout from Gaza. |
A new capital named Yongchang planned for quake-hit Beichuan in China's Sichuan province. | |
Jan. 20 | Barack Hussein Obama is sworn in the 44th President of the U.S. breaking colour barrier. Joe Biden takes oath as the 47th Vice-President. |
Two Indian-Americans Neal Kumar Katyal and Preeta Bansal appointed to key posts. | |
Toyota Motor names Akio Toyoda grandson of its founder as new president. | |
Jan. 21 | The U.S. President Barrack Obama orders suspension of trial proceedings by the military tribunals in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. |
In a rare do-over, Barack Obama is sworn in for the second time as the U.S. President. | |
Hillary Rodham Clinton is sworn in the U.S. Secretary of State in Washington DC. | |
Israel completes troops pullout from the Gaza Strip after a three-week offensive. | |
Jan. 22 | David Fincher's period love story The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Bags 13 Oscar nominations, while India-set rags-to-riches drama Slumdog Millionaire scores 10 nominations, including three for music director A.R. Rahman. |
Two persons are sentenced to death for their role in the tainted milk scandal in China which left six babies dead. | |
The U.S. President Barack Obama orders closure of the Guantanamo Bay military detention centre in Cuba within a year. | |
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation launches the International Year of Natural Fibres 2009. | |
India hands over the strategic Delaram-Zaranj highway built by it to Afghanistan at a function in Nimroz province. | |
The U.S. President Barack Obama becomes the nation's first emailing head of state. | |
Jan. 23 | Japan launches the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite, the world's first satellite dedicated to monitoring greenhouse gas emissions from Tanegashima, a small island. |
The U.S. authorities approve the first human trials using embryonic stem cells testing a pioneering therapy for stroke patients. | |
Jan. 25 | The Sri Lankan army captures Mullaithivu town, the last major settlement of the LTTE. |
The provincial government of Punjab in Pakistan takes over the Muridke headquarters of the Jamat-ud-Dawah, a front for the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba and renames it Punjab Welfare Institute. | |
Jan. 26 | New York-based Pfizer to acquire rival drugmaker Wyeth in a $ 68-billion cash-and-stock deal. |
A Californian woman gives birth to octuplets at the Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Centre near Los Angeles. The U.S. first live octuplets were born in Houston in December 1998 and seven siblings have survived. | |
Iceland's Prime Minister Geir Haarde's right-left coalition is forced to resign following months of protests over economic crisis following the crumbling of the financial sector in October. | |
Thomas Lubango Dylia of Congo, an armed militia leader, becomes the first to be tried by the International Criminal Court at The Hague. | |
Jan. 28 | The U.S. House of Representatives gives nod to a $ 819-billion stimulus package. |
Britain announces a $ 3.2 billion aid package to bail out the automobile industries. | |
The World Economic Forum meet opens in Davos, Switzerland. | |
Jan. 29 | The Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa issues an ultimatum to the LTTE to release civilians trapped in the war zone within the next 48 hours, while announcing a pause in hostilities. |
Afghanistan presidential polls set for August 20. | |
The Illinois Senate throws out of office Governor Rod Blagojevich accused of trying to sell Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat. | |
Jan. 30 | North Korea nullifies all pacts with South Korea. |
Michael Steele an African-American is voted in chairman of the Republican Committee. | |
Jan. 31 | Iraq holds provincial polls. Voting in Kirkuk postponed indefinitely. |
Events in February 2009 Feb. 1 |
Leader of the Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill is enthroned at a colourful ceremony at the nation's biggest Cathedral, Christ the Saviour. |
Johanna Sigurdardottir takes over as Iceland's first woman Prime Minister and also happens to be first openly gay head of government | |
Feb. 2 | India and the International Atomic Energy Agency sign a safeguards agreement in Vienna. |
Feb. 3 | Iran launches Omid (Hope) its first domestically made satellite. |
Feb. 4 | Fiftytwo people are killed and 80 injured in continued fighting between the Sri Lankan forces and the LTTE. |
Two nuclear submarines — Britain's HMS Vanguard and France's Le Triomphant collide in the Atlantic Ocean. | |
Feb. 5 | At least 30 people are killed as a suicide bombing rips through a crowd of worshippers at a mosque in Pakistan's Dera Ghazi Khan town in Punjab. |
Feb. 6 | Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki's candidates sweep to victory in nine of the nation's 14 provinces. |
Pakistan nuclear scientist Abdul Qader Khan is freed from five years of house arrest following the Islamabad High Court ruling. | |
U.S. scientists in collaboration with the Ethiopian government complete the first CT scan of Lucy, the human ancestor who lived 3.2 million years ago. | |
A Polish engineer Piotr Stancza is beheaded by Taliban militants in the Darra Adam Khel area in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province. | |
Feb. 7 | At least 135 people are killed and entire towns razed in the worst wild fire disaster in the south eastern state of Victoria in Australia that destroys more than 150 houses and burns 3,30,000 hectares. |
Feb. 8 | Slumdog Millionaire sweeps the British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards winning seven major awards, including for Best Film, best Direction and A. R. Rahman's music. |
Tabla maestro Zakir Hussain wins Grammy in the Contemporary World Music Album category for his collaborative album 'Global Drum Project'. | |
Feb. 9 | At least 28 people and 64 injured as a woman suicide bomber blows herself up at a military checkpoint in Mullathivu district. |
India and Bangladesh sign a mutual investment promotion and projection agreement and renew an old deal on water, road and rail transit. The Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina proposes a South Asia task force to combat terrorism. | |
Feb. 10 | Israelis cast ballots in parliamentary poll. |
The U.S. Senate passes a $838 billion economic rescue plan. | |
At least 19 civilians are killed and 75 injured as LTTE cadre open small arms fire in Udayarkottukulam in Mullathivu district. | |
Two satellites — one a 560 kg American, Iridium Craft — the other a Russian weighing nearly a tonne smash into each other nearly 800 km over Siberia. International Space Station safe. | |
At least 16 patients are killed in shelling on the Putumattalam hospital in Wanni, Sri Lanka. | |
Feb. 11 | Twentysix persons are killed and 55 injured as Taliban gunmen storm the Justice Ministry and another government building in Afghanistan capital Kabul. Eight attackers among the dead. |
Awami League loyalist Zillur Rahman is elected Bangladesh President by the Election Commission | |
Zimbabwe's opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai is sworn in Prime Minister in the capital Harare. | |
Israeli general election produces clear winners. | |
Feb. 12 | Pakistan admits that the November 26, 2008 attacks on Mumbai were partly planned on its soil. Case of terrorism registered against eight Pakistani suspects by the Federal Investigation Agency. Six of them under custody. |
Fifty persons are killed as a U.S. commuter plane crashes into a house in Buffalo, New York state. | |
A man of Tamil origin commits suicide by setting himself ablaze outside the U.N.'s Geneva office. | |
Thirtytwo pilgrims are killed as a woman suicide bomber blows herself up in Iskandiriyah town in Iraq. | |
Feb. 13 | The U.S. Congress gives nod for a $ 787 billion stimulus package. |
Brendon Sokaluk accused of lighting Australia's wild fire now known as Churchill fire is arrested. | |
Feb. 14 | King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia appoints for the first time a woman Noura al-Fayez, Deputy Minister for girls' education. |
At least 27 persons are killed in a U.S. missile strike in South Waziristan, a tribal area in Pakistan on the Afghan border. | |
Nikkitasha Marhawa, an Indian-American from Chicago is crowned Miss India Worldwide 2009 at an event in Durban, South Africa. | |
Feb. 15 | Sri Lanka's ruling combine United People's Freedom alliance notches up an impressive victory in elections to the Central Province and North Western Province. |
Venezuelans cast ballots in a referendum on presidential term limits. | |
Feb. 16 | The Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez wins referendum on scrapping term limits for elected posts, paving the way for his seeking re-election in 2012 and beyond. |
The toll in the Australian wild fire goes up to 189. | |
Pakistan ushers in New Islamic justice system — Nizam-e-Adl — in North West Frontier Province's Malakand division that includes seven districts including Swat valley. | |
Feb. 17 | The Sudanese government and Darfur's most powerful rebel group sign a framework pact for peace talks. |
Feb. 19 | Kyrgyzstan Parliament votes to shut a strategic U.S. airbase, the Pentagon's last foothold in Central Asia. |
Feb. 20 | Two persons are killed and 58 injured as two LTTE aircraft on a suicide mission attack government buildings in the heart of the Sri Lankan capital Colombo. The military brings down the two planes. |
Thirty five people are killed and 60 injured as a suicide bomber attacks the funeral procession of a slain Shia Muslim leader in Dera Ismail Khan in northwestern Pakistan. Two killed in ensuing violence. | |
A jury acquits three men charged in the October 2006 murder of Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya. | |
Feb. 21 | Taliban fighters and Pakistani officials agree on a "permanent ceasefire" in Swat valley. |
Feb. 22 | A blast in one of north China's coal mines leaves 74 dead and 114 injured. |
Slumdog Millionaire, a small-budget British film bags eight Oscars at the 81st Academy Awards function in Hollywood, including Best Director (Danny Boyle), Original Music Score and Song (A. R. Rahman, the first Indian to get two Oscars), sound mixing (Resul Pookutty of Kerala shares it with Iam Tapp and Richard Pryke), Best Picture. Kate Winslet of Britain is named best female actor for her role in The Reader, Sean Penn of the U.S. is noted best actor for performance in the political drama Milk, Spain's Penelope Cruz bags award for her supporting role in the Woody Allen romance Vicky Cristina Barcelona. | |
Smile Pinki, the tale of a little girl with a cleft lip, Pinki Sonkar, from Uttar Pradesh gets Oscar for Best Documentary (Short). | |
Feb. 24 | The U.S. President Barack Obama announces decision to deny tax breaks to American firms that outsource work to low cost destinations in his address to the joint session of the Congress. |
Feb. 25 | The Pakistan Supreme Court disqualifies former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his brother and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif from holding or contesting for public office. The latter demits office and Governor's rule is imposed in the province. |
Iran completes work on the 1000 MW Bushehr atomic power station. | |
Fifty persons are killed as Bangladesh Rifles personnel launch an armed rebellion seeking better pay and putting an end to the deputation of Army officers to command paramilitary body guards. BDR chief Major General Shakil Ahmed is taken hostage. | |
Feb. 26 | After a 33-hour revolt, Bangladesh Rifles personnel lay down arms and are given amnesty. |
Feb. 27 | Bangladesh security forces discover a mass grave of at least 42 massacred army officers at the Pilkhana headquarters of the BDR, including the Bangladesh Rifles chief Major General Shakil Ahmed. Dhaka declares three-day national mourning. |
The U.S. President Barack Obamba sets August 31, 2010 for the end of American combat operations in Iraq. | |
A 15-year-old U.S. newspaper, the Denver, Colorado-based Rocky Mountain News ceases publication after suffering heavy losses. | |
Feb. 28 | Bangladeshi soldiers recover 10 more bodies in a second grave at the BDR's Pilkhana headquarters in Dhaka. The toll goes up to 76. |
Events in March 2009 Mar. 1 |
Chang'e-1, China's first lunar probe impacts the Moon ending its 16-month mission. |
Mar. 2 | The President of Guinea-Bissau Joao Bernardo Vieira is assassinated by renegade soldiers at his palace. |
