U.S. forces launched a missile attack on a jihadist training camp in the Abyan region of Yemen. The raid reportedly killed 34 terrorists, including Saleh Ali Kazemi, considered a leader of the extremist group and involved in an attack that killed seven Spanish tourists in
US President Barack Obama decides to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. The decision is followed by NATO’s announcement of an additional 7,000 troops, primarily from the UK, Italy, and Georgia (not yet a NATO member).
Five car bombs explode in different areas of Baghdad, killing over 120 people.
NASA crashes the Centaur stage of the rocket carrying the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LUROS) into the Cabeus crater at the Moon’s south pole. The Centaur stage remains in orbit, along with the LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite) probe, which takes valuable images of
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center announced that glycine, one of 20 amino acids, has been found in dust collected by the StarDust probe from comet Wild 2. This has been suspected for some time, but this is the first experimental finding.
Pakistani army launches large-scale offensive in Waziristan against Taliban
Global Financial Crisis. George Papandreou, son of Andreas, newly appointed Greek Prime Minister, reveals that his country has a budget deficit of 13% of GDP, four times the Maastricht threshold, and that its public debt amounts to a staggering €410 billion.
Two hundred Taliban soldiers attack the American Forward Operating Base Keating in the Kamdesh District of Afghanistan. The battle rages for 12 hours, and the Taliban manage to enter the perimeter of the base, which was being cleared. Air support arrives, but is hampered by
Earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale in southern Sumatra: 1,100 dead
An 8.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami in American Samoa killed 168 people.
Taliban commander Sher Muhammad Qasab died from wounds sustained in the firefight before his capture. At the time of his death, he was in custody in Pakistan after being captured by Pakistani troops.
UBS, the Swiss banking giant and the world’s second-largest wealth management company, will provide the United States with the names of 8,000 to 10,000 of its American clients suspected of tax evasion, after lengthy negotiations following an explicit request to the Swiss government by President
Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud was killed by a US drone strike in Pakistani tribal territory, near the border with Afghanistan. The most wanted Pakistani fighter, who ordered the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Banazir Bhutto, was killed while receiving leg massages on the roof
Svante Paabo and his collaborators demonstrate that 2% of human DNA in non-African populations derives from Neanderthals—a small but significant percentage, and well above the error threshold. Neanderthals, after all, are not entirely extinct: they live within us.
The new map of Venus’s southern hemisphere, completed by the European Space Agency (ESA) Venus Express, confirms the presence of granite (or ancient basaltic-volcanic rock dragged into the planet’s interior by continental drift and coming into contact with water before resurfacing via volcanoes), and therefore
Frank Postberg of the University of Heidelberg, analyzing data from the American Cassini probe, confirms the existence of a liquid water ocean beneath the surface of Enceladus, Saturn’s satellite.
Iran. Green Revolution. Thousands of supporters of opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi take to the streets of Tehran to protest against Ahmadinejad. Forty Iranians are killed.
The Taliban are approaching the gates of Islamabad, Pakistan. The Pakistani army’s brutal counteroffensive begins, with the battle for control of the Swat Valley in search of Maulana Fazlullah, the region’s most powerful Taliban leader, in Mingora. Fleeing refugees speak of “dozens of Taliban suicide
Space Shuttle Atlantis’s STS-125 mission completed the final repair and upgrade of the Hubble Space Telescope. There were five repair or upgrade missions to the Hubble Space Telescope: Servicing Mission 1 (SM1): December 2–13, 1993, astronauts installed new instruments, including equipment adapted to correct a
Marchionne signs a historic FIAT-Chrysler partnership agreement: the alliance combines Fiat’s technology, its platforms and engines for small and medium-sized vehicles, its vast distribution network in Latin America and Europe with the assets of Chrysler, which has a strong presence in North America. This involves
Piracy is rampant in the Horn of Africa. On Easter Sunday, President Obama orders intervention to free the American captain of a cargo ship. The three pirates are shot in the head from a distance of 30 meters, and the captain is freed. Earlier that
3:30 AM. Earthquake, magnitude 5.8, hits Abruzzo, with epicenter in L’Aquila. Nearly 300 people are dead and approximately 30,000 people are displaced.
