A 2008 timeline
Agence France-Presse | 12/31/2008 11:46 AM
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PARIS - A timeline of world events in 2008:
JANUARY
- Israel imposes a complete blockade on the Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip.
- The French bank Societe Generale admits that a single securities trader lost it almost five billion euros (seven billion dollars).
FEBRUARY
- With support from many but not all western countries, Kosovo formally declares independence from Serbia.
- A suicide bomber kills some 80 men and boys attending a dog-fight event in Afghanistan.
- Turkey mounts a major offensive against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.
MARCH
- Dmitry Medvedev is elected president of Russia.
- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pays a visit to neighbouring Iraq.
- Violence erupts in Lhasa, capital of the Chinese autonomous region of Tibet.
- The US military death toll in Iraq passes the 4,000 mark.
APRIL
- The opposition in Zimbabwe claims it has won elections, but President Robert Mugabe refuses to concede.
- The passage of the Olympic flame through London and then Paris is marred by protests, causing anger in China.
- Police in Austria arrest Josef Fritzl, who has kept his daughter locked up in a specially designed cellar for 24 years, fathering seven children by her.
MAY
- Tens of thousands of people die and millions are made homeless when a cyclone devastates the secretive Asian state of Myanmar.
- Israel celebrates the 60th anniversary of its founding.
- A massive earthquake hits the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan, killing tens of thousands and causing massive destruction.
JUNE
- Around 1,000 inmates of an Afghan prison escape when Taliban guerrillas mount an attack.
- Voters in Ireland reject the European Union's Lisbon Treaty.
JULY
- The French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt is freed after being held hostage for six years by FARC guerrillas.
- Suicide bombers kill over 60 people in an attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul.
- US stock markets plunge after two giant mortgage companies are revealed to be in deep financial trouble.
- Serbian police capture the fugitive Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic, who is extradited to a UN war crimes tribunal.
- A young Palestinian man driving a bulldozer wounds at least 16 people in Jerusalem before being shot dead.
- In one of several such incidents, a US missile fired from Afghanistan kills six people in a tribal zone of Pakistan.
- World trade talks collapse in Geneva.
AUGUST
- Some 150 Hindu worshippers die in a stampede at a temple in northern India.
- The Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who denounced the Soviet Gulag system of labour camps, dies aged 89.
- Government forces in Georgia mount an assault on the breakaway region of South Ossetia, prompting a massive response from neighbouring Russia.
- The Summer Olympic Games open in Beijing. They go off without incident.
- Threatened with impeachment, Pervez Musharraf resigns as president of Pakistan.
- Ten French soldiers recently deployed to Afghanistan are killed in a battle with Taliban forces.
- 153 people die as a Spanish passenger plane crashes at Madrid's airport.
- Afghan officials say 76 civilians, many of them women and children, died when US forces attacked a village in the west of the country.
- The US Democratic Party formally nominates Barack Obama as its candidate for the upcoming presidential election.
- North Korea reverses a pledge to dismantle its nuclear installations.
- The Caribbean hurricane season kills hundreds of people in several countries, notably Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The latter country also suffers flooding.
SEPTEMBER
- In Thailand, clashes break out between security forces and anti-corruption protesters occupying government buildings.
- The US Republican Party suspends its congress due to the imminent arrival of Hurricane Gustav on the Louisiana coast, where the city of New Orleans is evacuated. Resuming a few days later, the congress nominates John McCain for the presidency.
- North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il is reported to have undergone brain surgery after a stroke.
- A fire aboard a truck being carried through the Channel Tunnel causes major damage, but no casualties.
- The Pakistani parliament elects Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of the slain politician Benazir Bhutto, as the country's new president.
- The crash of a Russian airliner near the city of Perm kills 88 people.
- The giant US bank Lehman Brothers goes bankrupt.
- The scandal-hit Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, resigns.
- The US central bank bails out AIG, a huge insurance company.
- Chinese officials say that thousands of babies are ill after consuming tainted milk.
- A truck bomb kills at least 60 people at a hotel in the Pakistani capital Islamabad.
- A student kills 10 people and then himself in a Finnish school.
- Chinese astronauts return to earth after a mission including their first space walk.
- US film star Paul Newman dies at 83.
- US politicians agree on a 700 billion dollar rescue plan for their economy.
- At least 149 people die in a stampede at a Hindu temple in western India.
OCTOBER
- Stock markets crash around the world.
- The Austrian far right politician Joerg Haider dies in a high-speed car crash.
- US forces operating from Iraq kill eight people in an attack on a Syrian village.
- An earthquake kills over 200 people in southwestern Pakistan.
- New fighting flares up in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
NOVEMBER
- North Korea releases pictures of its leader, Kim Jong Il, who is believed to have been seriously ill.
- US voters hand a convincing victory to the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, who will be the first ever African-American president.
- Indonesia executes three men for the 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali.
- At least 93 children and teachers die when a school collapses in Haiti.
- The veteran South African singer and anti-apartheid campaigner Miriam Makeba dies in Italy.
- Pirates operating off the coast of lawless Somalia grab a Saudi supertanker laden with two million barrels of crude oil.
- Heavily armed men landing by sea wreak havoc in the Indian city of Mumbai. At least 163 people die in three days of violence.
- Zimbabwe appeals for help to combat a serious cholera epidemic.
- The Iraqi parliament approves a contentious agreement with the US, under which foreign forces will leave the country by 2011.
DECEMBER
- A Thai court dissolves the country's ruling party, handing a victory to anti-corruption activists who have occupied the main Bangkok airport.
- Mass unrest breaks out in Greece after the shooting dead of a teenager by police.
- After much hesitation, US President George W. Bush says the administration will bail out two major automobile firms.
- Bush pays a final visit to Iraq. An Iraqi journalist hurls his shoes at him.
- Details emerge of a worldwide pyramid scheme run by a prominent US financier, Bernard Madoff. He is believed to have lost some 50 billion dollars in all.
- The longtime leader of Guinea, Lansana Conte, dies. A military junta then seizes control of the west African state.
- Harold Pinter, Nobel Prize-winning British playwright and one of theatre's biggest names for nearly half a century, dies aged 78 of cancer.
- Eartha Kitt, the versatile US singer and actress, dies at 81.
- Pakistan redeploys thousands of troops to the border with India.
- Israeli attacks on Hamas-run Gaza Strip kill at least 228 Palestinians.