The Sri Lankan military reopens the A9 highway, the only road linking Jaffna peninsula to the rest of the island, for military traffic after 24 years. | |
Mar. 3 | Five members of the Sri Lankan cricket team are injured as a dozen gunmen ambush the moving convoy of vehicles transporting the team in Lahore's Liberty Chowk. In the ensuing exchange of fire, eight persons, including six policemen in the escort teams are killed. |
The Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency approves an Additional Protocol to the safeguards agreement with India. | |
Japan's Nikkei loses 50.43 points at 7229.72, marking a 26-year low, as Asian stock markets extend their loss. | |
Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata unveils Nano Europa at the 79th Geneva Car Show. | |
Mar. 4 | The International Criminal Court, The Hague, issues an arrest warrant for Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Beshir for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. It is the first by the court against a sitting head of state. |
Mar. 5 | The Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is injured and his wife Susan killed in a road accident on the outskirts of the capital Harare. |
The NASA launches Kepler, a pioneering telescope to scout for Earth like planets aboard an unmanned Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The mission costs $591 million. | |
Industrialist Vijay Mallaya buys Gandhiji's memorabilia for $1.8 million after high drama at an auction in New York. | |
Mar. 6 | Over 100 LTTE cadre are killed as the rebels launch attack on the military's forward defences. |
Mar. 8 | At least 28 persons are killed and 58 injured as a suicide bomber blows himself up outside the police academy in the Iraqi capital Baghdad. |
Mar. 9 | Vinayagamoorthy Muralidharan (Karuna), former deputy leader of the LTTE, is sworn in Sri Lanka's Minister of National Integration in Colombo, shortly after joining the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party. |
The U.S. President Barack Obama lifts curbs on federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research. | |
Mar. 10 | Fourteen civilians are killed and 46 persons, including the Minister for Posts and Telecommunications Mahinda Wijesekara are injured as a LTTE suicide bomber blows himself up at a mosque in Akurassa in Matara district, Sri Lanka. |
A suicide bombing leaves 33 dead in Abu Ghraib district, western Baghdad. | |
Mar. 11 | Ten persons are killed as a gunman goes on a shooting spree in the southern U.S. State of Alabama before turning the weapon on himself. |
Nine students and three teachers of the Albertville-Realschule in Winnenden, Stuttgart in Germany are shot dead by a former student Tim Kretschmer. He kills three more before turning the gun on self after being injured in a shootout with police. | |
The LTTE's financial wing chief Subarathnam Selvatureiy alias Thamilendi is killed in confrontations in east of Pudukudiyirippu. | |
Mar. 12 | The former Nasdaq chairman Bernard Madoff is jailed after he pleads to an epic fraud that robbed investors worldwide of billions of dollars. |
An Iraqi court hands down a three-year jail term to journalist Muntazer Al-Zaidi for hurling shoes at the then U.S. President George Bush during a globally televised press conference in Baghdad last December. | |
Mar. 13 | The Swiss Government announces cooperation on cases of international tax evasion and to provide details on a case-to-case basis. |
The Pakistan Information and Broadcasting Minister Sherry Rahman resigns miffed over the move to block the Geo Television transmission. | |
Mar. 14 | Qamaruzzaman Kaira, Minister of Kashmir Affairs is appointed Pakistan Information and Broadcasting Minister. |
Mar. 15 | The former Pakistan Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, defies house arrest and leads cadre in a "long march" from Lahore to Islamabad demanding the restoration of the deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary. |
Mar. 16 | The Pakistan government agrees to restore the deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary. The PML (N) chief Nawaz Sharif calls off the protest rally. |
A suicide bombing in Rawalpindi leaves 10 persons dead. | |
Mar. 17 | Madagascar President Marc Ravalomanana hands over power to the military following weeks of anti-government protests. |
After 146 years, Seattle's best paper The Seattle Post Intelligencer folds up. | |
Mar. 18 | Madagascar's constitutional court declares Andry Rajoelina as the island's President. |
An Austrian Joseph Fritzl on trial for imprisoning his daughter for 24 years and fathering her seven children pleads guilty to all charges against him. | |
Natasha Richardson (45), the Tony Award-winning British actor dies after suffering a head injury while learning skiing at a resort in Quebec. | |
Mar. 19 | An estimated three million people strike work and march through the streets of Paris and major French towns to protest against low wages, job insecurity and rising unemployment. |
Joseph Fritzl is sentenced to life in a psychiatric prison for holding his daughter captive for 24 years and fathering her seven children. | |
Mar. 20 | The U.S. House of Representatives gives nod for a 90 per cent tax on bonuses for certain executives at firms getting taxpayer-financed help. Bill passed to recoup $165 million controversial bonuses paid to American International Group Inc. |
Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari accepts opposition demand to restore judges deposed during the 2007 emergency by his predecessor Pervez Musharraf. | |
Mar. 21 | Anna Bligh wins vote in a historic poll in Queensland becoming Australia's first elected woman Premier. |
Mar. 22 | Iftikhar Chaudhary assumes charge as the Chief Justice of Pakistan. |
Mar. 26 | U.S. software pioneer Charles Simonyi becomes the first person to travel twice to space as a tourist as he blasts off to the International Space Station on a Russian rocket from the Baikonur cosmodrome on the Kazakh steppe. |
Russian-French mathematician Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov is chosen for the Abel Prize for 2009. | |
At least 45 persons are killed as a suicide bomber blows himself up at a mosque in Khybar, close to the North West Frontier Province capital Peshawar. | |
A dam burst near the Indonesian capital Jakarta leaves 58 dead. | |
Mar. 28 | Ninety countries take part in 'Earth Hour 2009', a global event in which landmarks and homes go dark to highlight the threat from climate change. |
Mar. 30 | Eight recruits are killed and 95 injured as militants attack and seize the police academy in Manawan on the outskirts of Lahore. Troops retake the complex after an eight-hour gun battle. |
Pakistan government lifts Governor's rule in Punjab. | |
The Arab League summit opens in Doha, capital of Qatar. | |
Seven elderly patients and a nurse are killed as a heavily armed gunman opens indiscriminate fire at a nursing home in Carthage, a small town in North Carolina in the U.S. | |
The Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany appoints the Economy Minister Gordon Bajnai as his successor. | |
Mar. 31 | Shahbaz Sharif is restored as Punjab Chief Minister after the Pakistan Supreme Court suspends an earlier order disqualifying him from elected office. |
British troops begin withdrawal, six years after the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. |
Events in April 2009 Apr. 1 | The Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh calls for an international agreement on the transparent exchange of information in banking after talks with his British counterpart Gordon Brown in London. | |
The U.S. President Barack Obama and the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agree to reopen talks on reducing their nuclear warheads, during a meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit. | ||
Benjamin Netanyahu assumes office as Israeli Prime Minister. | ||
Apr. 2 | The G20 summit in London pledges $ 1.1 trillion to boost global economic growth. Leaders agree on measures to reform the banking system. | |
Apr. 3 | France decides to rejoin the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation after a 43-year break in ties. | |
Najib Tun Razak is sworn in Malaysia's sixth Prime Minister in the capital Kuala Lumpur. | ||
Thirteen persons are killed in a rampage by a gunman of Vietnamese origin at a civic centre in the New York State town of Binghamton. The assailant later turns the weapon on himself. | ||
Apr. 4 | Six paramilitary personnel are killed and five injured as a suicide bomber blows himself up at a checkpoint on a VIP road in the Pakistan capital Islamabad. | |
France returns to the NATO fold at the 60th anniversary summit of the Organisation at Strausborg. Albania and Croatia become new members. Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen is named the next Secretary-General. | ||
Apr. 5 | North Korea successfully launches an indigenous communications satellite aboard a three-stage rocket, Unha-2 (Milky Way). | |
Over 400 LTTE cadres including many top leaders are killed as the Sri Lankan army captures the last stretch of land under the Tigers' control. | ||
At least 22 persons are killed after a suicide bomber blows himself up at a mosque in Chakwal district of Pakistan's Punjab province. | ||
Apr. 6 | Over 100 people are feared dead and nearly 1,200 injured after a powerful earthquake strikes the historic central Italian town of L'Aquila in the mountainous Abruzza region. | |
Rioters in the former Soviet state of Moldova storm the Parliament building and the President's office in the capital Chisinau protesting against the results of parliamentary polls. | ||
Apr. 7 | A special tribunal convicts former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, of murder and kidnapping for death squad activities during his 10-year rule in the 1990s. | |
Apr. 8 | The head of the intelligence wing of the LTTE takes command owing to ill health of the supremo Prabakaran. | |
The toll from the Italian quake goes up to 289 even as rescue efforts are hampered by aftershocks. | ||
Ten Pakistani nationals and two others are held in one of the most complex anti-terror operations in Britain. | ||
Top counter-terror officer Bob Quick quits. | ||
Apr. 9 | Fiji's military ruler Commodore Frank Bainimarama quits as self-appointed Prime Minister after a court declares the government illegal. | |
Apr. 10 | Fiji's President Ratu Josefa Iloilo suspends the Constitution, assumes governing power and revokes all judicial appointments. | |
Apr. 11 | The India-ASEAN summit scheduled to be held in Pattaya, Thailand is put off following protests seeking the resignation of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. | |
Former coup leader Commodore Frank Bainimarama is reappointed Fiji Prime Minister. | ||
Apr. 12 | The Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa orders two-day halt to military offensive. | |
Thailand Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva declares emergency in the capital Bangkok and five provinces. | ||
Apr. 13 | Sri Lanka de-recognises Norway as the official facilitator of peace talks. | |
Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari approves plans to introduce Islamic law or Sharia in Swat and nearby areas of the north-west. | ||
Apr. 14 | North Korea pulls out of talks on denuclearisation. Expels IAEA inspectors and U.S. monitors from the Yongbyon nuclear complex. | |
Apr. 16 | Russia declares Chechnya a zone of peace lifting a tight security regime in force in the region for the past decade. | |
North Korea snaps ties with the IAEA and ceases cooperation with the U.S. on denuclearisation. | ||
Apr. 17 | The U.S. President Barack Obama seeks a "new beginning" with Cuba and says he is ready to listen and learn, at the opening of the Fifth Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago. | |
Apr. 20 | An estimated 58,000 civilians trapped in the no-fire zone and held hostage by the LTTE cross over to the government controlled area in Sri Lanka's northeast after the military breaches a 3-km-long earthen wall. | |
Apr. 22 | South Africans cast votes in general elections. | |
The LTTE media wing in-charge Daya Master and another senior official George Master surrender to the Sri Lankan military. | ||
India and Spain sign a trade agreement in the presence of President Pratibha Patil and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, in Madrid. | ||
David Kellermann, acting Chief Financial Officer of money-losing U.S. mortgage giant Freddie Mac is found dead at his home. | ||
An alleged terror plot by Pakistani nationals in the U.K. collapses after police fail to find any evidence and all those held freed. | ||