The ISS, following the docking of Space Shuttle STS-119, is completed with the final solar array from the original design. Although the ISS has always been a work in progress, the STS-119 shuttle mission completes the original design.
Former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz and Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali, were sentenced to 15 years in prison by the Iraqi Special Tribunal (IST) for their involvement in the execution of 42 merchants in 1992. The IST sentenced two of Saddam
Nicolas Sarkozy’s France is fully back in NATO command, having partially withdrawn from it in 1966 under Charles de Gaulle. The rapprochement between France and NATO began in 1995 with military cooperation following the crisis in Yugoslavia.
NASA’s Kepler satellite was launched into orbit on a Delta II rocket. It carried a 0.95-meter Schmidt telescope with an array of 42 CCDs, each measuring 50x25mm with 2200×1024 pixels. During its operational life (2009 to 2018), it discovered 2,662 planets and examined 530,506 stars.
Barack Obama sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America, two million people arrive in Washington DC for the inauguration
Giuseppe Setola, boss of the Casalesi Camorra clan, was captured in Caserta after escaping Carabinieri custody a few days earlier.
Several bloody civil wars that had dragged on for decades have ended without much fanfare: Angola, Chad, Peru, Sri Lanka.
American pilot Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger III, a former military pilot, had just taken off on an AirBus A320, US Airways Flight 1549, from New York’s La Guardia Airport when he struck a flock of ducks, igniting both engines. With incredible speed and composure, he
Air France-KLM acquires 25% of Alitalia-CAI’s capital for a sum close to 322 million euros.
CVN77 (Carrier Vessel Nuclear) Heorge H.W. Bush is the last Nimitz-class aircraft carrier launched by the US Navy. The next generation (from CVN78 onwards) will be the CVN21 class and will span the entire 21st century, with innovations such as the electromagnetic catapult (essentially a
Fiat acquires 35% of Chrysler. Fiat, Chrysler, and Cerberus Capital Management (which holds 80.1% of Chrysler’s capital) announce the conclusion of a preliminary, non-binding agreement to establish a global strategic alliance that also provides for the two groups to leverage each other’s distribution networks. The
After a week of bombing Gaza, the Israeli army begins its ground offensive in Gaza.
Global Financial Crisis. The US Federal Reserve (FED) cuts the interest rate to an unprecedented level: zero. It’s uncharted territory. The monetary policy transmission belt has broken. Money is no longer flowing to businesses and citizens. Washington therefore resorts to another experiment: quantitative easing, printing
The British pound collapses and practically reaches parity with the euro. (It was worth 1.35 euros until October 2008.)
Swat, Pakistan: A suicide bombing kills 41 people on their way to vote in a local election.
An al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Imad Ahmad Farhan, known as “Imad the Butcher” for confessing to at least 100 murders, is killed in central Ramadi the day after escaping from a police station.
In his fourth visit to Iraq and his final trip abroad, President George W. Bush ratified the agreement with the Iraqi government for a withdrawal from cities by June 30, 2009, and from Iraq by December 31, 2011.
Jos, Nigeria: The central Nigerian city is gripped by fierce clashes between Muslim Hausas and Christian Beroms following the outcome of a local election. Muslims on November 28, because of an unelected representative, burned churches and killed dozens of people with AK47s and machetes. On
series of terrorist attacks targeting multiple targets in Mumbai began on Wednesday, November 26, shortly after 10:30 PM local time (6:00 PM GMT). Men armed with machine guns and grenades launched a series of coordinated attacks on the central train station, a hospital, and two
Global Financial Crisis. The U.S. government intervenes to help CitiGroup, a bank in financial difficulty. This intervention differs from previous ones in that it does not involve placing the group under full conservatorship (like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), nationalizing it (like AIG), or selling
Global Financial Crisis. China surprises everyone with a massive, unprecedented investment plan (despite China’s continued 9% annual GDP growth): $586 billion, equal to 16% of its GDP, over two years.
Space Shuttle Endeavour reaches the International Space Station (ISS) for an expansion mission from 3 to 6 astronauts
Global Financial Crisis. U.S. bank Wells Fargo is acquiring Wachovia Bank in a deal valued at approximately $15.1 billion.
