- Title: VARIOUS: REVIEW OF THE YEAR 2004 - YEARENDER - SHOTLIST ONLY
- Date: 8th January 2004
- Summary: TEL AVIV, ISRAEL (JUNE 6, 2004) (REUTERS) FORMER PALESTINIAN LAWMAKER MARWAN BARGHOUTI ENTERING COURTROOM AS APPLAUSE IS HEARD NAIROBI, KENYA (JUNE 5, 2004) (REUTERS) KENYAN PRESIDENT MWAI KIBAKI SEATED NEXT TO SUDAN FIRST VICE PRESIDENT OSMAN TAHA/REBEL LEADER JOHN GARANG; SIGNS THE DOCUMENT; SUDAN FIRST VICE PRESIDENT OSMAN TAHA SIGNS DOCUMENT; KENYAN PRESIDENT MWAI
- Embargoed: 6th July 2005 22:37
- Keywords:
- Location: VARIOUS
- City:
- Country: USA
- Topics: Conflict,International Relations,Disasters,Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA4JUNXXN9TQ042MAU0TMFC7SY4
- Aspect Ratio: 4:3
- Story Text: News review of the year 2004.
The year began with tragedy in Egypt as an Egyptian Boeing 737 airliner carrying 135 mostly French tourists crashed into the Red Sea off the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. There were no survivors. The plane, operated by the Egyptian company Flash Airlines, disappeared from radar screens minutes after take-off from Sharm el-Sheikh airport and crashed into deep water a few miles to the southeast.
In Afghanistan, violence continued. At least 12 people, mostly school children, were killed and 45 injured in a powerful blast near a military base in Kandahar. The blast ripped through a truck close to a military base in the southern Afghan city, killing at least 12 people and wounding 45. A spate of deadly attacks cast renewed doubt over Afghanistan's ambitious plan to hold its first ever free presidential poll in November.
At NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California -- the home base of the Martian rover 'Spirit,' mission -- managers announced that the rover was ready to roll off its lander platform and start searching Mars for evidence of water. Spirit spent its time taking photographs and executing manoeuvres that will help scientists to discover more about the Red Planet.
In California, Michael Jackson pleaded innocent to child molestation charges during which a California judge gave the onetime "King of Pop" a stern lecture for turning up late and imposed a gag order on his high-profile legal team. Jackson apparently left the courtroom and climbed onto the roof of a black sports utility vehicle, where he waved, blew kisses and shuffled through a few dance steps for the benefit of a cheering throng of several hundred fans gathered outside. He was to appear for a second time in March, The self-proclaimed "King of Pop" has pleaded innocent to a
10-count Santa Barbara County grand jury indictment handed down in April and has vowed to prove himself innocent in court.
In France, thousands of demonstrators gathered in the Place de la Republique in protest against President Chirac's decision to ban ostentatious religious symbols in schools. Later in September, France's state schools reopened with the challenge of imposing the ban on Muslim headscarves overshadowed by the crisis of two French journalists held hostage by Islamist militants in Iraq. The crisis provoked a national wave of solidarity for journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, making it unthinkable for any French Muslim to voice approval for the hostage-takers' demand that Paris revoke the controversial law.
In U.S election year, U.S. President George W. Bush made a defiant defence of the Iraq war and urged Americans to stick with his leadership in the State of the Union address. Bush declared the state of the union "confident and strong" and set out an election year, stay-the-course agenda sprinkled with modest domestic proposals and warnings that the memory of Sept. 11, 2001, requires a tough approach to terrorism.
In Haiti thousands of anti-government demonstrators took to the streets of Port-au-Prince to protest against the government of embattled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and to demand his resignation. Carrying signs and chanting anti-government slogans, the demonstrators continued calling for Aristide's resignation despite his recent response to peace-making efforts and agreeing to meet with opposition groups.