Apr. 23 | At least 70 persons are killed in two suicide bomb attacks in Iraq. | |
Apr. 24 | Sixty persons are killed and 125 injured as two suicide bombers blow themselves up at the gates of a Shia Muslim shrine in the Iraqi capital Baghdad. | |
India and Poland sign agreements on cooperation in healthcare and medicine and tourism, in the presence of Presidents Pratibha Patil and Lech Kaczynski. | ||
Apr. 25 | The African National Congress wins the South African parliamentary polls overwhelmingly. | |
North Korea announces 'reactivation' of its reprocessing plant at the Yongbyon nuclear complex. | ||
Iceland's interim centre-left coalition government under Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir wins early parliamentary polls. | ||
Apr. 26 | The WHO declares the swine flu caused by the virus H1N1 that has claimed 81 lives in Mexico and spread to the U.S. and New Zealand a "public health event of international concern." | |
The LTTE declares a unilateral cessation of offensive military operations. | ||
Pakistan military kills 70 militants in an offensive in Lower Dir in North West Frontier Province. | ||
Apr. 27 | The Sri Lanka government announces end of combat operations with heavy weapons. | |
Spain becomes the first nation outside North America to confirm a case of swine flu. The toll in Mexico touches 103. The U.S. federal government declares a health emergency. | ||
Apr. 28 | The WHO raises swine flu alert level. The epidemic spreads to West Asia and Asia-Pacific regions. The toll in Mexico reaches 152. | |
Three men of Pakistani origin, accused of helping the July 7, 2005 London suicide bombers are cleared by a jury at the Kingston Crown Court. | ||
Apr. 29 | The U.S. heath officials confirm the first death outside Mexico in the swine flu outbreak. The victim a 23-month-old child, dies in a hospital in Texas, Houston. Egypt begins slaughter of the roughly 3,00,000 pigs in the country. | |
At least 41 persons are killed and 68 wounded in a twin car bombing in Iraq's Sadr city, a main Shia district in Baghdad. | ||
Pakistani troops retake Buner Valley in North West Frontier Province in a two-day operation that leaves 50 militants dead. | ||
Apr. 30 | The six-year British occupation of Iraq ends. | |
U.S. automaker Chrysler files for bankruptcy and announces an industry-changing deal with the Italian firm Fiat. |
Events in May 2009 May. 1 | Health authorities across Asia struggle to limit spread of swine flu after reporting two confirmed cases in the continent. The first confirmed case of swine flu — now termed A (H1N1) flu by the WHO in Asia is recorded in Hong Kong. The hotel where the Mexican guest briefly stayed, along with 300 occupants and staff is put under seven-day quarantine. South Korea reports a confirmed case. | |
The British government appoints Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy the country's first woman Poet Laureate. | ||
May. 3 | General Rookmangud Katawal, the Nepal Chief of the Army Staff is sacked by the Maoist government for insubordination and the Communist Party of Nepal (UML) withdraws support. | |
Influenza A (H1N1) spreads through Europe, Latin America. Colombia reports South America's first confirmed case. Spain with 20 confirmed cases is the hardest hit European nation. Costa Rica reports its first case. Mexico's confirmed cases touch 473. | ||
May. 4 | Pushpa Kamal Dahal "Prachanda" resigns as Nepal Prime Minister after the President Ram Baran Yadav asks the Army Chief General Rookmangud Katawal to continue in office. | |
At least 100 civilians are killed in U.S. air raids in Herat province, Western Afghanistan. | ||
May. 6 | Sixty four Taliban militants are killed as Pakistan intensifies crackdown to wrest control of Swat valley. | |
May. 7 | Deny Al-Qaeda and Taliban "the space" they enjoy now, says the U.S. President Barack Obama to Pakistan at a meeting in Washington attended by his Pakistan and Afghanistan counterparts Asif Ali Zardari and Hamid Karzai. | |
Patxi Lopez assumes office as the first non-nationalist President of the Basque region. | ||
May. 8 | The Pakistan Army launches "full-scale" military action named Operation Rah-e-Rast in the Swat valley to flush out militants. At least 143 are killed in strikes a day earlier. | |
May. 9 | Jacob Zuma assumes office as the fourth President of the post-apartheid South Africa, at a function in Pretoria. | |
At least 200 Taliban militants are killed in the Pakistan army offensive in Swat valley. | ||
May. 10 | More than 1,00,000 panicked people flee Pakistan's northwest following army crackdown on Taliban. | |
At least 300 people are killed and 1,100 injured as the Sri Lankan army makes a major push towards the New Safety Zone in a bid to rescue 20,000 civilians held hostage by the LTTE. | ||
May. 12 | The Sri Lanka military captures an earthen wall-cum-bund built by this LTTE in the vicinity of the 3.5 – Sq.km. new safety zone. | |
May. 13 | The 12-day 62nd Cannes Film Festival gets off to a glitzy start in the French Riviera resort with the soaring animated adventure UP. | |
May. 14 | At least 10,000 Sri Lankan Tamil civilians trapped in and around the New Safety Zone under the LTTE occupation walk to freedom. The wife of Sea Tiger chief Soosai and, four family members are caught. | |
The MPs' expenses claims scandal in Britain claims its first ministerial scalp with Justice Minister Shahid Malik being forced to quit pending probe into revelations that he paid discounted rent for his constituency home in Dewsbury, Yorkshire. | ||
The European Space Agency launches the Herschel and Planck space telescopes. | ||
May. 16 | Kuwait holds parliamentary polls. | |
May. 18 | The LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabakaran is presumed killed in an intense battle with the Sri Lankan military at Mullivaikkal in Mullaithivu district in Northern Sri Lanka lasting nearly 22 hours bringing to an end the 33-month-long Eelam War IV. The others confirmed dead are Charles Anthony, elder son of Prabakaran; the Tiger intelligence wing chief Pottu Amman; the political wing head B. Nadesan and S. Pulithevan in-charge of the LTTE's peace secretariat. | |
The trial of Myanmar opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi, on charges of harbouring a U.S. man who swam to her home, begins at the Insein prison outside Yangon. | ||
May. 19 | The Sri Lankan troops recover the LTTE chief Prabakaran's body found on the banks of the Nanthikadal lagoon. | |
The Speaker of the British House of Commons, Michael Martin is forced to quit following strong criticism of his handling of the MPs' expenses scandal. | ||
May. 20 | At least 98 persons are killed as an Indonesian military transport plane crashes and bursts into flames near Iswahyudi air force base in Magetan in East Java. | |
May. 21 | Sri Lanka draws up a plan for resettlement of 2.8 lakh war-displaced people in their original places of habitation in the north within the next six months. | |
Former British Gorkha soldiers wins a major victory after the government accepts their demand to settle in Britain. | ||
Apa Sherpa of Nepal who lives in the U.S. climbs Mount Everest for a record 19th time. | ||
May. 23 | Senior leader of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist) Madhav Kumar Nepal is elected the second Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal unopposed. | |
The former South Korean President, Roh Moo-hyun who was at the centre of a multi-million dollar corruption probe, commits suicide by jumping off a hill overlooking his native village of Bongha, on the south coast. | ||
Horst Koehler, the former head of the IMF is re-elected German President by a special federal Assembly, with a narrow one-vote victory. | ||
May. 24 | Iran and Pakistan sign a deal to lay a 2,700-km gas pipeline christened the Peace Pipeline for taking Iranian gas to India through Pakistan on the sidelines of a trilateral summit on Afghanistan security in Tehran. | |
Austrian director Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon is awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival. Charlotte Gainsbourg bags the Best Actress award for her role in Lars von Trier's Antichrist. | ||
Shravan Kumar, an Indian student is brutally assaulted by two youths at his house in Melbourne. | ||
Sant Ramanand leader of Dera Sachkhand Ballan is killed in a shoot-out at the Ravi Dass Gurdwara in Vienna-Rudolfsheim. | ||
May. 25 | North Korea conducts a second "more powerful", underground nuclear test and test-fires three short range missiles, triggering an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting. The first test took place on October 9, 2008. | |
Madhav Kumar Nepal takes oath as Prime Minister of Nepal. Bidya Bhandari becomes the nation's first woman Defence Minister. Surendra Pandey gets the Finance portfolio. | ||
Cyclone Aila wreaks havoc in Bangladesh claiming more than 60 lives, the worst-hit being Satkhira adjoining West Bengal. | ||
May. 26 | The Pakistan Supreme Court sets aside its own earlier order and a Lahore High Court verdict disqualifying the former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif and his brother, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif from contesting elections. | |
May. 27 | At least 23 persons are killed and nearly 250 injured in a powerful blast near the provincial head quarters of Inter-Services Intelligence in Pakistan's Lahore city. | |
Canadian short story writer Alice Munro wins the £ 60,000 Man Booker International Prize. | ||
May. 28 | Five persons are killed and 70 injured in twin blasts followed by a gun battle in a crowded bazaar in North West Frontier Province capital Peshawar. Four policemen are killed in a suicide attack on a police check-post. | |
Indian-American teenager Kavya Shivshankar wins the 2009 Scripps National Spelling Bee competition in Washington. | ||
May. 29 | The Australian police arrest five youths in connection with the recent assault on Indian students. A petrol bomb attack in Sydney leaves a student badly burnt. | |
The Federal Republic of Nepal celebrates its first Republic Day. | ||
May. 30 | Pakistan military secures Mingora, the main town in Pakistan's Swat Valley in the North West Frontier Province in the ongoing Operation Rah-e-Rast against the Taliban. | |
May. 31 | Heavy Clash in South Waziristan on the Afghan border. |
Events in June 2009 Jun. 1 | All 228 passengers on board an Air France aircraft flying from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil to Paris are killed as the plane crashes into the Atlantic Ocean after being struck by lightning, while crossing over a storm-prone region. | |
The 100-year-old U.S. auto major General Motors files for bankruptcy protection. | ||
Jun. 2 | A Full Bench of the Lahore High Court orders the release of Hafiz Saeed, the chief of Jammat-ud-Dawa, known as the front organisation of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, after six months house arrest. | |
The Brazilian Army discovers "small debris" from a plane in the Atlantic Ocean about 650 km northeast of the Fernando de Noronha island. | ||
Jun. 3 | The Organisation of American States decides to lift a 47-year-old ban on Cuba at the OAS General Assembly meeting in Honduras. | |
The British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith resigns in the wake of the MPs' expenses scandal. | ||
Jun. 4 | The U.S. President Barack Obama advocates a two-state solution to end the Israel-Palestine conflict and seeks a new beginning between America and Muslims in the course of an address at the Cairo University. | |
Bijay Kumar Gachchedar of the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum becomes Nepal's Deputy Prime Minister; Nepali Congress leader Sujata Koirala takes over as Foreign Minister. CPN (UML) leaders Bidya Bhandari and Surendra Pandey get Defence and Finance portfolios. | ||
Britons case ballots in elections to the European Parliament and local bodies. The Communities Secretary Hazel Blears quits. | ||
Jun. 5 | Four more high-profile British Ministers, including Defence Secretary John Hutton quit the Gordon Brown Cabinet. Health Secretary Alan Johnson is promoted Home Secretary in a Cabinet reshuffle. | |
At least 33 persons are killed as a suicide bomber strikes at the mosque in Haya Gai village in Upper Dir in north-west Pakistan. | ||
A blaze at a daycare centre in Hermosillo, northern Mexico claims 31 lives. | ||
Rajeev Motwani, the Indian-American computer science professor at Stanford University who mentored Google's co-founders drowns in a backyard swimming pool at his Atherton, California home. In 1992, he discovered with other scientists, a method to quickly test long-proof statements for mathematical problems. | ||
