WORLD AGENDA DECEMBER 2011

December 1-2, Yangon and Naypyidaw: Hillary Clinton visits Myanmar,the first U.S. Secretary of State to do so in more than 50 years. The move follows the end of five decades of military rule and the country’s recent release of political prisoners.

December 3, New York: Elizabeth Taylor’s $30 million jewellery collection, one of the foremost in the world, is auctioned at Christie’s. Among nearly 300 pieces amassed by the actress, who died in March, is a $3.5 million diamond ring given to her by Richard Burton.

December 4, Zagreb: Croatia’s conservative HDZ party which, under Franjo Tudjman, won the country independence from Yugoslavia in 1991and has dominated ever since, looks set to be ousted. Polls put the centre-left Alliance for Change far ahead amid weak economic growth.

December 5, Bonn: Afghanistan’s transition to independence after three decades of occupation, war and Taliban rule is the focus of an international conference on the country’s future after NATO troops leave in 2014. Security, jobs, women’s rights and education will top the agenda.

December 5, London: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange appeals against his extradition to Sweden where he is accused of rape and sexual assault. WikiLeaks published 391,000 classified documents on the Iraq war and 77,000 on the Afghan conflict in 2010.

December 5, London: Amy Winehouse’s new album, Lioness: HiddenTreasures, is released posthumously using tracks the 27-year-old left unfinished when she died of alcohol poisoning in July. The influential British singer was known for her deep contralto vocals and mix of genres.

December 13, New York: A 1928 red cloth covered notebook, belonging to Bengali poet and Nobel Literature Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore, is expected to fetch up to $250,000 at auction. The manuscript contains12 poems and lyrics for 12 songs.

December 16, Fort Meade, Maryland: U.S. Army analyst Bradley Manning is due to face a military court over charges of distributing government secrets which he allegedly leaked to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. The conditions of Manning’s confinement since his arrest in May have been widely criticised.

December 31, Baghdad: The deadline for the withdrawal of all 30,000 U.S. troops from Iraq. The nine-year war cost the United States $1 trillion and 4,500 lives – and the Iraqis at least 100,000 lives.

Early December, Geneva: Physicists begin preparations to upgrade the Large Hadron Collider, the 27km circular tunnel that produces hundreds of millions of collisions a second, to one producing 10 times that number. The project aims to replicate the beginnings of the universe.

December (undated), Amsterdam: The Deetman Commission publishes its final report on sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in the Netherlands, one of the countries worst affected by a scandal that spanned Europe and the United States. Nearly 2,000 Dutch people made allegations.
/ENDS