At the beginning of February, the annual Haj pilgrimage turned to tragedy when more than 240 people were crushed to death and the same number injured in a stampede. The disaster happened as pilgrims, wrapped in white robes, flocked to Jamarat Bridge in Mena for the stone-throwing ritual on the day of the Muslim Eid al-Adha feast of sacrifice. The haj has seen deadly stampedes almost every year. In 1990, 1,426 pilgrims were crushed to death in a pedestrian tunnel at the holy city of Mecca.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon survived yet another no-confidence vote after informing members of his right-wing Likud Party that he planed to evacuate almost all of the Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, dropping a political bombshell that stunned friends and foes alike. In the same month Israeli police stormed the square outside the al-Aqsa mosque, one of Islam's holiest sites, to confront stone-throwing Palestinians amid heightened tensions over Israel's West Bank barrier. The clash at the shrine, often a flashpoint, coincided with another spate of protests in the West Bank against the barrier, which by now was under World Court review for cutting into occupied territory that Palestinians want for a state.
Russian President Valdimir Putin would face a tough year starting in February when a suspected suicide bomb ripped through a packed Moscow underground train in the early rush-hour, killing at least 39 passengers and injuring more than 100.
Police attributed the blast, to a suicide bomber and Putin accused Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov of being behind the explosion.
Britain's Prince Charles arrived in Iran, becoming the first member of the British royal family to visit the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution which toppled Iranian monarch Mohammad Reza Shah. Charles, who was welcomed at Tehran's Mehrabad airport by British Ambassador Richard Dalton, will meet President Mohammad Khatami on Monday before travelling to the ancient south-eastern citadel city of Bam, struck by an earthquake on December 26 that killed more than 40,000 people. 2004 would see more than 1000 U.S soldiers killed since the official end of the Iraq war. In Kerbala bomb blasts tore through a religious festival killing at least 70. Kerbala was in the grip of religious fervour, packed by two million Shi'ite muslim pilgrims celebrating holy day on March 2 when five explosions ripped through the sacred city. The pilgrims were beating their heads and chests for a revered figure who died more than 13 centuries ago when the blasts ripped the crowd apart.
Martha Stewart is found guilty of lying to investigators over a suspicious stock sale, domestic diva Martha Stewart left the New York City Federal Courthouse amid a media frenzy and cheers from some fans. Later on In July of the same year she was sentenced to five months in federal prison and five months of house arrest, the minimum punishment allowed by law, for lying about a suspicious stock sale.
In Haiti rebel leader Guy Philippe joins thousands celebrating the end of Aristide reign. Thousands of Haitians shouted "we want justice" and celebrated the ousting of ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide under the watchful eyes of local police and battle-ready foreign troops.
Aristide, a slight and studious-looking 50-year-old, was a hero of Haiti's legions of poor when he emerged from delivering sermons denouncing oppression to become the country's first democratically elected president after years of brutal dictatorships. In March Haiti's new prime minister swore in his cabinet, but allies of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide were excluded and Aristide supporters and analysts said this threatened reconciliation efforts in the revolt-torn country.
March 11 2004 would be a day etched in Spain's memory forever when simultaneous bomb blasts ripped through four packed commuter trains in Madrid, killing 192 people and injuring 1,421 in Europe's bloodiest guerrilla attack for more than 15 years.
Spain focused blame on the Basque separatist group ETA, but a purported al Qaeda letter claimed responsibility for the 10 blasts and said a big attack on the United States was nearly ready, triggering fresh jitters in world financial markets.
As pictures were beamed around the globe of the carnage, in which people including a baby were torn to shreds, France said it would raise its terror alert level and Greece, host of the Olympic Games in August, also stepped up security measures. Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar vowed the government would arrest the "criminals" behind the blasts. National elections would take place three days later and Aznar would be sensationally removed by socialist Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero who later withdrew Spain's 1,300 troops from Iraq.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, 51, won a second four-year term in office with a landslide 71 percent. Putin's nearest rival Communist Nikolai Kharitonov took his defeat in stride, reporting to work in his parliament office in the early morning.
Unrest surfaced again in Kosovo when Albanians set fire to Serb churches, as NATO boosted its peacekeeping strength, warning it would stamp out ethnic violence with force. NATO troops fired teargas and rubber bullets to stop a crowd of ethnic Albanians marching on Caglavica, a mixed ethnic Albanian and Serb village hard hit in violence which killed at least 22 the day before.