Jun. 6 | Search crews recover the bodies of two men along with debris from the Air France flight that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean a few days earlier. | |
Jun. 7 | Lebanese cast ballots in general elections. | |
Europeans cast votes to elect 736 Euro MPs in the world's largest trans-national election. | ||
Jun. 8 | Conservative right-wing parties emerge victorious in the biggest trans-national election in the world involving voters from 27 European Union nations. to choose 376 Euro deputies. | |
The March 14 pro-western alliance led Saad Hariri wins Lebanon parliamentary elections securing 71 seats in the 128-member House. | ||
Brazilian and French ships recover more bodies from the crash site in the Atlantic Ocean taking the total to 16. The tailfin of the Air France flight AF 447 is secured. | ||
Jun. 9 | At least 16 persons including two U.N. officials are killed and 50 wounded in a massive explosion triggered by a suicide bomber at a five star hotel in Peshawar city, Pakistan. | |
The first 16 bodies recovered from the wreckage of the Air France jet crash arrive in Fernando de Noronha, a remote Brazilian island. Twentyeight bodies have been found so far. | ||
Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani of Tanzania, the first Guantanamo Bay detenu to be transferred for a civilian trial on U.S. soil pleads not guilty to taking part in the August 7, 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Tanzania and Nairobi. | ||
Russia to seek WTO membership only as part of a single regional bloc with Kazakshtan and Belraus, says the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. To launch single customs union on January 1, 2010. | ||
Jun. 10 | At least 32 persons are killed and 70 wounded as a car bomb rips through a crowded market in Southern Iraq. | |
Arcandor, the German retail group behind the Thomas Cook travel group files for bankruptcy protection in a court in Essen. | ||
Jun. 11 | The WHO declares a swine flu pandemic — the first global flu epidemic in 41 years as infections climb up to nearly 30,000 cases. | |
Jun. 12 | An unprecedented 82 per cent polling is recorded in the Iranian presidential election. | |
The United Nations Security Council votes unanimously to slap tougher sanctions on North Korea. | ||
Maulana Sarfaraz Naeemi, a leading religious scholar is killed in a suicide attack on a mosque in Lahore. Five persons are killed and 100 injured in another suicide bombing on a mosque in North-West Frontier Province. | ||
Jun. 13 | Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad secures a landslide victory in presidential polls trouncing his nearest rival Mir Hossein Mousavi. | |
Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan are declared 'Actors of the Decade' at the International Indian Film Academy Awards ceremony in Macau. | ||
Ashutosh Gowariker's epic love story Jodha Akbar sweeps the music and technical awards, in all bagging 10 trophies. Oscar nominee Lagaan is voted 'Film of the Decade'. | ||
Jun. 14 | The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives nod, but with conditions, to the establishment of a demilitarised Palestine state. | |
Jun. 15 | Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei orders probe into alleged fraud during the presidential polls. | |
Mir Hossein Mousavi addresses a mammoth rally stretching to 9 km in Tehran. | ||
Five students are killed in militia attacks on dormitories at Tehran University. | ||
Jun. 16 | The first-ever summit of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) at Yekaterinburg, Russia calls for the creation of a "more diversified international monetary system" and a "more democratic and just multipolar world order". | |
"Global multipolarity is irreversible", says the declaration released at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Yekaterinburg. Proposal for new global and regional reserve currencies in addition to the dollar. | ||
The Prime Minister Manmohan Singh bluntly tells Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari to deliver on Islamabad's assurances not to allow its territory being used by terrorists to launch attacks on India, at the sidelines of the SCO summit in Russia. | ||
Iran's Guardian Council agrees to conduct partial recount of votes cast in the presidential polls. | ||
Jun. 17 | The U.S. President Barack Obama extends partial federal benefits to same-sex partners of U.S. government workers. | |
Jun. 18 | The U.S. Senate votes to offer a formal apology for slavery and segregation inflicted on African-Americans. | |
The CPN-UML coalition government in Nepal retains Chief of the Army Staff, General Rookmangud Katawal. | ||
NASA successfully launches the dual Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on a landmark mission to scout for water resources and landing sites on moon. | ||
Jun. 19 | Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei endorses the presidential poll results and warns protesters to keep off the streets. | |
The world's oldest man Tomoji Tanabe (113) of Japan dies and his place is taken by British World War I veteran Henry Allingham, also 113. | ||
Jun. 20 | Scotland Yard launches probe into charges of misuse of parliamentary expenses by members. | |
Thirteen persons are killed in a crackdown on protesters in Iran. Neda Agha Soltan, a young woman is shot dead by a gunman. | ||
Jun. 21 | Iranian authorities arrest the daughter and granddaughter of former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. | |
Jun. 22 | The President of Russia's southern republic of Ingushetia Yunus-Ben Yevkurov escapes bid on life as an explosives-laden car rams his convoy on the outskirts of the regional capital Nazran. | |
Iran's Guardian Council rules out amendment of the Presidential polls. | ||
Jun. 23 | Indian-born Briton Lord Swraj Paul to be appointed a Privy Councillor. | |
Iran sets up a special court to deal with protesters held during the recent crackdown. | ||
Ninety people, mostly militants, are killed in air strikes and missile attacks in Pakistan's South Waziristan. | ||
Jun. 24 | The Pakistan Supreme Court upholds death sentence awarded to Sarabjit Singh of India arrested and convicted in 1990 of carrying out four bombings in Pakistani soil. | |
Jun. 25 | Pop King Michael Jackson (50) dies at the UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles after arriving in a coma. His entertainment career hit high water marks with the release of "Thriller" in 1982. | |
Jun. 26 | The U.S. House of Representatives passes The American Clean Energy and Security Act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. | |
Jun. 27 | China announces the passing of a first of its kind law to facilitate the fair settlement of land disputes. | |
Jun. 28 | Honduran army ousts leftist President Manuel Zelaya and exiles him to Costa Rica in Central America's first military coup since the Cold War, hours before a rogue referendum he had called in defiance of the Courts and Congress. | |
China unveils the country's first national fund aimed at investing in aero space. | ||
Jun. 29 | Convicted swindler Bernard Madoff is sentenced to 150 years in prison for fraud by a Manhattan Court. | |
The Honduran Congressional President, Roberto Micheletti is sworn in the nation's President. | ||
Jun. 30 | At least 152 people on board a Yemeni Airbus jet are killed after the aircraft crashes into the Indian Ocean while trying to land in the Comoros islands. A fourteen-year-old boy is pulled out alive. | |
U.S. forces pull out of Iraqi cities. |
Events in July 2009 Jul. 2 | Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano is elected the new chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency. | |
U.S. Marines launch Operation Khanjar or Strike of the Sword intended to seize virtually the entire lower Helmand river valley in Afghanistan, the heartland of the Taliban insurgency. | ||
Jul. 4 | North Korea test-fires seven short-range missiles. | |
Jul. 5 | The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moots for the first time a "two-state solution" to bring peace to West Asia. | |
Jul. 6 | At least 184 people are killed and 1,000 injured following two days of rioting in Urumqi, the capital city of China's Muslim majority Xinjiang autonomous region. This is a fallout of mass brawls on June 26 between Uighurs and Han Chinese that left hundreds injured. | |
Robert Strange McNamara (93), the U.S. Defence Secretary during the Vietnam War dies at his home in Washington. | ||
Jul. 7 | The U.S. President Barack Obama and his Russian Counterpart Dmitry Medvedev sign a pact that sets a new limit of 1,675 on nuclear warheads after the first Russian-American Summit in eight years in Moscow. | |
Thousands pay tribute to 'King of Pop' Michael Jackson at a memorial service in Staples Centre, Los Angeles. | ||
Jul. 8 | Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono ahead in quick count following the presidential polls. | |
Scientists claim creation of human sperm grown in a laboratory in Newcastle, England from embryonic stem cells. | ||
Jul. 9 | The G8 and G5 leaders call for an "ambitious and balanced conclusion" to the Doha Development Round of trade talks through a joint declaration at the G8-G5 Summit in L'Aquila, Italy. | |
More than 300 people are injured and 10,000 houses damaged after a powerful earthquake hits southwest China's Yunnan province. | ||
At least 42 persons are killed in a double suicide attack and two other bombings in Iraq. | ||
The G8 bans the transfer of enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) items to countries that have not signed the NPT, including India. | ||
Jul. 10 | The Major Economies Forum summit in L'Aquila, Italy arrive at a "historic consensus" on concrete goals on climate change, including reducing emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 and limiting the rise in temperature to 2 degree Celsius. | |
The trial of Myanmar Opposition leader Aung San Suukyi resumes. | ||
A new General Motors emerges from bankruptcy under a U.S. government plan to rescue the troubled U.S. auto giant. | ||
Jul. 12 | Ballots cast in Congo presidential polls. | |
Sri Lanka's Army Chief Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka is designated as the new Chief of Defence Staff. Navy Admiral Vasantha Karannagoda is appointed National Security Advisor. | ||
Jul. 13 | Turkey signs an accord with Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria to build the 3,300-km Nabucco pipeline to supply gas to Europe. | |
The Central Bank of Sri Lanka announces a special loan scheme, "The Awakening North" with a seed capital of Sri Lankan Rs. 3,000 million to spur economy in the Northern Province. | ||
The Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso calls for a snap general election on August 30, following the Liberal Democratic Party's stinging loss in the Tokyo metropolitan assembly poll a day earlier. | ||
A U.S. plane makes emergency landing in Charleston, West Virginia after a hole appears in the passenger cabin. | ||
Jul. 14 | India a "billion people and friend of France," says French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the Bastille Day military parade on the Champs de Elysees in Paris. Inspired by the French Revolution says Prime Minister Manmohan Singh the chief guest. | |
Jul. 15 | The Non-Alignment Movement a "moral force" for the equitable transformation of the world, says Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the 15th NAM summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. | |
Cuban President Raul Castro calls for a new monetary and economic world order at the NAM summit opening plenary. | ||
One hundred and sixty eight people are killed as an Iranian airliner en route to neighbouring Armenia catches fire mid-air and crashes into a farmland near a village north-east of Tehran. Ten members of Iran's national judo team among dead. | ||
Jul. 16 | "Action on terrorism should not be linked to the Composite Dialogue" process and these (sic) should not be linked," says the joint statement issued after talks between Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan in Sharm-el-Sheikh in Egypt. | |
The NAM declaration lays stress on the need for collective action on the principal global issue of the day. | ||
A possible stray comet hit creates a dent on Jupiter the size of earth. | ||
Jul. 17 | Nine persons are killed and 40 injured in serial explosions triggered by "suicide bombers" in two luxury hotels in the Indonesian capital Jakarta. | |
