Major events of the year
Events that dominated headlines in 2008: JANUARY - The French bank Societe Generale admits that a single securities trader lost it almost five billion euros (seven billion dollars).
FEBRUARY - With support from many but not all western countries, Kosovo formally declares independence from Serbia.
MARCH - Dmitry Medvedev is elected president of Russia.
- Violence erupts in Lhasa, capital of the Chinese autonomous region of Tibet.
APRIL - The passage of the Olympic flame through London and then Paris is marred by protests, causing anger in China.
- The conservative Silvio Berlusconi wins a third term as prime minister of Italy.
- Police in Austria arrest Josef Fritzl, who has kept his daughter locked up in a specially designed cellar for 24 years, fathering seven children by her.
MAY - Tens of thousands of people die and millions are made homeless when a cyclone devastates the secretive Asian state of Myanmar.
- A massive earthquake hits the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan, killing tens of thousands and causing massive destruction.
JUNE - Around 1,000 inmates of an Afghan prison escape when Taliban guerrillas mount an attack.
- Voters in Ireland reject the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty, the successor to the doomed EU Constitution.
- Veteran Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe claims victory in presidential elections despite widespread accusations of fraud.
JULY - The French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt is freed after being held hostage for six years by FARC guerrillas.
- Iran once again refuses to freeze its uranium enrichment work, despite protests from countries which believe it is developing a nuclear bomb.
- US stock markets plunge after two giant mortgage companies are revealed to be in deep financial trouble.
- Serbian police capture the fugitive Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic, who is extradited to a UN war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands.
- In one of several such incidents, a US missile fired from Afghanistan kills six people in a tribal zone of Pakistan.
AUGUST - Some 150 Hindu worshippers die in a stampede at a temple in northern India.
- The Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who denounced the Soviet Gulag system of labour camps, dies aged 89.
- Government forces in Georgia mount an assault on the breakaway region of South Ossetia, prompting a massive response from the military in neighbouring Russia.
- The Summer Olympic Games in Beijing go off without incident.
- Threatened with impeachment, Pervez Musharraf resigns as president of Pakistan.
- Afghan officials say 76 civilians, many of them women and children, died when US forces attacked a village in the west of the country.
- North Korea reverses a pledge to dismantle its nuclear installations.
- The Caribbean hurricane season kills hundreds of people in several countries, notably Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
SEPTEMBER - The Pakistani parliament elects Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of the slain politician Benazir Bhutto, as the country’s new president.
- The giant US bank Lehman Brothers goes bankrupt after the government refuses to save it.
- Chinese officials say that thousands of babies are ill after consuming tainted milk formula.
- A truck bomb kills at least 60 people at a hotel in the Pakistani capital Islamabad.
- US politicians agree on a 700 billion dollar rescue plan for their economy.
OCTOBER - Stock markets crash around the world, evoking comparisons with the collapse of 1929.
- The Austrian far right politician Joerg Haider dies in a high-speed car crash.
- New fighting flares up in the mineral-rich east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
NOVEMBER - US voters hand a convincing victory to the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, who defeats the Republican John McCain and will be the first ever African-American president.
- Pirates operating off the coast of Somalia grab a Saudi Arabian supertanker laden with two million barrels of crude oil.
- Heavily armed men landing by sea wreak havoc in the Indian city of Mumbai. At least 163 people die in three days of violence.
- The Iraqi parliament approves an agreement under which US forces will leave the country by 2011.
DECEMBER - A Thai court dissolves the country’s ruling party, handing a victory to anti-corruption activists who have occupied the main Bangkok airport.
- Mass unrest breaks out in Greece after the shooting dead of a teenager by police.
- The outgoing US president, George W. Bush, pays a final visit to Iraq. An Iraqi journalist hurls his shoes at him.
- Details emerge of a worldwide pyramid scheme run by a prominent US financier, Bernard Madoff, in which 50 billion dollars may have been lost.
- Nobel Prize-winning British playwright Harold Pinter, one of theatre’s biggest names for nearly half a century, dies of cancer aged 78.
- Pakistan redeploys thousands of troops to the border with India.