Israeli helicopters killed the spiritual leader of the Hamas Islamic militant group, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, as he left a mosque in Israel's highest profile assassination of more than three years of conflict. At least seven other people died in the pre-dawn Gaza City missile strike on the bearded, wheelchair-bound Palestinian cleric who headed the group that has sworn to destroy the Jewish state and killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings.
In Iraq horrific pictures were beamed across the world when a crowd of cheering Iraqis dragged charred and mutilated bodies through the streets of the town of Falluja after an ambush on two vehicles. The Falluja violence began when two four-wheel-drive vehicles were attacked by guerrillas on a main road in the town, 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad. A crowd then set the vehicles ablaze and hurled stones into the burning wreckage.
Television pictures showed one incinerated body being kicked and stamped on by a member of the jubilant crowd, while others dragged a blackened body down the road by its feet.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair sealed Libya's return to the international fold in May with an historic handshake that rewarded Muammar Gaddafi for renouncing weapons of mass destruction. He is the first British leader to visit Libya since Winston Churchill in 1943 in World War Two.
In April the world heard a familiar voice purportedly from Osama bin Laden offering a truce with European states if they stop attacking Muslims.
But the voice on the tape, broadcast by the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya channel and then by Qatar-based Al Jazeera, said there would be no truce with the United States. Bin Laden's al Qaeda network was blamed for the September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities and the Madrid railway bombing on March 11 this year.
Israel carried out it's second assassination when an Israeli helicopter carried out a missile strike on a car in Gaza City killing top Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi. Tens of thousands of Palestinian mourners cried out to avenge the assassination of the Hamas leader by Israel ahead of its planned U.S.-backed pullout from Gaza.
Four days later and Israeli whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu was to be released after serving an 18 year sentence for reporting Israel's nuclear programme to the Sunday Times.. In front of a large crowd that gathered to cheer him on in Ashkelon, Vanunu left the prison building, waving the victory signs in the air.
South African President Thabo Mbeki was sworn in for a second term as South Africa celebrated 10 years of post-apartheid democracy, its joy tempered by glaring problems ranging from poverty to AIDS.
With a blaze of fireworks and street celebrations, the European Union threw open its gates to 10 new members on May 1, reuniting a continent scarred by decades of Cold War conflict. Hundreds of thousands thronged open-air parties, concerts and border ceremonies from the Atlantic to the Baltic and the Mediterranean as political leaders hailed the final closing of Europe's east-west divide, 15 years after the Berlin Wall fell.
The United States, and the world was to be shocked again when the latest pictures in the Iraqi prison abuse scandal appeared in the Washington Post. The new batch of photographs, included more graphic images of apparent Iraqi prisoners at a U.S. military jail in Iraq.
A blast at a stadium in Chechnya killed six people, including the rebel region's pro-Moscow president Akhmad Kadyrov.
More than 50 people were wounded in the blast, which tore through the VIP stand at a stadium in the regional capital Grozny during celebrations of the
59th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two. Vladimir Yakovlev, the Kremlin's envoy in southern Russia said among the dead were Kadyrov's close aide Hussein Isayev and Reuters journalist Adlan Khasanov. Two of Kadyrov's bodyguards also died.
In May Al Qaeda's leader in Iraq beheaded an American civilian, Nick Berg and vowed more killings in revenge for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.
A poor quality videotape on the site showed a man dressed in orange overalls sitting bound on a white plastic chair in a bare room, then on the floor with five masked men behind him. It was to be the first of several televised executions.
India's opposition, led by the Gandhi dynasty, headed for a shock election win in May as millions of rural poor punished the government for leaving them out of the country's economic boom.
Barely three hours after counting started, Congress party leaders claimed victory and supporters beat drums and danced in the streets outside its headquarters in New Delhi, celebrating the upset in the largest democratic vote on earth.
Climate once again had a big impact on the world. Floods and mudslides caused havoc killing at least 270 people in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, many of them swept to their deaths when rain-swollen rivers burst their banks.
In Saudi Arabia Saudi commandos jumped from helicopters to storm a housing complex and free dozens of foreign hostages from militants, ending an attack on the oil industry that authorities said killed 22 civilians. Security forces burst into the upmarket Oasis compound after a 25-hour drama in the eastern oil city of Khobar. Three of the four militants escaped, holding hostages at gunpoint for cover, but their leader was captured.
