2011 - Year in review

12 Dec 2011, 10:34 am   -   Source: AAP

Turmoil in the Arab world, deepening crisis on financial markets, disaster in Japan and the end of the line for Osama bin Laden: here is a panorama of world events in 2011.

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Turmoil in the Arab world, deepening crisis on financial markets, disaster in Japan and the end of the line for Osama bin Laden: here is a panorama of world events in 2011.
 

January 14: Confronted with a massive popular movement which unleashes unrest across the Arab world, Tunisia's authoritarian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali flees the country, after 23 years in power. The UN says some 300 have been killed in the unrest. In his absence he will be sentenced to 66 years in prison at three separate trials.
 
February 11: In Egypt, with massive crowds filling the central Tahrir Square in Cairo, leader Hosni Mubarak becomes the next Arab leader to step down, and hands over power to the military. Nearly 850 civilians are killed in the revolt. Mubarak, who had been in power since 1981, goes on trial in August.
 
February 14: In the latest country to join what is dubbed the Arab Spring, Bahrain sees protests calling for political reforms. Saudi Arabia sends troops, and the protests are crushed by mid-March. Around 30 people die during the repression.
 
February 15-16: A rebellion erupts in Benghazi, Libya's second-biggest city against the 42-year-old regime of Moamer Kadhafi. On March 19, French, US and British forces launch UN-mandated air strikes, before handing over command to NATO on March 31. The opposition creates the National Transitional Council, which is recognised by the UN and over 60 countries.
 
February 22: In New Zealand's city of Christchurch a devastating 6.3 earthquake kills just over 200 people.
 
February 26: Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen becomes the first political victim of the financial crisis rattling the eurozone after his ruling Fianna Fail party is crushed by voters angry over the economy and an EU-IMF bailout. He is followed out of office in March by Portuguese premier Jose Socrates.
 
March 11: A massive earthquake and tsunami devastates northeastern Japan, leaving 20,000 people dead or missing and unleashing a nuclear crisis at the Fukushima plant, the worst since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
 
March 15: Syria becomes the next Arab country to face popular protests, which are heavily put down by the security forces. More than 4,000 people die in months of unrest, according to the UN. The regime of President Bashar al-Assad faces international pressure over the repression and Syria is later suspended from the Arab League.
 
April 11: Troops loyal to Ivory Coast leader Alassane Ouattara capture his besieged rival Laurent Gbagbo in Abidjan after a disputed election. In November Gbagbo is transferred to the International Criminal Court.
 
April 29: Britain's Prince William and his bride Kate Middleton marry with huge crowds and a global TV audience watching Britain's biggest royal celebration for three decades. They become the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
 
May 2: Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, is shot dead by US commandos in Pakistan after a 10-year manhunt.
 
May 14: IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a high-profile figure in French politics and global economics, resigns and faces trial after being accused of a sexual assault on a maid in his hotel suite in New York. The charges are later dismissed, but his presidential ambitions are ruined.
 
May 26: Serbia arrests Europe's most wanted man Bosnian Serb wartime army commander Ratko Mladic. He is transferred to the UN's warcrimes court in the Hague.
 
June 22: US President Barack Obama decides to bring 33,000 US surge troops home from Afghanistan by mid-2012. On July 17 Afghanistan begins handing responsibility for security from NATO soldiers to its own troops.
 
July 9: South Sudan proclaims independence after a January referendum in which almost 99 percent voted in favour of secession. The new country becomes the UN's 193rd member state.
 
 July 21: The US space shuttle Atlantis cruises home for a final time closing a 30-year chapter in American space exploration, in which two shuttles -- Challenger and Columbia -- were lost in accidents with the death of 14 astronauts.
 
July 21: Eurozone leaders agree on a second bailout for Greece worth 159 billion euros ($215 billion) in a bid to prevent the country from going bankrupt and contagion setting in in the EU currency zone.
 
July 22: 77 poeple are killed in massive twin bombing and shooting rampage by a right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik in Norway. He is later judged insane.
 
August 2: After a weeks-long battle, the US Congress agrees on a massive austerity plan and raising the US debt ceiling. On August 6 Standard and Poor's cuts the US credit rating from its top-flight triple-A for the first time in history, amid concerns over the country's deficit and debt.
 
August 4: The police shooting of a 29-year-old black man in Tottenham, north London, provokes rioting in the capital and beyond. Across England, five people are killed and hundreds of shops looted, with some set alight.
 
September 20: Burhanuddin Rabbani, Afghanistan's former president tasked with finding a peace deal with the Taliban, is assassinated in a turban suicide attack.
 
September 23: Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas unsuccessfully asks the United Nations to admit the state of Palestine. On October 31, however, Palestinians win entry to UNESCO, prompting the US to cut the organisation's funding.
 
October 7: Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian "peace warrior" Leymah Gbowee, and Yemen's Arab Spring activist Tawakkul Karman win the Nobel Peace Prize.
 
October 20: Toppled Libyan leader Gaddafi is killed after forces from the country's new rulers seize his hometown of Sirte after a seven-month-long campaign. On October 23, the new rulers declare that Libya has been liberated.
 
October 21: US President Barack Obama announces that US forces, numbering around 39,000, will be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of the year after a nearly nine-year campaign and 4,400 casualties.
 
October 23: More than 600 die in a devastating 7.2 magnitude earthquake in eastern Turkey.
 
October 23: The moderate Islamists of the Ennahda party win 89 of the 217 seats in Tunisia's new constituent assembly.
 
October 27: European Union leaders reach a ground-breaking deal to save the bloc's single currency, including a new rescue of Greece, a trillion-euro bailout fund, and cut a deal squeezing banks to share the burden of the two-year debt crisis.
 
October 31: The world's population passes the seven billion mark.
 
November 6: Greek Socialist Prime Minister George Papandreou agrees to stand down amid a crippling debt crisis. He is succeeded by vice-president of the European Central Bank Lucas Papademos.
 
November 7: Michael Jackson's doctor Conrad Murray is found guilty of involuntary manslaughter over the King of Pop's 2009 death. He is later sentenced to a maximum four years behind bars.
 
November 12: Silvio Berlusconi loses his job over the eurozone financial crisis, resigning amid Italy's 1,900-billion-euro debt burden. He is replaced by technocrat Mario Monti, who vows to balance the Italian budget by 2013.
 

November: The death toll from Thailand's worst floods in decades jumps to at least 666. The floods damage millions of homes and livelihoods.
 
November 23: In another development in the Arab Spring, after months of deadly clashes Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh signs a deal to hand over his powers after 33 years in office.
 
November 26: The US space agency's 'Curiosity' rover blasts off on a nearly nine-month journey to Mars where it will search for signs that life once existed on the Red Planet.
 
November 29: Britain's embassy in Tehran is attacked by protesters angry at fresh sanctions against Tehran's nuclear programme. Britain expels Iranian diplomats and shuts its embassy in response.
 
December 4: Islamists trounce their liberal rivals in the opening phase of Egypt's first election since the fall of Mubarak, with one in four voters choosing hardline Salafists.

December 5: France and Germany call for a rewrite of the EU treaty to set uniform tough budget standards across the eurozone, as S&P threatens sweeping ratings downgrades if they fail to act to end the eurozone debt crisis.

-December 19: North Korean leader Kim Jong-il dies, causing amid world wariness about the power  transition in the nuclear-armed nation.
  

Yearender

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