Post date: Dec 21, 2011 3:2:45 PM
News yearender for 2011.
(REUTERS) - JANUARY
At least seven people die and more than 20 are injured in a car bomb near a church in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, sparking tension between Christians and Muslims on New Year's Day.
Australia's biggest floods in decades spread across a swathe of land the size of France and Germany combined, leaving some towns in Queensland submerged and others isolated. U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords battled for her life on January 9 after a man shot her in the head and killed six people in a rampage that fuelled debate about extreme political rhetoric in America.
Sudan's citizens went to the polls on January 9 as they cast their vote for the secession of southern Sudan.
Heavy rains sparked floods and massive landslides in one of Brazil's worst natural disasters during January. The death toll reached over 600 as rescuers dug up corpses from under rivers of mud and managed to reach more remote areas.
FEBRUARY
Thai and Cambodian troops clashed for a fourth straight day on February 7 over a disputed border area surrounding a 900-year-old mountaintop temple as Cambodia urged the U.N. Security Council to intervene.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says rape charges against him are groundless on the first day of a London court hearing at which expert witnesses gave evidence.
Fire authorities in Western Australia said on February 7 that bushfires around Perth had destroyed more than 40 properties and at least one firefighter had been injured battling the blazes.
More than 1,000 people escaping turmoil in Tunisia landed on the Italian island Lampadusa in rickety boats, increasing fears of a new, uncontrolled wave of illegal immigration from North Africa.
Police in riot gear used batons on February 13 to try and break up a group of anti-regime protesters in the Algerian capital Algiers during a march inspired by uprisings elsewhere in the Arab world.
Authorities in New Zealand report that a pod of over 100 pilot whales that were stranded on a remote beach died after rescuers were unable to help them.
New Zealand declared a national state of emergency on February 24 to cope with the aftermath of a devastating tremour in Christchurch, the country's second biggest city.
MARCH
An earthquake out to sea unleashed a deadly Tsunami onto the Japanese coast on March 11, washing away everthing in its path. The quake and tsunami crippled three reactors at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power complex, raising fears of an uncontrolled radiation leak.
APRIL
Armed pro-Gbagbo "young patriots" and soldiers loyal to incumbent Laurent Gbagbo patrolled parts of Abidjan on April 2, after fierce battles with forces loyal to Alassane Ouattara, internationally recognised as winner of the Ivorian presidential elections last November.
However, Gbagbo was arrested on April 11 after French armoured vehicles closed in on the compound where the self-proclaimed president had been holed up in a bunker.
Two Taliban suicide bombers cause carnage at a Sufi shrine in eastern Pakistan on April 3, killing at least 41 people and wounding scores more in the latest bloody attack on minority religious groups in Pakistan.
Survivors from a capsized boat that had been travelling from Libya to Italy are rescued by the Italian coastguard and brought to the southern island of Lampedusa on April 6.
Between 130 and 250 people were missing and at least 15 appeared to be dead following the incident.
A large fire razed a shanty community near a main thoroughfare in the Philippine capital Manila on the afternoon of April 19, burning over 900 houses and displacing thousands of residents.
Rarely seen in public, former Cuban President Fidel Castro formally relinquished his last post at the closing session of Cuba's Communist Party Congress on April 19.
The Ukrainian town of Slavutych holds a vigil service to mark the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, The town - 40 kilometres from Chernobyl - was built to host residents of Pripyat - the city nearest Chernobyl that is now an eerie ghost town - and many of those that came to the memorial service lived and worked near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant when the fatal accident happened on the night of April 26, 1986.
The highly publicised wedding of Prince William of Wales and Kate Middleton took place on April 29 at London's Westminster Abbey. The ceremony, full of Bitish pomp and pagentary, was watched by an estimated 2 billion people across the globe.
MAY
On May 2, the world's most wanted man, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, was killed by U.S. special forces in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.
The special operation, conducted at night was watched by U.S. President Barack Obama and his staff as it unfolded.
On May 15, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was arrested in New York and accused of a sexual attack on a hotel maid.
A rejected bride-to-be was pulled to safety after threatening to jump out of a seventh-floor window in northeast China on May 17, after her fiancé dumped her days before their wedding.
U.S. President Barack Obama opened a four-nation tour of Europe on May 23 in Ireland where he enjoyed a pint of stout, and explored his Irish roots in a town that was home to his great-great-great grandfather.