In Spain spain's Crown Prince Felipe married former television presenter Letizia Ortiz in a glittering ceremony symbolising a new dawn for Spain two months after the deadly Madrid train bombings.Pakistan conducted a second test of a nuclear-capable ballistic missile in less than a month in June, but played down assertions that the tests were aimed at rival India. The missile was fired a Ghauri missile capable of carrying nuclear and other warheads up to 1,500 km (900 miles).
Two men exchanged marriage vows in France's first gay wedding, hailed by supporters as a victory for human rights but swiftly denounced by the government as illegal. Bertrand Charpentier and Stephane Chapin, who were in hiding because of the controversy and media attention, said the wedding was a victory for tolerance. French law already allows existing civil unions between homosexuals but gays say this gives them a bad deal in terms of tax, inheritance and parenting rights. The topic of gay weddings has stirred controversy in other countries, notably the United States, where President George W. Bush has called for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriages.
World leaders and WWII veterans attending Bayeux ceremony paid tribute to thousands of Allied soldiers killed in D-Day landings.
It was an emotional scene as some 12,000 people crowded into the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in Bayeux, France, for a D-Day remembrance ceremony on June 6. D-Day veterans stood between white headstones in the hot summer sun to mark the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy. Others took part in the march past, their medals glistening in the sunshine, in honour of the Allied soldiers who fought and died during World War II.
An Israeli court sentenced Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian lawmaker widely seen as a successor to Yasser Arafat, to five consecutive life terms for murder.
In Sudan amid shrieks of joy and singing, Sudan's government and southern rebels launched the final phase of talks to end Africa's longest civil war with a signing ceremony. Sudan's civil war has killed an estimated two million people, mainly through famine and disease since 1983 when Khartoum tried to impose Islamic Sharia law on the mainly animist south. Oil, religion and ideology have been complicating factors in the war.
On June 11 America said farewell to Ronald Reagan as the country saw its first national presidential funeral for more than 30 years.
It rained in Washington as the casket carrying the body of the 40th head of state was taken by motorcade from the Capitol building to the National Cathedral.
There was a 21 gun salute as the casket left the Capitol to the strains of the hymn Eternal Father Strong to Save.
As the eulogies concluded an orchestra and choir launched into song. It was the first state funeral for a president since Lyndon Johnson was laid to rest in 1973.
Marc Dutroux, Belgium's most reviled man, was sentenced to life in prison on June 22 for kidnapping, raping and killing girls in a series of crimes that stunned the country nearly eight years ago. After more than an hour of deliberation, the court also sentenced co-defendant Michelle Martin, Dutroux's ex-wife, to 30 years in prison; heroin addict Michel Lelievre to 25 years, and businessman Michel Nihoul to five years.
In Turkey clashes continued between protesters and police in Istanbul on the sidelines of a NATO summit.
Anti-NATO protesters hurling paving stones and petrol bombs clashed with riot police leaving around 30 people injured.
The violence erupted well away from the venue for the 26-nation two-day gathering, which was ringed by a tight security cordon.
Iraqi's were glued to their television screens in July as a downcast but defiant, Saddam Hussein appeared before an Iraqi tribunal, refusing to recognise its authority and saying the "real criminal" was U.S.
President George W. Bush.
The arraignment was the first step towards a trial which could help Iraq come to terms with 35 years of Baath party brutality, though it was not due to start till 2005.
The 67 year-old former president was shown wearing a dark grey jacket over a white shirt, with no tie in the first footage shown of the ousted Iraqi leader since photographs taken after his capture in December 2003.
In London, Britain's Tony Blair admitted that biological and chemical weapons, which he once insisted Saddam Hussein had primed for use, may never be found.
"We know Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction but we know we haven't found them," Blair told a committee of senior parliamentarians.
"I have to accept we have not found them, that we may not find them." Blair persuaded reluctant British politicians to back war on Iraq last year on the basis that Iraq had banned weapons and could use them.
At least 15 people were killed and more than 120 injured when an explosion ripped through the underground pipeline in the industrial zone of Ghislenghien, near the town of Ath, 40 km (25 miles) southwest of Brussels.