Global Financial Crisis. A scary weekend. Fortis, a Franco-Belgian bank, is at risk of collapse, saved at the last minute by the entry of three nations into its capital: Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. (Fortisvale’s balance sheet is triple Belgium’s GDP). Germany must inject billions
Three-man Shenzhou-7 spacecraft launch mission, China’s first spacewalk, from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Inner Mongolia
Suicide bomb attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan: A truck bomb carrying half a ton of explosives explodes in the parking lot, killing 57 people, including the Czech ambassador. Most of the victims were guards, drivers, and taxi drivers waiting in the parking
Global Financial Crisis. World stock markets react with a wave of gains to the injection of hundreds of billions of dollars into the markets. The gains are 8%-9%, recovering almost all of the previous days’ losses in a single session.
Global Financial Crisis. The U.S. Treasury announces the establishment of a $50 billion guarantee fund for money market funds. The fund will be financed by the Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund. The long-term cost of the financial plan, including bailouts for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and
Global Financial Crisis. The major central banks of industrialized countries inject $247 billion into the money markets (European Central Bank: $110 billion, Swiss National Bank: $27 billion, Bank of Japan: $60 billion, Bank of England: $40 billion, Bank of Canada: $10 billion), in order to
Global Financial Crisis. Barclays acquires Lehman Brothers’ US market operations. The British bank purchases assets with a theoretical value of $250 billion for $72 billion, along with liabilities of $68 billion, and acquires Lehman’s New York headquarters and two data centers in New Jersey for
The easy-profit finance industry collapses, the Large Hadron Collider is turned on…
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is switched on at CERN in Geneva. At 27 km long, it is the largest machine ever built. It is a proton-proton collider built 100 m underground, on the border between Switzerland and France. It has four gigantic experiments along
Asif Ali Zardari, co-chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), is elected president of Pakistan: he is the widower of Benazir Bhutto, former prime minister assassinated on 27 December 2007 in an attack in Rawalpindi.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who came to power in a bloodless coup nine years earlier, resigns from office
Hewlett-Packard has announced the completion of its acquisition of Electronic Data Systems: the $13.9 billion deal should help HP better compete against IBM. This is the largest transaction in the history of IT services, the second largest in the technology industry after HP’s acquisition of
The United States (US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice) and Poland (Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski) sign an agreement for the installation on Polish territory of a missile system for the destruction of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Russian troops are pushing deep into Georgian territory, reaching the cities of Senaki (from Abkhazia) and Gori (from South Ossetia, Stalin’s hometown), up to 18km from the capital Tbilisi.
The Russians are invading South Ossetia, a Georgian territory of 60,000 people linked to Russia and whose annexation it had requested; the invasion, which includes thousands of soldiers, hundreds of tanks and aircraft, will push deep into Georgian territory in a few days and will
Radovan Karazdic was captured in Serbia by police and handed over to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
The United States (US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice) and the Czech Republic (Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg) sign an agreement for the installation on Czech territory of a radar system for the detection and shooting down of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Ingrid Betancourt and 15 other American and Colombian hostages were freed by Colombian forces in the jungle, where they had been held captive by the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). Betancourt was a presidential candidate in Colombia and had been captured by the terrorist
Frank Blackmore, British traffic engineer and inventor of the city roundabouts that revolutionized English traffic starting in the 1960s, dies.
The American Mars Phoenix probe successfully lands on the frozen surface of the Martian North Pole (Vastitas Borealis).
A 16-year-old diabetic girl dies in Italy because her daily insulin doses were replaced with herbal and homeopathic products.
An earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale struck Sichuan province in central China, leaving over 60,000 dead and millions homeless.
The Nargis monsoon hits Myanmar (Burma) causing perhaps over 100,000 deaths, the regime initially denies the tragedy and then hinders the arrival of relief, finally trying to take credit for the little relief that has reached the population
Silvio Berlusconi’s “Freedom Party” wins a strong majority in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate; the far right and far left fail to obtain enough votes to be represented in Parliament for the first time since the war.