d term as president of the United States. 23: Viktor Yushchenko is sworn in as president of Ukraine. 25: A stampede during a Hindu festival in western India kills at least 258 people and wounds 200. 29: Jetliners from China land in Taiwan for the first time in 56 years. 30: Iraqis vote in first democratic elections since Saddam Hussein's ousting, selecting 275 members for the transitional National Assembly.FEBRUARY
1: King Gyanendra of Nepal dismisses his country's government and enforces a state of emergency aimed at crushing a Maoist insurgency. 4: United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan suspends Benon Sevan, the head of the UN oil-for-food program in Iraq, and a senior UN official who dealt with contracts, following an independent investigation that accused them of misconduct. 5: Togo President Gnassingbe Eyadema, Africa's longest-ruling leader, dies. 7: Ellen MacArthur, a 28-year-old Englishwoman, breaks the solo round- the-world sailing record, completing the 41,800km circumnavigation in 71 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes and 33 seconds. 8: The British government gives the creator of Dolly the sheep a human cloning license for medical research. 10: North Korea announces it has nuclear arms. 14: The bombing of his motorcade kills Lebanon's former prime minister, Rafik Hariri, and 20 others. A gas explosion at a mine in northeastern China kills at least 211 people. 16: The UN's Kyoto Treaty on climate change officially comes into force eight years after it was signed. Neither the United States nor China ratified it. 17: Iraq's electoral commission certifies the results of the January 30 elections and allocates 140 of 275 National Assembly seats to the United Iraqi Alliance, giving the Shiite-dominated party a majority in the new parliament. 20: Israel's Cabinet gives final approval to the government's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements. 22: A powerful earthquake shakes central Iran, killing more than 600 people. 28: In the deadliest single strike since the fall of Saddam Hussein, a suicide car bomber targets mostly Shiite police and National Guard recruits in Hillah, killing 125 and wounding 133. MARCH
3: The number of US military deaths in Iraq reaches 1,500. An Indonesian court sentences Abu Bakar Bashir, the alleged leader of a militant Islamic group, to 2 years in prison for conspiracy in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people. Millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett becomes the first person to fly around the world solo without stopping. 4: American troops fire on a car carrying recently freed Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, killing the intelligence officer who helped negotiate her release and injuring the reporter. 7: The presidents of Syria and Lebanon announce that Syrian forces will pull back to the Bekaa Valley by March 31. A complete troop withdrawal is deferred.8: Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov, blamed by Russia for the 2004 school hostage crisis and other deadly terrorist acts, is killed in northern Chechnya by Russian forces. 14: China's parliament enacts a law authorizing force to stop rival Taiwan from pursuing formal independence. 21: George W Bush signs legislation aimed at keeping alive a comatose and severely brain-damaged woman, Terri Schiavo, whose case has been a political football for years. She later dies after lower courts refuse to reconnect her feeding tube. 24: Kyrgyzstan's president, Askar Akayev, flees the country after opposition activists storm his headquarters, seize control of state television and rampage through government offices. Chess legend Bobby Fischer is freed after nearly nine months in a Japanese detention center and flies to his new home, Iceland. 28: A major earthquake strikes off the west coast of Indonesia, killing 500 people. 31: President Robert Mugabe's party scores an overwhelming win in Zimbabwe's parliamentary elections, which are widely condemned as fraudulent.