Pakistan's Supreme Court sets aside opposition leader Nawaz Sharif's conviction in the so-called plane hijack case of October 1999. | ||
Jul. 18 | The stage is set for formal indictment in 26/11 case as a charge sheet is filed against the Laskhar-e-Taiba operations commander Zaki-ur-Rahman and 12 others declared "proclaimed offenders" in a Pakistani anti-terror court in Rawalpindi. | |
Mandela Day launched as the former South African President Nelson Mandela turns 91. | ||
Henry Allingham (113) of Britain the world's oldest man and oldest World War I veteran dies. The World's oldest man is now an American Walter Breuning (112) and the oldest woman Gertrude Baines (115) a fellow American. | ||
Jul. 20 | NASA observes 40th anniversary of first human landing on the moon. | |
Myanmar leader Dang San Suu Kyi is conferred with the Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Peace and Reconciliation at a function in Durban. | ||
The former Peruvian President, Alberto Fujimori, is sentenced to 7-1/2 years in jail for embezzlement. | ||
Jul. 21 | Japan's Prime Minister Taro Aso dissolves Parliament. | |
The U.S. State Department backs restricting transfers of enrichment and reprocessing technology to India. | ||
Jul. 23 | The Ann Arbor News, the 174-year-old daily of Michigan abandons print for an online future. | |
Two Chinese teams break new ground in stem cell research by creating tire mice from cells derived from skin tissue. These types of stem cells are called IPS for induced pluripotent stem cells. | ||
Jul. 25 | Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is declared re-elected by a landslide margin. | |
China moves away from the landmark one child law. | ||
Iran's first Vice-President Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie quits after getting the marching orders from the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. | ||
Jul. 26 | Pakistan police arrest pro-Taliban cleric Sufi Mohammad, who brokered a peace deal between the government and militants in the Swat Valley in February. The deal collapsed in April. | |
Jul. 27 | For the first time in six decades, the Chinese President Hu Jintao and his Taiwanese counterpart Ma Yingjeou exchange direct contact. | |
Jul. 29 | At least 64 persons are injured in a car bombing outside a police barracks in Burgos, northern Spain. | |
Four days of ethnic clashes in northern Nigeria leaves 300 dead. | ||
Jul. 31 | The Pakistan Supreme Court declares the former President Pervez Musharraf's November 3, 2007 Emergency and the subsequent dismissal of judges unconstitutional and illegal. | |
Twenty-nine people are killed in a series of blasts targeting Shia worshippers at mosques across the Iraqi capital Baghdad. |
Events in August 2009 Aug. 1 | The former Philippines President Corazon Aquino (76) whose victory in the February 1986 snap polls riding on the wave of "people power" forced into exile the strongman Ferdinand Marcos, dies of cancer in Manila. | |
Trial of those accused of rioting after the disputed Iranian presidential polls opens in Tehran. A defendant, former Vice-President Mohammad Ali Abtahi shifts stance. | ||
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, dives to the bottom of the world's deepest Baikal lake in Siberia aboard a mini-submarine. | ||
Aug. 3 | Iran's Supreme Leader Ayotollah Ali Khamenei formally endorses Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a second four-year term as President. | |
Indian social activist Deep Joshi, Ka Hsaw Wa of Myanmar, Yu Xiaogang and Ma Jun of China, Antonio Oposa Jr. of the Philippines and Krisana Kraisintu of Thailand are named winners of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for 2009. | ||
Anders Fogh Rasmussen assumes office as NATO Secretary-General. | ||
Aug. 4 | China announces implementation of a trial pension plan scheme for farmers beginning October. | |
Aug. 5 | North Korea frees two U.S. journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee jailed in the country since March following a "special pardon" issued by President Kim Jong-Il. | |
Pakistan Interior Minister Rehman Malik informs Parliament that Jamat-ud-Dawa, a front of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is blamed for the Novermber 2008 Mumbai attacks, has been among 25 groups banned under the 1997 Anti-Terrorism Act. | ||
Pakistan's most wanted man Beithullah Masood leader of the Tehreek-e-Taliban is presumed killed in a U.S. missile strike in the South Waziristan tribal area. | ||
Aug. 6 | The new LTTE chief Selvarasa Pathmanathan is arrested in Malaysia capital Kuala Lumpur and brought to Colombo for questioning. | |
The Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso signs an out-of-court settlement with the relief seeking victims of the fallout of the U.S. atomic bombings over Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War. | ||
The U.S. Senate confirms Puerto Rican Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court. | ||
Two men rob a jewellery shop in Mayfair district, London of items worth £40 million in Britain's biggest jewellery heist. | ||
Aug. 7 | India and South Korea sign a pact Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement to scrap or reduce most trade tariffs over the next decade. | |
Aug. 8 | Former Pakistan Foreign Secretary Niaz A. Naik (82) a pioneer of "Track 2" and backchannel diplomacy between India and Pakistan is found dead at his home in Islamabad. | |
Sonia Sotomayor is sworn in as the U.S. Supreme Court's first Hispanic justice and third female member in the court's 220-year history. | ||
Aug. 9 | Typhoon Morakot slams into Chinese provinces on the east coast making landfall in Beibi, Xiapu county in Fujian province. Nearly 1 million people evacuated. Torrential rains in Taiwan cause the island's worst flooding in 50 years. | |
Aug. 10 | Forty persons are killed as two truck bombs explode in Khaznah, a Kurdish village near the troubled northern city of Mosul, Iraq and two car bombings in Baghdad. | |
Aug. 11 | Myanmar's Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is put under house arrest for 18 more months after the junta reduces a three-year jail sentence imposed by a trial court in Yangon. She has already spent nearly 14 years of house arrest. | |
Typhoon Morakot leaves 600 people dead and displaces more than one million people in Taiwan. Over 600 feared buried in mudslips in the mountainous village of Hsiao-lin. More than 1.4 million people relocated in China's Zhejiang, Fujian and Jiangxi provinces. | ||
Aug. 12 | U.S. Marines launch "Eastern Resolve 2" in the Taliban heartland of Afghanistan. | |
The U.S. President Barack Obama bestows the Presidential Medal of Freedom on 16 luminaries, including physicist Stephen Hawking, actor Sidney Poitier, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and tennis great Billie Jean King. | ||
Aug. 13 | India and the Association of South East Asian Nations sign a Free Trade Agreement in Bangkok. The accord, India's first with a trade bloc, will cover 11 countries with a combined GDP of over $1 trillion and will take effect from January 1, 2010. | |
U.S. researchers discover a way to identify drugs that can specifically attack and kill cancer stem cells. | ||
Aug. 14 | One hundred and eighteen persons are confirmed dead in Typhoon Morakot in Taiwan. At least 380 persons of Hsiao-lin village in Taiwan's south are feared dead. | |
Pakistan announces an Independence Day package of reforms for its tribal areas, including lifting a ban on political activities and changes to the Frontier Crimes Regulations. | ||
A "countdown clock" is set clicking in Singapore to monitor preparations for hosting the world's first-ever Youth Olympics for athletes in the 14-18 age group slated for August 14-26 2010. | ||
President Asif Ali Zardari confers the Sitara-e-Imtiaz (Star of Excellence) Pakistan's third highest award posthumously on Indian parliamentarian Nirmala Deshpande. | ||
Aug. 15 | Seven Afghans are killed as a suicide bomber explodes an explosives-laden car outside the NATO military headquarters in Kabul. Ninetyone others, including a woman parliamentarian are injured. | |
Myanmar junta releases American John Yettaw who swam uninvited into the lakeside residence of pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi in May and stayed there for two days, after Senator Jim Webb holds talks with chief Than Shwe. | ||
At least 43 women and children are killed and 80 injured as a fire rages through a tent at a wedding ceremony in Kuwait City. | ||
Aug. 16 | John Yettaw of the U.S. sentenced to seven years hard labour by the Myanmar junta for swimming to the house of Aung San Kyi is deported. | |
Aug. 17 | Ali Sher Haideri, the spiritual leader of the extremist group Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan is shot dead in his car while returning to Hyderabad from the Sindh city of Khairpur. | |
Aug. 18 | Seven persons are killed and 52 injured in a suicide bombing in the Afghanistan capital Kabul and a Taliban rocket hits the presidential palace grounds. | |
Aug. 19 | At east 86 persons are killed and nearly 300 injured following serial blasts in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, targeting the Foreign and the Finance Ministries. | |
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad retains Manouchehr Mottaki as Foreign Minister. For the first time since the Islamic revolution three women have been included in the Cabinet. | ||
Aug. 20 | Afghans cast ballots in presidential pools. Insurgents kill 26 in scattered attacks. | |
The Scottish government frees Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, a former Libyan agent, serving lifer for his role in the December 1998 Lockerbie air crash which killed 270 passengers, mostly American. | ||
Aug. 22 | The Tehreek-e-Taliban names Hakeemullah Mehsud as its new 'amir'. | |
Aug. 23 | Venezuela's Stefania Fernandez (18) is crowned Miss Universe 2009 by incumbent crown holder and compatriot Dayana Mendoza at a pageant in the Bahamas. | |
Aug. 24 | The publisher of the world's largest circulated magazine Reader's Digest files for bankruptcy protection in the U.S. | |
Aug. 25 | Michael Jackson's death a homicide, says coroner. | |
Senator Edward Moore Kennedy (77) of Massachusetts, the last surviving Kennedy scion and a champion of liberal causes dies at his home in Hyannis Port of brain tumour. He served 46 years in the Senate and the Senate Health, Education, Labour and Pensions Committee headed by him passed a landmark healthcare legislation on July 15 this year. | ||
Aug. 26 | One of Iraq's top Shia leaders, and head of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council since 2003, Abdul-Aziz Al-Hakim dies of lung cancer in Tehran. | |
Aug. 27 | Prince Muhammad bin Naif, Saudi Arabia's Assistant Interior Minister escapes bid on life by a suicide bomber at his residence in Jeddah. | |
Aug. 29 | Japanese cast votes in parliamentary polls. Trends project landslide victory for the opposition Democratic Party of Japan. | |
The former Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert is indicted on corruption charges. | ||
Aug. 31 | The Democratic Party of Japan begins talks on government formation after winning 308 seats in the 480-member Lower House against the ruling LDP's 119 ending more than half a century of almost unbroken conservative rule. | |
The Colombo High Court sentences senior journalist J.S. Tissainayagam for 20 years RI under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. | ||
Fashion designer Anand Jon Alexander is sentenced to 59 years jail term after being convicted of 14 counts, including rape by the Los Angeles County Superior Court. |
Events in September 2009 Sep. 1 | Fiji is suspended from the Commonwealth for failing to meet a deadline to make progress towards establishing democracy. | |
J.S. Tissainayagam is chosen the first winner of the Peter Mackler Award for Courageous and Ethical Journalism by the Global Media Forum and the U.S. branch of Reporters Without Borders. | ||
Sep. 2 | Meet Oliver, the first baby in the world born using a new egg-screening technique, array comparative genomic hybridisation, is unveiled by British scientists in London. | |
At least 32 persons are killed as a 7.0 magnitude earthquake rocks Indonesia. | ||
Sep. 3 | Iran to have first woman Cabinet Minister after Parliament gives approval for nomination of Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi as Health Minister. Nod for Ahmad Vahidi as Defence Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki as Foreign Minister and Mostafa Mohammad Najjar as Interior Minister. | |
