November

2: UNITED STATES - George W. Bush is re-elected President as his Democrat opponent John Kerry concedes defeat in the face of a mass mobilisation of conservative religious voters in Bush's favour..

Secretary of State Colin Powell resigns on November 15 to be replaced by national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice.

2: NETHERLANDS - Theo van Gogh, a controversial writer and film director, is brutally murdered on the streets of Amsterdam by a Muslim fundamentalist angered by van Gogh's portrayal of Muslim women. His killer and six other members of a North African group with terrorist connections are quickly arrested but racial tension grows in the normally liberal Dutch society.

2: UNITED ARAB EMIRATES - Death of Sheikh Zayed Ben Sultan Al-Nahyane, founding father and president of the UAE, succeeded by his son, Sheikh Khalifa Ben Zayed Al-Nahyane.

5: RUSSIA - President Vladimir Putin signs a law ratifying the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

6: IVORY COAST - Nine French soldiers die in an attack by the Ivorian air force, which had been attacking rebel positions. The French retaliate by destroying the air force's two planes, unleashing four days of violent anti-French demonstrations, looting and rape. An estimated 8,000 westerners, mostly French, are evacuated or leave under their own steam.

The government in Abidjan says 57 Ivorian civilians died and more than 2,200 injured in the clashes and the French army admits to having shot about 20 people dead.

7: IRAQ - Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi declares a state of emergency throughout the country, with the exception of Kurdistan, for 60 days to insure that elections go ahead at the end of January 2005.

The following day, US and Iraqi forces begin an onslaught against Fallujah, the Sunni Muslim stronghold in the biggest offensive since the fall of Baghdad in April 2003.

11: INDIA - Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announces a reduction in the number of troops in the disputed province of Kashmir. India and neighbouring Pakistan have been holding peace talks over Kashmir since the start of the year and agreed to resume normal diplomatic relations in June.

11: FRANCE - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat dies in Paris, where he has been treated in hospital since October 29.

The following day, after a funeral service in the Egyptian capital Cairo, his body is interred in earth brought especially from Jerusalem to the Mouqataa complex, his former headquarters in Ramallah on the West Bank, where he spent the last years of his life, amid scenes of mass grieving.

The battle for successioin opens with PLO secretary-general Mahmoud Abbas named head of the organisation, the head of the political bureau, Faruk Kaddumi, is elected head of Fatah and the speaker of parliament, Rawhi Fattuh, is named interim head of the Palestinian Authority while Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei keeps his job.

16: SPAIN - A 16-year-old Spanish boy who has admitted handing explosives to the perpetrators of the March 11 bomb attacks in Madrid, is sentenced to six years' imprisonment.

18: EUROPE - The new European Commission, headed by Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, is finally approved by parliament, ending three weeks of opposition after Durao Barroso named controversial Italian Rocco Buttiglione in his team, but Buttiglione's outspoken views on homosexuality made him unacceptable to many Euro MPs.

18-19: SUDAN - The United Nations Security Council holds an extraordinary meeting on the conflicts afflicting Sudan in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, the first time in 14 years it has convened outside of its headquarters in New York.

The council passes a resolution promising international aid to Khartoum once the peace agreement with rebels in the south of the country is signed, by the end of this year, and calls for an immediate end to the fighting between government forces and rebels in Darfur.

Sudan has been the theatre of war since 1983, with 1.5 million people having died in the conflict in the south and 70,000 killed in Darfur since fighting broke out last year in what the UN calls the world's worst current humanitarian crisis.

22: IRAN - Iran announces the suspension of all work on enriching uranium after Britain, France and Germany agree a co-operation package.

23: DR CONGO - Rwanda threatens to intervene in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo against Rwandan Hutu rebels based there. The UN Mission in DRC claims on December 2 to have evidence of a Rwandan presence in the country but this is denied by Kigali.

27: MYANMAR - The Myanmar military regime says it has released more than 9,200 prisoners in the past eight days but extends the house arrest of dissident leader Aung San Suu Kyi, detained in May 2003, for a further year.

30: UNITED NATIONS - The UN announces a series of 101 reforms, including expanding the Security Council from 15 to 24 members.

30: PHILIPPINES - A tropical storm, followed by a typhoon swepps across the north of the country, leaving 1,600 people dead or missing.

December

6: SAUDI ARABIA - Four armed men attack the US consulate in Jeddah, killing five non-American employees before being killed themselves. The raid, the first against a diplomatic mission in Saudi Arabia, is claimed by Al-Qaida.

7: AFGHANISTAN - Hamid Karzaï is sworn in the first democratic president, three years after the fall of the Taliban regime.

8: CHINA - Lenovo, China's biggest manufacturer of personal computers buys the PC division of the world's leading computer firm, IBM.

8: PERU: Twelve Latin American countries, meeting in Cuzco, agree to found the South American Nations Community to promote economic and political integration int he region.

10: IRAQ - The death toll among US soldiers in Iraq passes the 1,000 mark. According to the "Iraqbodycount" website, which compiles figures from press reports. During the same period, since the US-led invasion in March 2003, some 15,000 Iraqi civilians have died.

10: ITALY - Charges against Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of bribing judges are dropped due to the statute of limitations have expired. Berlusconi vows to clear his name.

The following day, Berlusconi suffers another setback when a key aide, Senator Marcello dell'Utri is sentenced to nine years in jail by a Palermo court for Mafia connections.

13: ROMANIA - Centre-right opposition candidate Traian Basescu wins Romania's presidential election, defeating left-leaning Prime Minister Adrian Nastase to succeed Ion Iliescu.

14: FRANCE - President Jacques Chirac inaugurates the world's tallest bridge, 270 metres (885 feet) above the river Tarn in south western France.

17: EU - The European Union agrees to start entry talks with Turkey in October 2005, but says they could last at least a decade.

19: RUSSIA - Yuganskneftegaz, the main asset of the Russian Yukos energy giant, is sold to a mysterious company called Baikalfinansgroup which turns out to be a front for the Russian state. The sale is officially to pay off 27.5 billion dollars in back taxes against Russia's biggest oil producer but is seen as a means for the Kremlin to reassert control of the strategic energy sector and crush a powerful political opponent, imprisoned Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

21: IRAQ: A suicide blast in a Mosul mess-hall kills 14 US troops, the most in a single attack since the Iraq war began.

22: IRAQ: French journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot are freed after being held hostage by Irsqi insurgents since August 20.

26: SOUTH ASIA - An earthquake measuring a massive 9.0 on the Richter scale off the Indonesian island of Sumatra causes huge waves that sweep away whole communities and kill more than 120,000 people in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Maldives and Thailand.

26: UKRAINE - Pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko is declared winner of a rerun presidential election against Russia's favourite Viktor Yanukovich in a success for his "orange revolution". A previous vote on November 21 had given victory to Yanukovich but was annulled because of widespread fraud.

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