Several tornadoes touched down in Oklahoma on May 24, leaving piles of debris where commercial and residential structures once stood.
May 31 saw Bosnian Serb wartime general Ratko Mladic flown into Rotterdam in the Netherlands where he was transferred to prison near The Hague to stand trial for warcrimes.
JULY
The owners of British tabloid news paper News of the World made the shock decision to close the title on July 7 in the face of mounting criticism of its newsgathering techniques.
Claims of illegal hacking into the voicemails of stars, royals, families of soldiers killed in combat and a kidnapped girl later found to be murdered have engulfed parent company News Corp in scandal.
Rupert Murdoch, head of News Corp which also owns the Sun, Times and Sunday Times newspapers, flies to London this weekend to try to contain the fallout, fearing it could jeopardise his bid to buy British broadcaster BSkyB.
Staff at News of the World, where some 200 people are losing their jobs, have voiced anger and disbelief at the sudden move to shut it down, believing they were ruthlessly sacrificed to save the prized BSkyB deal.
The collapse in advertising in the wake of the latest hacking allegations may also have played a part in the decision.
Thousands of Southern Sudanese danced and cheered as their new country formally declared its independence on July 9, after a hard-won separation from the north that also plunged the fractured region into a new period of uncertainty.
A man threw a 'custard pie' made of white shaving foam over News Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch on July 19 during a committee hearing into the hacking scandal at one of his newspapers at the Houses of Parliament.
There was no sign that Murdoch had been hurt and no doctor was required. The session was abruptly suspended and the journalists and members of the public were asked to leave before resuming again shortly after the incident.
The space shuttle Atlantis glided home through a clear moonlit sky on July 21 to complete a 13-day cargo run to the International Space Station and end a 30-year odyssey for NASA's shuttle programme.
Atlantis' return from the 135th shuttle mission capped a programme that made spaceflight appear routine, despite two fatal accidents that killed 14 astronauts and destroyed two of NASA's five spaceships.
A bomb killed seven people in Norway's capital Oslo on July 22, Norwegian man Anders Behring Breivik who was believed to be behind the bomb attack also opened fire at a youth camp on the island on Utoeya, leaving scores of teenagers dead.
AUGUST
Riots broke out late on August 6 in London's northern Tottenham district when a peaceful protest over the police's shooting of a suspect turned violent, leaving parts of the high street charred and its shops looted.
The violence spread over the following days to Hackney in east London and the deprived districts of Peckham and Lewisham in south London.
In Somalia during August, makeshift camps for displaced people were overwhelmed by growing levels of disease and malnutrition.
Several people were killed when gunmen fired at Israeli vehicles near the Egyptian frontier on August 18, in attacks likely to raise concerns about the ability of Egypt's new leadership to rein in militants along the border.
On August 18, Turkey bombs Kurdish guerrilla targets in northern Iraq for a second night, after nine Turkish soldiers are killed in a PKK ambush.
Five Taliban attackers laid siege to a British cultural centre in the Afghan capital on August 19, killing at least nine people during an hours-long assault on the 92nd anniversary of Afghanistan's independence from British rule.
In one of the worst attacks in a major Mexican city in years, masked gunmen killed at least 53 people at a casino in northern Mexico on August 25, leaving it ablaze with patrons trapped inside.
Hurricane Irene, a wide storm packing winds of more than 100 miles per hour (160 km per hour), bore down on the North Carolina coast of the United States on August 26, ahead of an expected landfall the following day as US President Barack Obama urged citizens in the hurricanes path to take precautions.
A bomb blast ripped through the United Nations offices in the Nigerian capital of Abuja on August 26 as a car rammed into the building, and witnesses said they had seen a number of dead bodies being carried from the site.
Landslides in eastern Uganda killed at least 23 people on August 29. Many more victims were believed to be buried under mounds of mud.
The landslides occurred in the early hours after unseasonably heavy rains near the border with Kenya razed hundreds of houses.
A suicide bomb attack killed nine people on August 31 in an attack in Chechnya's capital Grozny during celebrations at the end of the Muslim festival of Ramadan.
SEPTEMBER
Former international Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn arrived at his central Paris home on September 4, after a sexual assault case brought against him in the U.S. was dropped.
A man who is believed to have a bomb strapped to himself inside an Australian court building appeared at a window wearing a barrister's wig on September 6.