The chain of explosions, described by one witness as a "mini-Hiroshima", destroyed two factories, leaving a large crater in their place. Bodies and debris were scattered over a 500-metre (yard) radius around the scorched disaster site.
July would see more violence in Iraq when a minibus packed with explosives blew up near a marketplace north of Baghdad killing 51 people and wounding 40 in the worst attack since the handover of sovereignty in June.
The powerful suicide bomb left a sea of destruction, obliterating market stalls and destroying six buildings just days before a major political conference to plot Iraq's future. Reuters Television pictures showed at least a dozen dead bodies scattered across a street, some of them still on fire.
Flanked by attorneys, a visibly pregnant U.S. Army Private Lynndie England, appeared before a military court at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
England was one of six soldiers charged in the abuse case and faced 13 counts of abusing prisoners including conspiracy to mistreat Iraqi prisoners, U.S. President George W. Bush told a roomful of top Pentagon brass that his administration would never stop looking for ways to harm the United States. The latest instalment of gaffes from a president long known for his malapropisms came during a signing ceremony for a new $417 billion (USD) defense appropriations bill that includes $25 billion in emergency funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The first of several major hurricanes caused devastation in the USA, rescuers poured into southwest Florida to search for victims and help shocked survivors of Hurricane Charley, a devastating storm that flattened homes and stores and left up to 1 million without power.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) began a huge airlift to Sudan, carrying hundreds of tonnes of aid to displaced people in the most remote areas of Sudan's troubled Darfur region . There are more hopeful signs that the crisis in Darfur may improve as African Union soldiers from Rwanda arrived in Darfur to observe African Union monitors, and Sudanese militiamen in the government service begin to disarm.
Two Russian jets crashed simultaneously in Russia, supporting theories that bombs downed the aircraft before elections in volatile Chechnya.
UN monitors are in Darfur to see if the government is making progress in the conflict in Darfur, but aid agencies are still struggling to give aid to people.
At the end of August armed robbers stole a version of "The Scream" and another masterpiece by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch in a bold daytime raid on an Oslo museum packed with terrified tourists. Two masked robbers ran into the Munch Museum, threatened staff with a gun and forced people to lie down before taking "The Scream", an icon of existentialist angst showing a waif-like figure against a blood-red sky, and "Madonna".
The pictures, worth millions of dollars and among Munch's best-known works, were later cut from their frames which were found in another part of the city.
Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic opened his war crimes trial defence against charges of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans in the 1990s after months of delays due to his ill health. Charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, he launched his defence at the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) with an opening statement in what is regarded as Europe's most significant war crimes trial for more than half a century.
Palestinian suicide bombers killed 12 people in simultaneous attacks on two Israeli buses, breaking a long lull in such violence and potentially disrupting an Israeli plan to withdraw from Gaza. The bombings in southern Israel's largest city Beersheba were the first since March 14 when suicide attackers killed 10 people in the port of Ashdod on March 14 after infiltrating by hiding in a container exported from Gaza.
September would be dominated by events in Beslan when Russian soldiers fought Chechen separatists to end a two-day school siege.
The southern Russian town of Beslan was to bury more of the 335 people, half of them children, killed during a chaotic operation to free them from captors holding them hostage. The ruins of School No.1, where more than 1,000 hostages were held for 53 hours, was turned into a memorial, where funeral processions stopped on their way to a new cemetery for the victims. Russian President Vladimir Putin, called on Russia's security forces to act more effectively against terror. Putin denounced gunmen who resorted to attacking "defenceless children" .
On September 17 Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, claimed responsibility for the Beslan school siege. In the statement, Basayev, Russia's most wanted man, said brigades of the group Riyadus-Salikhin which he heads carried out the Beslan attack as well as bomb attacks that downed two passenger planes and attacks in Moscow.
In the run up to the U.S election George Bush addressed the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. U.S. President George W. Bush vigorously defended the invasion of Iraq and his leadership in the war on terror on, promising to create a safer world and vowing: "I will never relent in defending America -- whatever it takes." Former President Bill Clinton under went bypass surgery after being rushed to a top New York hospital complaining of chest pains and shortness of breath. Clinton made a full recovery, during his White House years, Clinton was often overweight despite his regular jogging. But he showed no signs of heart problems during rigorous health examinations made public during his presidency.