APRIL
2: Pope John Paul II dies in his Vatican apartment. 5: Japan's government approves a new public school textbook that China and South Korea denounce as "poison" for whitewashing Japan's alleged World War II atrocities. 6: Prince Rainier III of Monaco dies, leaving the throne to Prince Albert II, his only son with actress Grace Kelly. Iraqi lawmakers elect Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani as president, with two vice-presidents, a Shiite and a Sunni Arab. 7:Historic bus service begins between the two parts of Kashmir, one controlled by India, the other by Pakistan. 9: Protesters throw rocks and break windows at the Japanese Embassy in Beijing after a march demanding a boycott of Japanese goods in the textbook row. Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles marry in a simple civil service in Windsor, England. 13: Right-wing extremist Eric Rudolph pleads guilty to carrying out the deadly bombing at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. 19: Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany is elected pope. A Spanish court convicts a former Argentine naval officer of crimes against humanity and sentences him to 640 years in prison for throwing 30 prisoners from planes during his country's "dirty war" more than two decades ago. 21: The US Senate overwhelmingly approves US$81 billion (HK$6,240 billion) for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.25: A packed commuter train jumps the tracks and hurtles into an apartment complex in western Japan, killing 107 people and injuring more than 460 in the country's worst rail accident in 40 years. 26: Syria's 29-year military presence in Lebanon ends as Syrian soldiers complete a withdrawal. 29: Taiwan's opposition leader Lien Chan and Chinese President Hu Jintao meet, capping a historic reconciliation. MAY
3: The first democratically elected government in the history of Iraq is sworn in. Iran declares that it is determined to pursue all legal areas of nuclear technology, including uranium enrichment. 5:Tony Blair wins a historic third term as Britain's prime minister, but his Labour Party suffers a sharply reduced parliamentary majority. 16: Newsweek retracts a Koran abuse story that sparked deadly protests in Afghanistan that left 15 people dead. Kuwaiti lawmakers approve political rights for women, clearing the way for females to participate in parliamentary elections for the first time in the nation's history. Mexican President Vicente Fox apologizes for saying that Mexicans in the United States do the work that even blacks won't. 20: China announces new tariffs on surging textile exports in a concession aimed at easing a clash with the US and Europe. Two tabloids owned by Rupert Murdoch publish revealing photographs of Saddam Hussein, including one showing him naked except for his underwear. 29: French voters reject the European Union's proposed constitution. 30: Saad Hariri, the son of assassinated former premier Rafik Hariri, sweeps parliamentary elections in Beirut. 31: Oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, is convicted of charges including fraud and tax evasion and sentenced to nine years in prison. Breaking a silence of 30 years, former FBI official Mark Felt steps forward as "Deep Throat", the secret source who helped bring down Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal.
JUNE
1: Paul Wolfowitz begins a five-year term as head of the 184-nation World Bank. Dutch voters reject the European Union constitution. 6: A bus bombing in Nepal's rural south kills 38 people and wounds 71. 13: A California jury acquits Michael Jackson on all charges in his child molestation trial. 16: European Union leaders decide to put on hold plans to unite their 25 nations under a single constitution. Gunmen take dozens of toddlers hostage at an international school in Siem Reap, Cambodia, and kill a three-year- old Canadian boy before they are overpowered by the police. 17: Former Tyco International CEO Dennis Kozlowski and a subordinate are convicted by a Manhattan State Supreme Court jury of looting more than US$600 million (HK$4,700 million) from their company. 23: Former Ku Klux Klansman Edgar Ray Killen is sentenced to 60 years for the 1964 Mississippi slayings of three civil rights workers. 25: Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wins Iran's presidential runoff in a landslide. The death toll in two weeks of flooding in China rises to 567.
JULY
2: London and seven other major world cities play host to Live 8, Bob Geldof's music spectaculars aimed at putting the eradication of world poverty on developed nations' agendas. The event led to debt cancellation and a sharp increase in aid for many poor countries. 3: A NASA space probe hits its comet target as planned in a mission to learn how the solar system was formed. 6: London is awarded the 2012 Olympics. 7: Four blasts rock the London subway and tear open a packed double-decker bus during morning rush hour, killing 52 people and four suspected suicide bombers. Some 700 people are injured. 13: Former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers is sentenced to 25 years for leading the largest corporate fraud in US history. 17: The Iraqi Special Tribunal files its first criminal case against Saddam Hussein for a 1982 massacre of Shiites. 21: Small explosions strike the London Underground and a bus. No one is killed. 22: London's plainclothes police mistake a Brazilian electrician for a terrorist and shoot him to death. 23: Multiple bomb blasts in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el- Sheik kill at least 88 people in the nation's deadliest terror attack. 24: Lance Armstrong closes his career with a seventh consecutive Tour de France victory. 26: Discovery and seven astronauts blast into orbit on America's first manned space shot since the 2003 Columbia disaster. 26-27: Record monsoon rains in western India kill almost 700 people. 28: Irish Republican Army (IRA) announces a formal end to its armed campaign to become an ordinary political movement. 30: John Garang, Sudanese vice- president and a former rebel leader, dies in a helicopter crash in southern Sudan.