- Israeli attacks on Hamas-run Gaza Strip kill at least 228 Palestinians.
FEBRUARY - With support from many but not all western countries, Kosovo formally declares independence from Serbia.
MARCH - Dmitry Medvedev is elected president of Russia.
- Violence erupts in Lhasa, capital of the Chinese autonomous region of Tibet.
APRIL - The passage of the Olympic flame through London and then Paris is marred by protests, causing anger in China.
- The conservative Silvio Berlusconi wins a third term as prime minister of Italy.
- Police in Austria arrest Josef Fritzl, who has kept his daughter locked up in a specially designed cellar for 24 years, fathering seven children by her.
MAY - Tens of thousands of people die and millions are made homeless when a cyclone devastates the secretive Asian state of Myanmar.
- A massive earthquake hits the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan, killing tens of thousands and causing massive destruction.
JUNE - Around 1,000 inmates of an Afghan prison escape when Taliban guerrillas mount an attack.
- Voters in Ireland reject the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty, the successor to the doomed EU Constitution.
- Veteran Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe claims victory in presidential elections despite widespread accusations of fraud.
JULY - The French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt is freed after being held hostage for six years by FARC guerrillas.
- Iran once again refuses to freeze its uranium enrichment work, despite protests from countries which believe it is developing a nuclear bomb.
- US stock markets plunge after two giant mortgage companies are revealed to be in deep financial trouble.
- Serbian police capture the fugitive Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic, who is extradited to a UN war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands.
- In one of several such incidents, a US missile fired from Afghanistan kills six people in a tribal zone of Pakistan.
AUGUST - Some 150 Hindu worshippers die in a stampede at a temple in northern India.
- The Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who denounced the Soviet Gulag system of labour camps, dies aged 89.
- Government forces in Georgia mount an assault on the breakaway region of South Ossetia, prompting a massive response from the military in neighbouring Russia.
- The Summer Olympic Games in Beijing go off without incident.
- Threatened with impeachment, Pervez Musharraf resigns as president of Pakistan.
- Afghan officials say 76 civilians, many of them women and children, died when US forces attacked a village in the west of the country.
- North Korea reverses a pledge to dismantle its nuclear installations.
- The Caribbean hurricane season kills hundreds of people in several countries, notably Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
SEPTEMBER - The Pakistani parliament elects Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of the slain politician Benazir Bhutto, as the country’s new president.
- The giant US bank Lehman Brothers goes bankrupt after the government refuses to save it.
- Chinese officials say that thousands of babies are ill after consuming tainted milk formula.
- A truck bomb kills at least 60 people at a hotel in the Pakistani capital Islamabad.
- US politicians agree on a 700 billion dollar rescue plan for their economy.
OCTOBER - Stock markets crash around the world, evoking comparisons with the collapse of 1929.
- The Austrian far right politician Joerg Haider dies in a high-speed car crash.
- New fighting flares up in the mineral-rich east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
NOVEMBER - US voters hand a convincing victory to the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, who defeats the Republican John McCain and will be the first ever African-American president.
- Pirates operating off the coast of Somalia grab a Saudi Arabian supertanker laden with two million barrels of crude oil.
- Heavily armed men landing by sea wreak havoc in the Indian city of Mumbai. At least 163 people die in three days of violence.
- The Iraqi parliament approves an agreement under which US forces will leave the country by 2011.
DECEMBER - A Thai court dissolves the country’s ruling party, handing a victory to anti-corruption activists who have occupied the main Bangkok airport.
- Mass unrest breaks out in Greece after the shooting dead of a teenager by police.
- The outgoing US president, George W. Bush, pays a final visit to Iraq. An Iraqi journalist hurls his shoes at him.
- Details emerge of a worldwide pyramid scheme run by a prominent US financier, Bernard Madoff, in which 50 billion dollars may have been lost.
- Nobel Prize-winning British playwright Harold Pinter, one of theatre’s biggest names for nearly half a century, dies of cancer aged 78.
- Pakistan redeploys thousands of troops to the border with India.
- Israeli attacks on Hamas-run Gaza Strip kill at least 228 Palestinians.
Komentar