A second major hurricane hit the states in September, hurricane Frances lashed eastern Florida with strong winds and heavy rain, cutting power to nearly half a million homes and businesses and ripping yachts from their moorings after the enormous storm pounded the Bahamas.
An exciting day for NASA scientists turned sour after a space capsule returning solar particles to Earth after a three-year mission crashed in the Utah desert before it could be captured in a mid-air recovery. NASA officials launched a team of helicopters with the hope of snagging a parachute coming from the Genesis capsule before it landed. Hollywood stunt pilots were brought in to do the job, and their helicopters were outfitted with hooks to catch the parachute of the falling spacecraft as it descended.
In Indonesia at least eight people were killed and 130 wounded as a result of car bomb explosion outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta.
Charred debris, bodies and body parts, glass and the twisted wreckage of motorcycles, cars and a truck littered the road outside the embassy immediately after the blast.
The Jakarta blast came just hours after Australian police said they were beefing up counter-terrorism security before the country's election next month. Australia has never been hit by a major terror attack on its soil but 88 Australians were among 202 people killed in Bali nightclub bombings.
Doctors said at least seven supporters of the ousted governor of Herat region in western Afghanistan were killed and twenty wounded in clashes with U.S. troops and police. Protests erupted after President Hamid Karzai replaced powerful regional commander Ismail Khan as Herat governor on September 11. The replacement of the governors in Herat and the restive neighbouring province of Ghor came after Karzai launched his manifesto for October 9th presidential elections with a pledge to rein in regional warlords.
At the United Nations U.S. President George W. Bush called on Israel to impose a freeze on Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, taking a harder line on settlement growth than Washington had recently. In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Bush issued the direct challenge to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon while also calling on Palestinians to adopt peaceful means to achieve the rights of their people. While Washington has long called on Israel to halt settlement expansion, the administration was conspicuous in its refusal to criticise Israeli plans unveiled last month to build some 1,530 more homes in the West Bank.
British hostage Ken Bigley facing a death threat from Iraqi kidnappers appealed to British Prime Minister Tony Blair for his life in a videotape released on Islamist website. The 62-year-old engineer was kidnapped in Baghdad on Sept. 16 by the Tawhid and Jihad Group which had beheaded two American hostages who were seized along with the Briton. The kidnappers had demanded U.S.-led forces in Iraq release women prisoners in Iraqi jails to spare Bigley's life. The plea was unsuccessful and Bigley was purportedly killed on October 7.
One month before U.S elections President George W. Bush and Democrat John Kerry clashed over Bush's Iraq policy in a high-stakes presidential debate seen as critical to Kerry closing the gap with his opponent. Kerry quickly jumped on the attack against Bush in the first -- and possibly most important -- of three presidential debates. A small lump that was visible on the back of President George W. Bush spawned chatter on the internet that he was wearing a communication device. Bloggers theorize that aids to the president were able to feed Bush answers to questions in real time while he was on stage with Kerry.
A privately built rocket plane blasted straight up through blue skies above the Mojave desert in October and reached its target altitude to claim a $10 million prize for the first commercially viable manned spacecraft. Despite a series of unplanned vertical rolls that prompted Melvill to shut down the ship's engine early, he afterward described the flight as "near-perfect flight as far as I could see." The X Prize was founded in 1996 by space enthusiast Peter Diamandis in the hope that it would spur a commercial space travel industry.
In Senegal swarms of desert locusts continued to ravage crops but villagers said the infestation was even worse than the last big upsurge to hit West Africa more than a decade ago. The locusts, small enough to perch on the end of a finger but able to form swarms of up to 80 million, were still speckling the sky on Monday around the village some 170 km (105 miles) north of the Senegalese capital Dakar Australian Prime Minister John Howard claimed a resounding victory on October 9 over main opposition Labor after voters convincingly returned the conservative government for a fourth straight term in office. With more than 70 percent of the 13 million votes counted, television forecasts had the government easily returned to power, perhaps with an increased majority.
Japan's deadliest typhoon in over a decade triggered floods and landslides that killed at least 55 people and left 33 missing and rescuers raced against time to search through rubble for possible survivors.