AUGUST
1: Saudi Arabia's ruler, King Fahd, dies, and Crown Prince Abdullah, his half brother, is appointed the country's new monarch. 4: Al-Qaeda's No 2, Ayman al- Zawahri, threatens more destruction in London. 6: Citizens of Hiroshima mark the 60th anniversary of its destruction by a US atomic bomb. 7: Seven people on a Russian mini- submarine trapped for nearly three days under the Pacific Ocean are rescued by a British remote-controlled vessel. 8: Former United Nations procurement officer, Alexander Yakovlev, pleads guilty to soliciting a bribe under the oil- for-food program. 12: A NASA spacecraft begins a seven- month voyage to Mars that aims to gather more data on the red planet than all previous explorations combined. 14: Israel seals the Gaza Strip to Israeli civilians, signaling the start of its historic withdrawal. A Cypriot plane crashes into a hill north of Athens, killing all 121 people on board in Greece's deadliest airline disaster.15: Indonesian government and Free Aceh Movement separatists sign a peace deal ending their 30-year conflict. Rebels begin handing in weapons in September. 23: Israeli forces evict militant holdouts from two Jewish settlements, completing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's historic withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and a part of the West Bank. Venezuela's vice-president Jose Vicente Rangel condemns American religious broadcaster Pat Robertson for suggesting President Hugo Chavez should be killed. 25: Katrina, one of the worst natural disasters to hit the United States, strikes Florida as a Category 1 hurricane with 80mph (130km/h) winds. 26: State of emergency declared in Mississippi and Louisiana after Katrina, now a Category 3 hurricane, makes landfall. 28: Iraqi negotiators finish the new constitution and refer it to voters, but without the endorsement of Sunni Arabs. 29: The eye of Katrina passes over New Orleans, smashing levees and causing major flooding. The death toll in the city stands at more than 1,300. 30: Crude oil prices rise to a record US$70.85 (HK$552) a barrel. 31: More than 700 people are killed when a religious procession across a Baghdad bridge is engulfed in panic over rumors that a suicide bomber is at large. SEPTEMBER
5: An Indonesian jetliner crashes in Medan, Indonesia, killing 143 people. 6: The US Army hands over its base in Najaf, Iraq, giving Iraqis full control of the city as a first step in transferring security across the country. 7: A year-long investigation of the UN oil-for-food program issues a strong indictment of the United Nations and its top leadership, concluding they tolerated corruption and allowed Saddam Hussein's government to pocket US$10.2 billion (HK$79.6 billion). 9: Egypt's elections commission declares Hosni Mubarak the winner of the nation's first contested elections, marred by violence and a low turnout. 12: An FBI intelligence analyst with top secret clearance, Leandro Aragoncillo, is charged with passing classified information about Filipino leaders to officials. 14: More than a dozen explosions rip through Baghdad in rapid succession, killing at least 160 people and wounding 570. Al-Qaeda claims responsibility.18: German conservative challenger Angela Merkel's bloc wins the most votes in elections, but falls short of a clear mandate to govern. Afghanistan holds legislative elections. 19: North Korea agrees to shut down its nuclear weapons program. 21: Japan's Parliament re-elects Junichiro Koizumi as prime minister following the ruling coalition's landslide electoral victory. 26: International weapons inspectors backed by Protestant and Catholic clergymen announce the Irish Republican Army's full disarmament. 28: A woman disguised as a man slips into a line of Iraqi army recruits and detonates explosives strapped to her body, killing at least six recruits and wounding 35 - the first known suicide attack by a woman in Iraq's insurgency. US Army private Lynndie England gets three years in jail for her role in the torture of detainees in Iraq.