China approves first A (H1N1) flu vaccine named Panflu.1 produced by domestic pharmaceutical company Sinovac. | ||
Russia and India have defied dictum that "there are no permanent friends but only permanent interests," says the President Pratibha Patil during talks with her Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev at the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow. | ||
Michael Jackson laid to rest in California two months after his death. | ||
Sep. 4 | "India's relationship with Russia stood on its own and will not be affected by its relationship with other countries," says the President Pratibha Patil after talks with the Russian Premier Vladimir Putin at the White House in Moscow. | |
At least 90 people are killed after a NATO air strike involving 500 pound bombs destroys two fuel trucks hijacked by the Taliban in Char Dhara district in Kunduz province in Afghanistan. | ||
Two Indian priests of Pashupatinath temple in Nepal, Raghavendra Bhatta and Girish Bhatta are attacked by Maoists. | ||
Sep. 6 | Four Uighur teenagers are detained by the Chinese police for a spate of syringe attacks in the Muslim majority Xinjiang region. | |
President Pratibha Patil arrives in Tajikistan, becoming in the process the first Indian head of state to visit the Central Asian Republic. | ||
Sep. 7 | Taiwan's Prime Minster Liu Chao-shiuan resigns following criticism of the way the government tackled Typhoon Morakot that left 600 dead. | |
Three youth of Pakistani origin are convicted of plotting to blow up U.S.-bound flights leaving Heathrow airport in Britain in August 26. | ||
The President Pratibha Patil calls for proactive steps to deal with terrorism, extremism and fundamentalism during talks with her Tajik counterpart Emomali Rahmon in Dushanbe. | ||
Sep. 11 | Gertrude Baines (115), the world's oldest person dies in Los Angeles. | |
Sep. 12 | The former President of Taiwan, Chen Shui-bian and his wife Wu Shu-chen are jailed for life for corruption. | |
Juan Almeida Bosque (82) Cuban Vice-President and a comrade-in-arms of Fidel Castro dies of a heart attack. | ||
Lebanon, an Israeli film bags the Golden Lion at the 66th Venice Film Festival. An Iranian film Zanan Bedoone Mardan (Women Without Men) bags the Silver Lion. Colin Firth gets the best actor award in Tom Ford's A Single Man and Ksenia Rappoport is given the best woman actor award for her role in the Italian film La Doppia Ora. | ||
Sep. 14 | Three persons convicted of plotting to blow up U.S.-bound flights leaving Heathrow airport are jailed for life. | |
The world's most famous mountain gorilla Titus, aka the Gorilla King dies at the Rwandan national parks. | ||
Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a top Al-Qaeda leader in Somalia is killed in a U.S. raid. | ||
Sep. 15 | The jailed Iraqi television reporter Muntadhar Al-Zeidi who grabbed headlines after throwing his shoe at the former U.S. President George Bush on December 14, 2008 is freed. | |
The United States Food and Drug Administration approves a swine flu vaccine. | ||
Sep. 16 | Yukio Hatoyama is appointed Japan's Prime Minister. Hirohisa Fujii is named Finance Minister and Katsuya Okada becomes Foreign Minister. Naoto Kan is appointed Minister in charge of New National Strategy Bureau. | |
Israeli armed forces in their three-week war in Gaza earlier this year, deliberately targeted civilians using disproportionate force, which amounts to international war crimes concludes a U.N. report. | ||
Pakistan books Hafiz Saeed, founder-leader of the Lashkar-e-Taiba/Jamat-ud-Dawah who masterminded the Mumbai terrorist attacks under the Anti-Terrorism Act. | ||
Sep. 17 | The U.S. President Barack Obama shelves a Bush-era plan for an Eastern European missile defence plan. | |
Sep. 18 | A suicide car bomb attack kills 33 persons in Pakistan. | |
Sep. 20 | 30 Rock is named the best comedy for the third straight year at the 61st Annual Primetime Emmy Awards. AMC's Mad Men wins best drama for the second straight year. | |
Sep. 21 | The Lahore police confine Hafiz Saeed, founder-leader of the Lashkar-e-Taiba/Jamat-ud-Dawa to his house. | |
France's former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin goes on trial on charges of plotting to smear his arch-rival Nicolas Sarkozy and wreck his presidential bid in 2004. | ||
The deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya returns home and seeks asylum in the Brazilian embassy in the capital Tegucigalpa. | ||
The former U.S. President, Jimmy Carter, is presented the Mahatma Gandhi Global Non-violence Award at the James Madison University Virginia. | ||
Sep. 22 | "The journey is hard. And we don't have much time left to make it," says the U.S. President Barack Obama at the U.N. Climate Change Summit in New York. | |
Irina Bokova, Bulgaria's former Foreign Minister becomes the first woman to head UNESCO. | ||
Sep. 24 | World powers adopt a landmark resolution seeking to rid the planet of nuclear arms at an unprecedented U.N. Security Council summit chaired by U.S. President Barack Obama. | |
Scientists report a "breakthrough" in the quarter century fight against HIV AIDS after an experimental vaccine cuts risk of infection in humans. | ||
Sep. 25 | The G20 is designated a "premier forum" for future discussion of international economic issues. The grouping agrees to effect a 5 per cent shift in the IMF quota share. Mechanism for peer review of each other's policy frameworks and performance. | |
The stimulus measures to tackle the financial crisis should continue till normality is restored to the global economy, says the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, at the G20 summit plenary session in Pittsburgh, Pennysylvania the U.S. | ||
The former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert goes on trial on graft charges. | ||
Sep. 26 | At least 16 persons are killed and 100 wounded in suicide car bombings in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province. | |
Tropical Storm Ketsana dumps nearly a month's worth of rain (34.1 cm) in six hours on the Philippines capital Manila. | ||
Sep. 27 | The German Chancellor Angela Merkel wins a second four-year term. Her rightwing coalition wins a comfortable majority. | |
Sep. 28 | Iran testfires long-range missiles. The Shahab-3 and Sajjil rockets can reach Israel. | |
Sep. 29 | At least 150 people are killed as a tsunami triggered by an earthquake flattens villages in the South Pacific islands of Samoa and American Samoa. | |
Sep. 30 | At least 1,100 people are feared killed after a 7.6 magnitude earthquake hits Indonesia's Sumatra island. The coastal city of Padang bears the brunt. | |
Peru's Supreme Court sentences former President Alberto Fujimori to six years in jail for wiretapping opponents and paying bribes to lawmakers during his rule from 1990 to 2000. | ||
Guy Laliberte, the Canadian billionaire who founded the Cirque du Soleil becomes the first clown in space following his liftoff to the International Space Station from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. |
Events in October 2009 Oct. 1 | Today, a socialist China is standing tall in the East, marching towards modernisation, embracing the future and embracing the world" says the Chinese President HU Jintao addressing people on the occasion of the people's Republic of China's 60th anniversary on the Tian'anmen Square in Beijing. | |
The People's Republic of China stages the largest ever military display in its history as part of its 60th anniversary celebrations. | ||
Oct. 2 | Ratna Kurnia Sari is pulled out alive after lying buried in the ruins of a college in Padang, Indonesia. | |
Marking the International Day of Non-Violence, the United Nations releases a stamp on Mahatma Gandhi on the occasion of his 140th birth anniversary. | ||
Oct. 3 | Ireland votes 'yes' in a crucial referendum on the contentious Lisbon Treaty designed to streamline the European Union. | |
David Coleman Headley, a U.S. citizen is held by the Chicago FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force at O'Hare International Airport for plotting terror attacks in Denmark and India. | ||
Oct. 4 | Greeks Cast votes in snap general elections. | |
Oct. 5 | Americans Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak win the 2009 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres — a vital factor in cell ageing. The trio had won the 2006 Lasker Prize for the same work. | |
The Greek Socialist leader George Papandreou trounces the governing Conservatives and is set to form Government. His Panhellenic Socialist Movement or PASOK sweeps to victory with 43.92 per cent of votes polled. | ||
Five persons are killed in a suicide attack at the United Nations World Food Programme Office in the Pakistan capital Islamabad. | ||
Oct. 6 | Three Amercians Charles K. Kao, Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith share the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for developing fibre-optic cable and the sensor at the heart of digital cameras. | |
The toll in the Indonesia earthquake goes up to 704. | ||
British Novelist Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, a historical novel about the rise of King Henery VIII's adviser Thomas Cromwell wins the 2009 Man Booker Prize. | ||
Oct. 7 | India-born Amercian Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and fellow American Thomas Steitz along with Israeli Ada Yonath share the 2009 Chemistry Nobel Prize for showing how the ribosome, which produces protein, functions at the atomic level using X-ray crystallography. | |
Astronomers announce discovery of a mega-ring around Saturn. | ||
The Italian constitutional court strips Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's immunity from prosecution after cancelling a law passed by the Government last year. | ||
Oct. 8 | Seventeen persons are killed and 80 injured as a Taliban suicide bomber blows up an explosives laden car outside the Indian embassy in the Afghanistan capital Kabul. | |
Herta Mueller, a member of Romania's ethnic German minority wins the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature. | ||
Global climate talks come to an end in Thailand capital Bagkok in an atmoshphere of distrust and recrimination | ||
Oct. 9 | The U.S. President Barack Obama is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009. | |
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration crashes two spacecraft into the eternally dark cabeus crater near the moon's south pole, in search of water. | ||
At least 49 persons are killed and 100 injured after a massive suicide car bomb rips through a packed market in Peshwar, Pakistan. | ||
At least 181 people are killed in a series of rain-triggered landslips in Philippines' main island of Luzon over a two-day period. The toll from two weeks of storms goes up to 540. | ||
Oct. 10 | Ten persons are killed as militants seize the Pakistan Army headquarters in Rawalpindi. | |
Poland's President Lech Kaczynski signs the European Union's reforming Lisbon Treaty. | ||
Oct. 11 | After an 18-hour stand off, Pakistan Army commandos storm Army Headquarters in Rawalpindi freeing 39 persons taken hostage by militants. | |
Oct. 12 | Amercians Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson win the 2009 Economics Nobel Prize for their analyses of economic governance. Ostrom is the first woman to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences since its inception in 1968. | |
A Suicide attack leaves 41 dead in Shangla district, Swat Valley in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province. | ||
Nepal's Foreign Minister Sujata Koirala is sworn in the second Deputy Prime Minister. | ||
Six persons are sentenced to death and one gets lifer for their role in the July violence in China's Muslim majority Xinjiang region that claimed 197 lives and left more than 1,600 injured. | ||
The Lahore High Court rules as illegal two cases against Jamat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed accepting his plea that the JuD is not a proscribed outfit. | ||
Oct. 13 | Alyn Ware of New Zealand, Congo's Rene Ngongo, David Suzuki of Canada and Australian-born physician Catherine Hamlin are named co-winners of the 2009 Right Livelihood Award, the so-called "alternative Nobel". | |
China and Russia sign trade deals worth $ 3.5 billion. A missile deal also inked. | ||
The U.S. Senate Finance Committee gives nod for a sweeping healthcare overhaul. | ||
Oct. 15 | A synchronised triple-attack in Lahore and a vehicle-bombing in Kohat, North West Frontier Province leaves 39 dead. | |
The U.S. President Barrack Obama signs into law the Kerry-Lugar Bill that will provide $7.5 billion in aid to Pakistan. | ||