In France the incoming head of the European Commission withdrew his proposed EU executive to avoid a humiliating European Parliament defeat, plunging the bloc into an unprecedented political crisis. "I have come to the conclusion that if a vote is taken today, the outcome will not be positive for EU institutions or for the European project," Jose Manuel Barroso told a packed assembly just one hour before the investiture vote was due.
An Indonesian Islamic cleric went on trial in October accused of leading an al Qaeda-linked militant network and of planning or inciting others to carry out terror attacks in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
Prosecutors said Abu Bakar Bashir had also ordered members of Jemaah Islamiah to disseminate the teachings of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden which called for war against Americans.
Four days before the U.S. election, Osama Bin Laden derides U.S.
President George W. Bush and raises possibility of new Sept. 11-style attacks.
Bin Laden, taunting the man who has vowed to take him "dead or alive" for the past three years, said Bush had failed Americans with his Middle East policies, deceiving the nation and provoking Muslim groups like al Qaeda to strike again.
In Rome European Union leaders signed an historic constitution amid controversy over the choice of ministers for the EU executive.
European Union leaders signed the bloc's first constitution in a glittering ceremony but their celebration of unity was marred by uncertainty over its ratification and turmoil over the stalled European Commission.
November would be dominated by the elections in the U.S and the death of Yasser Arafat.
"Arafat ... died at the military hospital Percy, Clamart on November 11, 2004, at 3.30 (0230 GMT)," Christian Estripeau, chief doctor and spokesman, told reporters outside the hospital in a Paris suburb. Arafat, 75, suffered a brain haemorrhage at the hospital where he was flown from the West Bank on Oct. 29. Palestinian officials said he had lain in a coma for about a week and that he had suffered liver and kidney failure. The Palestinian officials had maintained in public that he was alive, though several aides had said privately that he had been dead for some time.
The autocratic Palestinian president died with his 40-year quest for a state unachieved, a succession scramble looming and Israel cementing its grip on occupied land with no peace talks under way. Arafat's death, removing the man Israel called an impassable obstacle to peace, offered a chance for the first peace bid in years. But no potential successor wields his authority and fears are strong that infighting could hamper any peacemaking. An Egyptian helicopter flew Arafat's coffin from Egypt, where a funeral service was held, to his Muqata headquarters. The aircraft was quickly surrounded by a surging crowd of thousands chanting Arafat's name. The mass of people was so strong that Palestinian spokesman Saeb Erekat called on the crowd pressing around the helicopter to move back. The Palestinian Authority declared a 40-day mourning period.
In The U.S George Bush won a second term in office after beating Senator John Kerry in the U.S elections. President George W. Bush claimed a historic victory in his bid for re-election and pledged to reach across partisan lines.
He told supporters he was set to forge ahead on goals such as stabilizing Iraq and overhauling Social Security. Bush said it was time for the U.S. to move forward.
"A campaign has ended and America goes forward with confidence and faith see a great day coming for our country and I am eager for the work ahead. God bless you and may God bless America," he said.
U.S forces continued their offensive in Falluja, the assault provoked an upsurge in violence elsewhere in Iraq, as happened in April during an earlier failed U.S. attempt to subdue the country's most rebellious city.
Saying the planet is at risk from human activity, Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai urged democratic reforms and an end to corporate greed when she collected the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10.
Maathai, Kenya's deputy environment minister and the first African woman to win the Peace Prize, said sweeping changes were needed to restore a "world of beauty and wonder" by overcoming challenges ranging from AIDS to climate instability.
The election in Ukraine dominated events in the second part of November, tens of thousands of demonstrators massed under falling snow in the Ukrainian capital to support liberal opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, who says he was cheated of victory in the poll.
Almost complete official results showed Moscow-backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich the winner in a poll that Western observers say was marked by mass fraud. A re-election is due on December 26th, but in a twist the man who hopes to become Ukraine's next president claims he was poisoned. Viktor Yushchenko, who faces Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich in the re-run, long alleged he was poisoned as part of a plot to kill him.
Ukraine played a key role in the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, two years after the fall of the Berlin wall. A referendum on independence, backed nine to one by voters, was followed within weeks by the dissolution of the Soviet state. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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