OCTOBER
1: Three suicide bombers strike three restaurants in Bali, killing 22 people, including the bombers. 3: Switzerland decides to extradite the Kremlin's former nuclear minister, Yevgeny Adamov, to the United States to face charges of stealing up to US$9 million (HK$70.2 million) intended to improve nuclear security in Russia. 5: Defying the White House, US senators vote 90-9 to approve an amendment that would prohibit the use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" against anyone in US government custody. 7: Egyptian Mohamed ElBaradei and his International Atomic Energy Agency win the Nobel Peace Prize. 8: A week of mudslides and flooding across Guatemala kills at least 652 people and leaves 577 missing. Turkey reports the country's first cases of bird flu. Cases are also confirmed in Romania. A powerful earthquake triggers landslides, killing at least 87,350 people in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. 13: British playwright Harold Pinter wins the 2005 Nobel Prize for literature. Scores of Islamic militants launch simultaneous attacks on police and government buildings in Nalchik, a city in Russia's turbulent Caucasus region, leaving 137 people dead. 14:Japan's parliament enacts privatization of the country's mammoth postal service, setting in motion the creation of the world's largest private bank. 15: Iraqis vote on a new constitution. 17: A two-man Chinese space crew lands in China's northern grasslands after five days in orbit. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi enrages China and South Korea by visiting Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, which honors the country's 2.5 million war dead. 19: Saddam Hussein pleads not guilty to charges of murder and torture. 21: Haji Baz Mohammad, a Taliban- linked drug lord who allegedly sought to poison US streets with millions of dollars of heroin, becomes the first person extradited from Afghanistan to New York to face federal charges. 24: Rosa Parks, whose defiant act on a city bus in 1955 inspired the civil rights movement in the United States, dies in Detroit, at age 92. 25:Iraq's new constitution is ratified by a huge margin. The US military death toll in the Iraq war reaches 2,000. 26: Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declares Israel a "disgraceful blot" that should be "wiped off the map." 27: One hundred youths riot to protest over the accidental deaths of two Muslim teens electrocuted in a Paris suburb. The riots spread across 20 cities over the following fortnight. 28: More than a million demonstrators flood the streets of Tehran and other major cities in Iran to back President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's call for the destruction of the Jewish state. The US vice-president's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, resigns after being indicted on charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements in the CIA leak investigation.29-30:The death toll from Hurricane Wilma climbs to 21 in Florida. NOVEMBER
7: Sixty-three people have died from bird flu worldwide since 2003, the World Health Organization says. 8: French President Jacques Chirac declares a 12-day state of emergency, paving the way for curfews to be imposed on riot-hit towns to halt France's worst civil unrest in nearly four decades. Vietnam, the country hit hardest by bird flu, confirms its 42nd death from the disease.9: Suicide bombers carry out nearly simultaneous attacks on three US-based hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing 63 people, including the bombers. 15: Israel and the Palestinians reach an agreement to open Gaza's borders from November 25. Two kidney dialysis patients receive the world's first blood vessels grown in a lab dish from snippets of their own skin, scientists from a California biotech company claim. 18: Sri Lanka's Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse wins the nation's presidential election by a slim margin. 24: The European Union accuses Iran of having documents that show how to make nuclear warheads and joins the United States in warning Tehran it faces referral to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions. Jordan's King Abdullah II appoints national security adviser Marouf al- Bakhit as prime minister and urges him to launch all-out war against Islamic militancy following the deadly triple hotel bombings. Hwang Woo-suk, a South Korean cloning pioneer accused of ethics violations, apologizes to the public, acknowledging that two junior scientists working for him voluntarily donated their own eggs for his research. 25: Palestinians take control of a border for the first time with the festive opening of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt. 27: Doctors in France perform the world's first partial face transplant on a woman disfigured by a dog bite. 30: Shimon Peres quits his political home of six decades to campaign for Ariel Sharon's new party.
DECEMBER
2: Double murderer Kenneth Lee Boyd becomes the 1,000th person executed in the United States since capital punishment resumed 28 years ago. Singapore executes a Vietnam-born Australian heroin trafficker despite a warning by Australia's prime minister. 5: Iran announces plans for a second nuclear power plant. 7: A US air marshal kills a passenger at Miami International Airport after he claims to have a bomb. No bomb is found. 11: Explosions rip through a major fuel depot north of London, injuring 43 people. Thousands of drunken white youths attack police and Arab immigrants at a beach in Sydneys. 12: Hospital patients, soldiers and prisoners in Iraq begin voting in parliamentary elections, three days ahead of the general population. Stanley Tookie Williams, a convicted killer whose case stirred a debate about capital punishment versus the possibility of redemption, is executed in California. 14: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad escalates his anti-Israeli rhetoric, calling the Holocaust a "myth" used by Europeans to create a Jewish state in the heart of the Islamic world. 29: Indonesian soldiers pull out of Aceh province to complete the last phase of an agreed troop withdrawal with the Free Aceh Movement. The separatists had already disarmed and formally disbanded their armed wing. An Egyptian court sentences Ayman Nour, the lawyer and politician who challenged President Hosni Mubarak in elections, to five years in prison on charges of forging petitions. President Vladimir Putin's top economic adviser resigns, six days after declaring that Russia "is no longer a democratic country." South Korean cloning pioneer Hwang Woo Suk did not make any of the 11 stem cell lines he claimed were derived from the DNA of sick and injured patients, an expert panel investigating the controversial scientist finds. AGENCIES