Local media reported police negotiators were trying to talk to the man. Earlier reports said the man may have a hostage - a young girl believed to be his daughter.
A passenger plane carrying a Russian ice hockey team to a season-opening match crashed after takeoff from a provincial airport on September 7, killing 43 people and leaving two survivors in grave condition.
Egyptian protesters stormed the building housing Israel's Cairo embassy on September 9, pulling down the Israeli flag and throwing embassy documents out of the windows.
U.S. President Barack Obama led mourners during a ceremony in New York to mark the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States.
At least 190 people drowned when a ferry capsized in rough waters off east Africa on September 10, as it sailed from Zanzibar to Pemba Island, the worst disaster in the archipelago's recent history.
Taliban suicide fighters launched a multi-pronged attack in Kabul on September 13, firing rockets towards the U.S. and other embassies in central Kabul, and sending two suicide bombers to the west of the city later in the afternoon.
A bomb blast rocked the centre of the Turkish capital Ankara on September 20, Kurdish seperatist groups were believed to be responsible.
Migrants scuffled with Italian police on September 21 on the island of Lampedusa as tensions mounted following rumours they were soon to be repatriated.
Police were seen beating hundreds of migrants who tried to escape by climbing a 30-metre wall.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas asked the United Nations on September 23 to recognize a state for his people, even though Israel still occupies its territory and the United States had vowed to veto the move.
Two U.S. citizens sentenced in Iran to eight years in jail for spying left for the United States on September 24 from Oman, where they had landed after being released by Iranian authorities.
On September 25 Barcelona's 'La Monumental' arena closed its doors for good as bullfighting was banned. Two of the bullfighters performing there were carried out by excited fans chanting "Torero, Torero" who said that bullfighting would be back one day.
Typhoon Nesat pounded northern Philippine provinces and the capital on September 27, packing strong winds and intensifying monsoon rains that toppled trees and flooded parts of Manila.
OCTOBER
An Italian court cleared 24-year-old American Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend of murdering British student Meredith Kercher in 2007 and ordered them to be set free on October 3 after nearly four years in prison for a crime they always denied committing.
Somalia's al Qaeda-linked rebels struck at the heart of the capital Mogadishu on October 4, killing at least 65 people with a truck bomb in the group's most deadly single attack since launching an insurgency in 2007.
Overhead the skies were grey on the morning of October 6, matching the mood below where flags in front of the Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California, flew at half-mast. Nearby, a makeshift memorial marking the passing of Apple legend Steve Jobs attracted a steady stream of somber visitors.
Jobs, who touched the daily lives of countless millions of people through the Macintosh computer, iPod, iPhone and iPad, died on October 5 at age 56 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. He stepped down as Apple chief executive in August.
The worst flooding in two decades submerged much of Thailand, including parts of the capital Bangkok during October.
A rare opportunity to glimpse life inside the closed state of North Korea in October showed many children in the countryside sick and hungry, in desperate need of proper nutrition and medical care after a dire winter and heavy flooding blighted the country.
A Ukrainian court on October 11 sentenced former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko to seven years in prison for abuse of office in relation to a 2009 gas deal with Russia which she brokered.
New Zealand's salvage experts reboarded a stricken container ship wedged on a reef on October 13 as the vessel threatened to break in half and residents joined specialist crews in clearing beaches of large clumps of toxic fuel oil.
Eighty-eight of the 1,368 containers have been lost and authorities said one was carrying ferrosilicon, a hazardous substance which can explode on contact with water.
Police patrolled beaches to stop any looting of containers.
A largely peaceful protest in the heart of London's financial district turned violent on October 15, as tension between demonstrators and police began to escalate.
Up to three thousand people were gathered near to London's stock exchange for a protest over economic inequality that organisers hoped will match New York's 'Occupy Wall Street' movement.
Israel on October 18 began releasing 477 Palestinian prisoners with many being put on buses for Gaza, which is run by Hamas.
Other were set to be freed in the occupied West Bank.
The prisoners were released in exchange for the freedom of captured Israeli solder Gilad Shalit, who was held by Hamas for more than five years.
Israel will release a further 550 prisoners in a second stage of the Egyptian-brokered agreement, expected in about two months.
In Athens on October 19, protesters threw molotov cocktails, firecrackers and stones at police guarding parliament as a debate on further austerity measures takes place inside.