Brazil, Nigeria, Bosnia, Lebanon and Gabon are elected U.N. Security Council members. | ||
Oct. 16 | Queen Elizabeth II formally opens the United Kingdom's Supreme Court situated in London's Parliament Square. It was established on October 1. | |
Leftist Latin American leaders agree on the creation of regional currency, the Suge aimed at scaling back the use of dollar at a meeting in Cochabamba, Bolivia. | ||
Thirteen persons are killed in a suicide car bomb attack in Peshawar, capital of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province. | ||
U.S. authorities arrest Sri Lanka-born Raj Rajaratnam, founder and head of the New York-based Gallion Management hedge fund on charges of "vast insider trading." | ||
Oct. 17 | The Maldivian Cabinet signs a declaration appealing to global leaders to save their atoll nation from being swamped by rising sea water after a underwater meeting in Girifushi near the capital Male. | |
Oct. 18 | Sixty militants are killed in Pakistan Army offensive against Taliban in South Waziristan code named Rah-e-Nijat (path of Deliverance). | |
A suicide bomber assassinates five top commanders of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in the Sistan-Balochistan province that borders Pakistan and Afghanistan. Thirtynine others also fall victim. | ||
Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a native of Pakistan and a Canadian citizen is arrested at his home in Chicago for providing material support to a foreign terrorism plot that involved Headley. | ||
Oct. 19 | The Colombo Stock Exchange witnesses the biggest fall in the last five years following the arrest of hedge fund billionaire Raj Rajaratnam. | |
Oct. 20 | Five students are killed and 29 persons wounded as two suicide bombers blow themselves up at the International Islamic University campus, on the outskirts of the Pakistan capital. | |
Oct. 21 | Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono begins the second five-year term as Indonesia's first directly elected President. | |
Afghanistan is to hold a second round of presidential election on November 7 after the incumbent Hamid Karzai fails to win a clear majority, in the August 20 vote. | ||
A crucial meeting of representatives of the world's 17 major economies in London on climate change fails to reach agreement. | ||
Oct. 22 | A Brigadier and his driver, also a soldier, are killed after gunmen ambush their car in the Pakistan capital Islamabad. | |
Oct. 23 | At least 23 persons including many children are killed in a fresh wave of bombings in Pakistan. A suicide bomber targets a strategic military complex at Kamra near Islamabad. | |
The U.S. President Barrack Obama signs a proclamation declaring the 2009 A(H1N1) flu a national emergency. | ||
Oct. 24 | The Prime Minister Manmohan Singh proposes the setting up of an India-Asean Round Table at the seventh bilateral summit on the sidelines of the 15th ASEAN summit in the Thai resort town of Hua Hin. | |
If the "Asian Century" is to become a reality it was Important for India and China to live in harmony, says the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao after talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the sidelines of the Asean Summit in Hua Hin. | ||
Pakistan Army captures Kotkai town, the native place of Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud after the launch of an offensive in South Waziristan that has left 163 militants dead. | ||
Oct. 25 | At least 136 people are killed and nearly 600 injured following two suicide car bomb blasts in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, targeting the Justice Ministry and the provincial administration. | |
Israeli police storms the black-domed Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. | ||
Tunisians cast ballots in presidential polls. | ||
The Prime Minister Manmohan Singh calls for an Asian Regional Trade Agreement at the fourth East Asia Summit in Hua Hin, Thailand. | ||
India grants the Market Economy Status to Vietnam, which responds by entering into the Indo-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement. | ||
Oct. 26 | The toll in the 10-day Pakistan army operation in South Waziristan against Taliban fighters goes up to 227. | |
Tunisia's President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali is re-elected for a fifth term. He took power in a bloodless coup in 1987. | ||
Oct. 27 | India and Nepal sign a "historic" new treaty to control illegal trade across the border. | |
President Pratibha Patil pays a ceremonial visit to the Windsor Castle in the U.K. She is the first Indian head of State to visit the country in almost 20 years. | ||
Oct. 28 | A massive bomb blast near the historic Kissa Khwani Bazaar in Peshawar, Pakistan leaves 118 dead and more than 200 injured. | |
NASA launches the world's tallest rocket, Ares I-X on a two-minute test flight from Kennedy Space Centre, Florida. | ||
An Album, Li anniversaire d' Asterix et Obe'loix, le livre d'or' (Asterix and Obelix birthday, the golden book) marking the 50th anniversary of the character's first appearance in 1959 is released in 15 countries. | ||
Pakistani Taliban suicide gunmen dressed as police personnel storm a U.N. guest house in the Afghanistan capital, Kabul leaving nine persons dead. | ||
Oct. 29 | President Pratibha Patil receives the Queen's Baton from Britain's Queen Elizabeth II at the Buckingham Palace as India formally take charge of the 2010 XIX Commonwealth Games to be held in New Delhi. | |
Egypt offers to allow India to set up an "India Zone" along the Suez Canal development area. | ||
China's fastest super computer Tianhe (Milky Way) is unveiled on the National University of Defence Technology campus in Changsha, Hunan province. | ||
Oct. 30 | The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approves the use of Hebrew, Hindi, Korean and other scripts not based on the Latin alphabet in so-called domain names. | |
India and Cyprus sign a business agreement in Nicosia. | ||
Nine U.S. banks wind up business on a single day. | ||
Christopher Lee a.k.a. Counts Dracula and Dooku is knighted for his services to drama and to society. |
Events in November 2009 Nov. 1 | Former Afghanistan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah withdraws from the November 7 runoff presidential polls. | |
Nov. 2 | At least 34 persons are killed and 50 injured in a suspected suicide bombing in the parking lot of a hotel off Rawalpindi, Pakistan. | |
Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission proclaims President Hamid Karzai winner cancelling a planned runoff. | ||
Nov. 3 | Zech President Vaclav Klaus signs the revised Lisbon Treaty paving the way for its implementation within the 27-member European Union. | |
Twelve Sri Lankan parties launch a new political platform, the Eksath Jathika Peramuna or the United National Front. | ||
Nov. 4 | A website "South Asian Link", designed as a global hub for the South Asian Diaspora is activated in Singapore. | |
Nov. 5 | Thirteen persons are killed and 30 injured as an U.S. Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Malik Hassan opens fire at Fort Hood Army post in Texas. The assailant is shot at and wounded seriously. | |
Nov. 6 | The United Nations General Assembly endorses the 575-page report by South African jurist Richard Goldstone that focuses on alleged war crimes during the 22-day Gaza conflict early this year. | |
Two persons are killed and six injured as a gunman goes berserk at the 16-storey Gateway Centre in Orlando, Florida in the U.S. | ||
Nov. 7 | The U.S. House of Representatives approves healthcare bill in a 220-215 squeaker. | |
Nov. 8 | At least 12 persons, including an anti-Taliban Mayor are killed as a suicide bomber strikes at a cattle market in Mattani, a suburb of Peshawar, Pakistan. | |
Nov. 9 | World readers celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (on November 9, 1989). | |
Nov. 10 | At least 30 persons are killed and more than 40 injured in a suicide car bomb blast in the North West Frontier Province town of Charsadda, Pakistan. | |
The navies from the two Koreas briefly exchange fire for the first time in seven years. | ||
Russia honours Mikhail Kalashnikov, father of the world's most famous gun AK-47, with the country's highest award, Hero of Russia. | ||
Nov. 12 | Sri Lanka's Chief of Defence Staff Sarath Fonseka resigns. | |
The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announces a major shake-up of immigration rules in the U.K. | ||
People cast votes in the first Legislative Assembly election in Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan. | ||
Nov. 13 | Seventeen persons are killed and more than 80 wounded in two suicide attacks in the North West Frontier Province, Pakistan that also leaves the regional headquarters of the Inter-services Intelligence destroyed. | |
The Chinese President Hu Jintao presents a four-point blueprint for reviving the global economy at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Chief Executive Officers summit in Singapore. | ||
NASA finds frozen water on the Caebus crater on moon. | ||
Nov. 14 | Eleven persons are killed and 26 wounded as a suicide bomber blows up his car at a police checkpoint in Peshawar, Pakistan. | |
Nov. 15 | "A new growth paradigm" is needed to create a "connected Asia-Pacific in the 21st century", say leaders at the forum of Asia Pacific Economic cooperation in Singapore. | |
The U.S. President Barack Obama says sanctions on Myanmar will remain until there are concrete steps towards democratic reform at the first-ever U.S.- Asean Summit, in Singapore. | ||
Nov. 16 | The U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon calls for a "single global address" to address the plight of the world's hungry opening the World Summit on Food Security in Rome. Five "principles" to help vulnerable underlined. | |
Nov. 17 | The U.S., China for climate pact that will include binding emission cuts for developed countries, mitigation activities for others. | |
Nov. 18 | Sri Lanka revokes the mandatory security clearance for civilians of the Northern Province to travel via land routes. | |
Nov. 19 | Hamid Karzai is sworn in Afghanistan President for a second term, in Kabul. | |
At least 19 persons are killed and 45 injured in a suicide bomb attack in Peshawar, Pakistan targeting the district court complex. | ||
The Supreme Court of Bangladesh upholds death sentence for 12 former military officers for the August 15, 1975 assassination of the nation's founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. | ||
Belgian Prime Minister Herman Von Rompuy is elected the first European Council President and Britain's Catherine Ashton is named the 27-member body's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. | ||
Nov. 20 | The Big Bang machine on the Large Hadon Collider, the world's largest atom smasher, starts operating again 14 months after a technical snag caused one tonne of helium to leak into the 27-km long tunnel that houses it. | |
Nov. 21 | Police in the northern Italian town of Brescia arrest two Pakistani nationals — Mohammad Yakub Jainjua and his son Aamer Yakub Janijua on charges of aiding and abetting in the November 26, 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. | |
A gas explosion in a coal mine in northern Heilongjiang province in China leaves 42 persons dead and 77 trapped 400 metres underground. | ||
War displaced Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka to be resettled from the transitional camps by January 31. Travel curbs on camp dwellers to be lifted from December 1. | ||
Nov. 22 | At least 29 persons are killed after an Indonesian passenger ferry sinks in rough waters off Sumatra Island. | |
The toll in China's coalmine blast goes up to 92. | ||
Nov. 23 | The Prime Minister Manmohan Singh makes a strong pitch for American business to increase investment in crucial areas such as infrastructure at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington. | |
The Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa orders early presidential polls two years ahead of his tenure. | ||
Fiftyseven persons are killed in a political massacre and buried in shallow graves near Ampatuan town in the Southern Philippines province of Maguindanao. Eighteen journalists feared killed in the rampage. | ||
Nov. 24 | India "a rising and responsible global power," says the U.S. President Barack Obama after the summit meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Acknowledges India's status as nuclear power. MoUs signed to "enhance cooperation on energy, security, energy efficiency, clean energy and climate change," to intensify cooperation in agriculture and food security. | |
