December 23, 2009. Copyright 2009, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Review of the Year 2009
By Julie Mullins

LONDON, December 23, Graphic News:  Captions accompany graphic GN25446

January
15. A U.S. Airways A320 ditched into a chilly Hudson River after striking a flock of birds soon after take-off. The pilot's landing skills saved the lives of all 155 on board

20. Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th and first African-American President of the United States

31. Madagascar's opposition leader Andry Rajoelina seized power amid violent protests that killed over 100 people
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February
07. Australia's worst ever bushfires killed 173 people in Victoria on Black Saturday

20. Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu was invited to form Israel's next government after.Tzipi Livni's Kadima failed to form a coalition

22. Low-budget film Slumdog Millionaire won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture
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March
4. President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan became the first sitting head of state to be indicted by the International Criminal Court, over war crimes in Darfur

9. Barbie, the world’s best selling doll, celebrated her 50th birthday

10. Tibetans marked the 50th anniversary of the flight into exile of the Dalai Lama after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959

24: The Indian Premier League was relocated to South Africa due to security concerns as India geared up for the world's largest election
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April
4. NATO, the world’s largest peacetime military alliance, celebrated its 60th anniversary

14. Legendary music producer Phil Spector was found guilty of second degree murder over the 2003 shooting death of actress Lana Clarkson

25. Jacob Zuma became president of South Africa following the ANC's election victory

28. Swine flu, first detected in Mexico, quickly spread worldwide. By year's end the pandemic had claimed almost 10,000 lives
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May
6. Tens of thousands of refugees fled Pakistan’s Swat Valley ahead of an imminent army offensive against the Taliban

18. Sri Lanka's 26-year civil war with the Tamil Tigers came to a violent end

20. Anger in Britain over the stream of revelations over MPs' expenses claims wrecked careers and ruined reputations

31. London's famous Big Ben celebrated its 150th anniversary
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June
1. An Air France A330 with 228 people on board plunged into the Atlantic Ocean on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris

13. Riots erupted in Iran as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected president by a surprisingly large margin of victory

25. Pop superstar Michael Jackson died in Los Angeles, aged 50, from a powerful cocktail of sleeping drugs

29: Disgraced financier Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in jail for perpetrating the biggest investment fraud in Wall Street history
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July
5. Roger Federer won a record 15th major title at Wimbledon, a month after completing a career grand slam with victory at Roland Garros

5. Riots in China’s restive Xinjiang region between ethnic Uighurs and Han Chinese left 200 people dead

26. India launched its first nuclear submarine, the INS Arihant
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August
4. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton secured the freedom of two U.S. journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, sentenced to 12 years hard labour for entering North Korea illegally

17. The global financial crisis showed signs of easing, with Japan, France and Germany the first major economies to pull out of recession

20: Abdelbaset Ali Al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people, was freed from a Scottish jail on compassionate grounds

20. Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt smashed his 100m and 200m world records for the second successive year

28. California woman Jacie Lee Dugard, 29, was reunited with her family 18 years after being kidnapped by a convicted sex offender who fathered her two children
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September
21. Scandal engulfed F1 again, with Renault receiving a suspended two year ban for race fixing at the 2008 Singapore GP

23-30. The Philippines was hit by two devastating typhoons which killed over 900 people

28. Film director Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland and faced extradition to the U.S. for a sex offence in 1977
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October
5. Greece's socialist PASOK party scored a landslide election victory, with voters angered by a faltering economy ousting the conservative government halfway through its second term

7. Megawealthy entrepreneur Simon Cowell celebrated his 50th birthday

9-28. A series of bomb attacks in Pakistani cities killed hundreds as the army battled militants in South Waziristan
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November
2. As allied casualties mounted in Afghanistan Hamid Karzai won another term as President after a drawn-out election marred by widespread fraud

10. Somali pirates were responsible for more than half of all pirate attacks in 2009

19. Low-profile Belgian premier Herman van Rompuy was elected as the first President of the European Union
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December
7. Copenhagen staged a Climate Change summit aiming to secure a new global agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol

14. Sport's first billionaire, Tiger Woods, temporarily withdrew from golf after admitting to multiple affairs

15. Boeing's 787 Dreamliner made its first test flight two and a half years behind schedule
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