Basque armed separatists ETA called a halt to 50 years of armed struggle, the group said in a statement published in Basque language newspaper Gara and broadcast in a video statement on a website on October 20.
A magnitude 6.6 earthquake struck near Van in southeastern Turkey on October 23 near the border with Iran, demolishing several buildings.
European Union leaders met on October 26 to discuss how to stop a debt crisis that started in Greece, spread to Ireland and Portugal, and now threatens Italy.
But the prospects of a comprehensive deal looked dim, with disagreements remaining in several crucial areas.
At least 200 passengers were stranded at Perth airport on October 29 after Australia's Qantas Airways grounded its entire fleet on over a bitter labour dispute in an unprecedented move that the government said it would ask a labour tribunal to stop.
NOVEMBER
A Boeing 767 plane made an emergency landing at Warsaw's Frederic Chopin International airport on November 1 after problems with its landing gear, according to airport authorities.
All 230 passengers on board were safely evacuated after the Polish national carrier LOT plane landed at 1440 local (1340GMT) at Warsaw's Frederic Chopin International airport.
They may have been facing a Greek government on the brink of collapse and a euro in crisis, but G20 leaders kept smiles on their faces as they posed for a group photograph during their summit in Cannes on November 3.
Pale-faced but smiling, the crew of a long-duration isolation study emerged bleary-eyed to a flood of daylight and applause on November 4, after 520 days locked away in windowless, cramped cells to simulate the length of a journey to Mars.
Colombian Marxist guerrilla chief Alfonso Cano was killed on November 5, when government forces bombed a jungle hideout and rappelled down from helicopters, killing Cano in a gun battle.
Michael Jackson's personal doctor was found guilty on November 7 of involuntary manslaughter in the singer's death following a six-week trial that captivated Jackson fans around the world.
More than 20,000 supporters of Chinese dissident artistAi Weiwei donated nearly six million yuan (945,000USD) to help him pay a tax evasion bill issued by the Chinese authorities in November.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and German Chancellor Angela Merkel attended the opening ceremony of the North Sea gas pipeline Nord Stream on November 8 in Lubmin, Germany.
A black asteroid as big as an aircraft carrier zoomed past Earth on November 8, delighting astronomers and stargazers who trained telescopes on the ancient body in hopes of learning more about its composition and origin.
Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou was seen leaving parliament for the prime minister's office ahead of an expected meeting with the Greek president on November 9. He was widely tipped to step down as the Greek nation hurtled towards an economic and political precipice.
Two bullets that hit the White House, one a window and the other the building's exterior, have been found, the U.S. Secret Service said on November 16. No one was hurt in the shooting.
One of the bullets broke a window but was stopped by protective ballistic glass behind the executive mansion's historic external glass,
Oscar Ortega-Hernandez was arrested on October 16 in connection with the incident, by Pennsylvania state troopers at a hotel near Indiana, Pennsylvania.
New Italian prime minister Mario Monti and outgoing premier Silvio Berlusconi on November 16 attended a government handover ceremony ahead of Monti's first cabinet meeting.
Hundreds of people protesting against economic inequality marched in New York's financial district on November 17 and there were minor skirmishes with police, but authorities thwarted their bid to shut down Wall Street.
The top surviving commanders of the 1970s Khmer Rouge regime masterminded one of the "worst horrors" of the 20th century, creating a living nightmare by killing or enslaving millions of Cambodians, a U.N.-backed war crimes trial heard on Monday November 21.
Egyptians voted on November 28 in their first election since a popular revolt ousted former President Hosni Mubarak, as many standing in very long queues outside polling stations said it was the first time they had ever voted.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague on November 29 warned Iran it faced "serious consequences" over the attack on the British embassy in Tehran.
Hundreds of protesters invaded on two compounds earlier in the day, putting the safety of staff at risk and causing "extensive damage" to property.
Thousands of public sector workers, staging Britain's first mass strike for more than 30 years, marched through central London on November 30 before holding a rally near the country's parliament.
DECEMBER
British Prime Minister David Cameron said on December 9 his decision to block an EU treaty change was because it was not in the best interest of his country.
Europe secured an historic agreement to draft a new treaty for deeper economic integration in the euro zone, but Britain, the region's third largest economy, refused to join the other 26 countries in a fiscal union and was left isolated.