Under the "Obama-Singh 21st Century Knowledge Initiative," the U.S. and India promise to increase university linkages and junior faculty development exchanges. | ||
Nov. 25 | The Anti-Terror Court of Rawalpindi, Pakistan indicts seven men, including Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi, Lashkar-e-Taiba operations commander for their suspected role in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. | |
The Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and U.S. President Barack Obama announce launch of the India-U.S. Counterterrorism Cooperation Initiative. | ||
The U.S. presents blueprint of strategies to cut heat-trapping greenhouse gases. | ||
Floods leave 77 dead in Saudi Arabia and Jeddah hardest hit. | ||
Dubai World, the fulcrum of the United Arab Emirates' economy asks for a "standstill" agreement to delay repayment by six months on most of its $59 billion of debt. Markets worldwide fall sharply as a result. | ||
Nov. 26 | China's Cabinet announces a target to limit the growth of its greenhouse gas emissions. | |
Ireland's police force colluded with church to cover up child abuse by clergy in Dublin on a huge scale from 1975-2004, says the Murphy Commission enquiry. | ||
Nov. 27 | The International Atomic Energy Agency votes to rebuke Iran for building a uranium enrichment plant in Fordow near the holy city of Qom in secret, at the U.N. IAEA's headquarters in Venna. India among 25 nations backing resolution. | |
The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting opens in the Trinidad capital Port of Spain. | ||
Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari amends the National Command Authority Ordinance 2009 to make the Prime Minister the Chairman of the body that has overall control of the nation's nuclear weapons. | ||
Sri Lanka presidential polls slated for January 26. | ||
At least 26 persons are killed and 100 injured as a bombing derails a speeding express train near Uglovka, half way between Moscow and St. Petersburg, in Russia. | ||
Nov. 28 | "Climate change action based on the perpetuation of poverty will simply not be sustainable," says Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the special session on climate change at the CHOGM summit in Port of Spain, Trinidad. | |
India and Canada reach a civil nuclear agreement on the sidelines of the Commonwealth summit. | ||
India, China, Brazil and South Africa sign a draft declaration listing their "non-negotiable" demands ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit, in Beijing. | ||
The National Reconciliation Ordinance under which Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and others got amnesty from corruption charges against them lapses. | ||
Nov. 29 | Hondurans cast ballots in presidential polls. | |
Swiss voters approve a blanket ban on the construction of minarets in a referendum. | ||
Iran decides to build 10 more nuclear enrichment plants. | ||
Nov. 30 | The "Big Bang" Large Hadron Collider at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research near Geneva creates a world record by accelerating beams to the highest energy ever achieved in a particle collider. | |
Porfirio "Pepe" Lebo is elected Honduras President. | ||
Dubai's stock market drops 7.3 per cent while the stock market in Abu Dhabi closes 8.3 per cent lower. | ||
The United Liberation Front of Asom chairman, Arabinda Rajkhowa, is reportedly arrested in the Bangladesh capital Dhaka. |
Events in December 2009 Dec. 1 | United States President Barack Obama unveils a new fast-track war strategy addressing cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. Pledges 30,000 more troops for Afghanistan and vows to end war and begin pullout in 2011. | |
The Sri Lanka Government throws open the camps for the war displaced to facilitate free movement. | ||
Dec. 2 | A policeman is killed and 11 others injured as a suicide bomber blows himself up outside the gates of the Pakistan navy headquarters in Islamabad. | |
The price of gold strikes a record high level above $1,217 an ounce (31.1gm) in trading at the London Bullion Markets as the U.S. currency weakened against the euro. | ||
Dec. 3 | Three Somali Ministers and eight others are killed in a bomb blast at a hotel in capital Mogadishu during a graduation ceremony. | |
Dec. 4 | At least 40 persons including 17 children are killed and 70 injured as suicide bombers strike at a mosque in Parade Line, Rawalpindi, Pakistan. The Nepal Cabinet holds a meeting at the Everest Base Camp in Kalapatthar at an altitude of 17,192 feet to highlight damage to the Himalayas due to climate change. An Everest Declaration is issued. | |
At least 43 persons are killed after a passenger ferry sinks on the Daira river, around 100 km north of the Bangladesh capital Dhaka. | ||
The U.S. and Russia miss the deadline to sign a replacement to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). | ||
Renowned director Roman Polanski is placed under house arrest at his Alpine chalet in the resort of Gstaad, Switzerland. | ||
Dec. 5 | More than 100 people are killed and 130 injured in a fire at a nightclub in the Ural city of Perm, Russia. | |
The U.S. Senate votes for cuts in payments to home health agencies. | ||
Dec. 6 | Bolivian cast votes in presidential polls. | |
Dec. 7 | India and Russia sign the civil nuclear cooperation pact 3.0 that is free from any curbs on New Delhi and guarantees against restriction in the future. The two sides sign six pacts, including three in the military sphere. | |
A court in Chicago charges Pakistani-origin American David Coleman Headley with criminal conspiracy in the November 2008 Mumbai terror attacks that killed 166 people. | ||
Twin blasts in Lahore's Moon Market and a suicide bombing in Peshawar leave 25 persons dead and hundreds injured. | ||
Bolivian President Evo Morales wins landslide victory in general elections, seeking a second term. | ||
S.B. Dissanayake, the national organiser for the Opposition United National Party joins the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party led by President Mahinda Rajapaksa. | ||
The U.N. Climate Change Conference 2009 of 194 nations opens at Copenhagen, Denmark. The U.S. announces it will start to regulate carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant. | ||
Dec. 8 | A string of car bombings in the Iraqi capital Baghdad leaves 127 people killed and more than 500 injured. | |
At least eight persons are killed and more than 30 wounded in a suicide bombing-cum-rocket attack on the ISI headquarters in Multan, Pakistan. The toll in Moon Market bombings goes up to 49. | ||
British billionaire Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic unveils SpaceshipTwo, a commercial spaceship. | ||
Japan unveils $81 billion of new stimulus spending. In the U.S. President Barack Obama announces steps to create jobs. | ||
The U.S. agrees to pay $1.4 billion to settle long-running claims involving Native Americans. | ||
Dec. 10 | The U.S. President Barack Obama is presented the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 in Oslo. Promises to use it to "reach for the world that ought to be". | |
Tamil Nadu born Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, one of the three winners of the Chemistry Nobel receives the prize at a gala ceremony in Stockholm. The laureates from the other streams are also given the prizes. | ||
Dec. 11 | The European Union pledges € 7.2 billion ($10.6 billion) to help poor nations battle global warming. Liu Xiabo, one of the China's most high profile dissidents is indicted on subversion charges for his strong calls for democratic reforms. | |
Dec. 12 | Gibraltar's Kaiane Aldorino is crowned Miss World 2009 at a glittering ceremony in Johannesburg, South Africa. Miss Mexico Perla Beltran finishes second and South Africa's Tatum Keshwar takes the third place. | |
IIT alumnus Vikram Budhi is sentenced to a 57-month jail term by a Chicago court for posting hate messages in 2006 against the then U.S. President George W. Bush. | ||
The China-Kazakhstan natural gas pipeline is inaugurated jointly by Presidents Hu Jintao and Nursultan Nazarbayev in the Kazakh capital Astana. | ||
The U.S. House of Representatives approves sweeping financial reforms, passes legislation to govern Wall Street by creating a Financial Services Oversight Council. | ||
Dec. 13 | Tens of thousands of activists march to the Bella Centre in Denmark capital Copenhagen where the U.N. climate summit is under way demanding a strong treaty to tackle global warming. | |
The Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi is hospitalised after an attack during an election rally in Milan. | ||
Dec. 14 | African nations walk out of the U.N. climate change talks against efforts by rich nations to "kill Kyoto." | |
Dec. 15 | At least 20 persons are killed and 60 injured in a suicide car attack in Dera Ghazi Khan town in Punjab, Pakistan. | |
The high-level segment of the climate change conference opens in Copenhagen. | ||
Boeing's revolutionary lightweight passenger jet 787 Dreamliner made mostly of composite material takes to the skies for the first time around Puget Sound and inland Washington state. | ||
The U.S. House of Representatives passes the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act that seeks to impose curbs on firms selling refined petroleum to Tehran. | ||
Arturo Beltran Leyva, a Mexican drug kingpin nicknamed the "boss of bosses" is killed in a shootout in the streets of Cuernavaca. | ||
Dec. 16 | The Pakistan Supreme Court declares the National Reconciliation Ordinance null and void and orders reinitiation of proceedings against the accused acquitted under the law. A jolt to President Asif Ali Zardari. | |
Consensus eludes climate talks and president Connie Hedegaard conference | ||
Yegor Gaidar (53), architect of Russia's "stock" market reforms in the 1990s dies of a blood clot at his country house outside Moscow. | ||
Maoists 'take over' Nepal capital Kathmandu and declare it Newa Autonomous State. (Newa is the indigenous, ethnic group of Kathmandu.) | ||
Dec. 17 | All beneficiaries under the new nullified NRO in Pakistan put on an "exit control list." | |
The U.S. joins fund to provide $100 billion to developing nations after 2020 to tackle climate change | ||
Dec. 18 | All the 193 nations agree to a climate deal brokered by the U.S. President Barack Obama, whose 11th hour bargaining with BASIC countries helps to make it possible. Rich nations promise $30 billion in emergency climate aid to poor countries in the next three years. | |
Dec. 19 | The "Copenhagen Accord," a non-binding agreement of sorts is cobbled together after a marathon all-night plenary session at the climate change conference. Sets a target limiting temperature increases but fails to specify the greenhouse gas emission cuts. | |
Pope Benedict XVI declares his Polish predecessor John Paul II "venerable." | ||
Two thousand people are stranded for 10 hours after four passenger trains suffer breakdown in the Channel tunnel between France and Britain. | ||
A massive snows storm leaves buried many cities from Washington to Boston under 70 cm of snow. Europe too not spared | ||
Dec. 20 | The day one of the three-day Nepal bandh witnesses violent incidents. | |
Iran's renowned dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri (87) dies. He played a pivotal role in drafting the nation's Constitution. | ||
Dec. 22 | Three persons are killed in a suicide attack on the Press Club in Peshawar, Pakistan. | |
Forty persons are injured as an American Airlines flight from Miami with more than 150 on board overshoots the runway while landing during a heavy rainstorm in Kingston, Jamaica. | ||
Dec. 24 | The U.S. Senate nod for landmark healthcare overhaul. | |
Nod for Rajiv Shah's nomination as USAID chief. | ||
Dec. 25 | Japan unveils a record 92.29 trillion yen ($ 1 trillion) budget for the next fiscal year. | |
Dec. 26 | China begins a high speed train service on the Wuhan-Guangzhou route. | |
Dec. 27 | Eight persons are killed as Iran witnesses huge protests. | |
A Nigerian is charged with bid to blow up a plane by a Detroit court. | ||
Dec. 28 | At least 43 persons are killed in a suicide bombing in Karachi. | |
Dec. 29 | China executes a Briton convicted of drug smuggling. | |
Dec. 31 | Eight CIA staffers are killed in a suicide blast in Afgahnistan. | |
Reena Kaushal, first Indian woman to ski to the South Pole. | ||
Mota Singh, Britain's first Asian judge is knighted. |
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