WORLD AGENDA

March 2016

Mar 21-22, Havana: Barack Obama will become the first U.S. president to visit Cuba in 88 years in a historic trip designed to end decades of animosity between the former Cold War foes

Mar 23, Bogota: The agreed deadline is reached between the Colombian government and leftist FARC rebels to end Latin America’s longest war. Around
220,000 have been killed and millions displaced since 1964

Mar 1, Japan: The country that led the world into the robotics era plans to leap over Google and the carmakers pioneering driverless cars, to experiment with a driverless taxi service in Fujisawa, near Tokyo

Mar 3, New Zealand: The Pacific nation holds the final and binding vote on changing the country’s flag, with the choice between the present Union Jack and the winning design from some 10,300 entries submitted in 2015

Mar 5, Cape Canaveral: An asteroid, known as 2013 TX68, is due to pass Earth and may be only 17,700 kilometres away.  NASA scientists say that given uncertainty about its precise path, it could also end up 14 million km away, but it will not hit Earth.

Mar 1, U.S.: The biggest test of the 2016 presidential primary season takes place on Super Tuesday when a dozen states, most of them in the south, choose their Republican and Democratic contenders for the Nov 8 election

Mar 13, Germany: Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats are expected to win crucial elections in three states, despite escalating anger over the country’s record influx of migrants. Saxony-Anhalt, Baden-Wuerttemberg and Rhineland- Palatinate go to the polls

Mar 26, London: The final Independent appears on newsstands, one of the first national newspapers in the world to end its print version under pressure from the internet

Source: Kate EdgleyPictures: Getty Images, AP, Robot Taxi, Inc., NASA/JPL-Caltech/Lockheed Martin