/ 0
2012-The Year That Was
A Raja Jailed
Former Telecom Minister A Raja, who was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation for his alleged role in the 2G spectrum scam, had been sent to Delhi's Tihar Jail till March 3.
Raja and Swan Telecom promoter Shahid Balwa were arrested for their alleged involvement in the 2G Spectrum allotment scam.
The two were made to face each other and answer questions relating to the grant of license and undue favours extended to the company during 2008.
Raja was forced to resign from the Union Cabinet last year after the Comptroller and Auditor General of India faulted him for undervaluing spectrum to favour companies who were largely ineligible for 2G spectrum, and added that the government had probably lost Rs.1.76 lakh crore in estimated revenue.
Suresh Kalmadi Jailed
The chairman of the controversial New Delhi Commonwealth Games 2010, Suresh Kalmadi, was arrested on suspicion of criminal conspiracy in the awarding of Games contracts, including a £450,000 deal with a London firm over the staging of the Queens Baton relay and a contract with Swiss Timing.
Kalmadi, joined his two deputies, the secretary general of the organising committee Lalit Bhanot and director general V K Verma and three other Games officials in facing serious fraud charges.
The Central Bureau of Investigation made the arrest after interviewing Kalmadi for the fourth time in three months.
Kanimozhi Jailed
Denied bail by a special court in Delhi, K. Kanimozhi was arrested on the 20th of May 2011. Kanimozhi, a Rajya Sabha member, was denied bail along with Sharad Kumar, managing director of Kalaignar TV, and was moved to jail No. 6 at Delhi’s Tihar jail.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which was investigating the alleged corruption in the allocation of second-generation (2G) telecom spectrum licences, named Kanimozhi and Kumar in the supplementary chargesheet for conspiring with former telecom minister A. Raja to transfer more than Rs. 200 crore to Kalaignar TV. CBI claimed that the money was a bribe paid by Shahid Balwa, a promoter of DB Realty, in exchange for telecom licences to his company, Swan Telecom.
MP Amar Singh Jailed
High-profile MP Amar Singh was arrested and lodged in Tihar Jail in a sensational twist in the cash-for-vote scam that rocked Parliament three years ago.
55-year-old Singh was denied bail and arrested after Special Judge Sangita Dhingra Sehgal remanded him in judicial custody for 14 days.
The arrest came when the former Samajwadi Party appeared a couple of hours after pleading for exemption from personal appearance on medical grounds but the court was unconvinced and asked him to produce all his medical reports.
The court also rejected bail to former BJP MPs Faggan Singh Kulaste and Mahabir Singh Bhagora, who too appeared before the court responding to its summons for their alleged role in the scam that was seen as an attempt to bribe MPs for their vote in support of the government's confidence motion after the Left parties withdrew support on the nuclear deal.
Page 2
-
Tunisian President Ben Ali Sentenced
The former Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and his wife were sentenced to 35 years in jail after being found guilty of theft in absentia by a Tunisian court.
Ben Ali and his wife, Leila Trabelsi, were accused of theft and unlawful possession of large sums of foreign currency, jewellery, archaeological artifacts, drugs and weapons.
The case was brought in absentia after Ben Ali fled Tunisia on 14 January following mass protests across the country. Ben Ali, who had since said he was deceived into leaving Tunisia, had accumulated vast wealth from his involvement in some of the country's biggest businesses during his 23-year reign.
In addition to the lengthy sentences, the court ordered that the former president and his wife pay fines totalling 91m Tunisian dinars (£41m).
More than 30 members of Ben Ali and Trabelsi's family were arrested after the fall of the Family, some of whom have been since charged with economic crimes and abuse of power.
Among the assets left by Ben Ali that the courts said they were seeking to recover were luxury villas, as well as interests in hotels banks and pharmaceuticals.
Ivory Coast's Laurent Gbagbo arrested
Having refused to stand down for four months after losing the presidential election, even as the country descended into civil war, Gbagbo was finally detained at his personal residence by forces loyal to the country's elected president, Alassane Ouattara. French troops and United Nations peacekeepers, who had earlier struck Gbagbo's home in the main city, Abidjan, from the air, provided crucial support.Gbagbo had been hiding in a bunker under his house for a week.
A history lecturer by profession, with a doctorate from a Paris university, Mr Gbagbo was crucial in Ivory Coast's transition toward multi-party democracy in the 1980s and early 1990s.
After becoming President in 2000, however, he adopted draconian measures to stifle political dissent and manipulated issues of nationality and religion to maintain power.
In his wake, he left a divided country that threatens the stability of the entire region.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il dies
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il the son of Kim Il Song, the founder of the communist nation, Kim Jong Il had been in power since 1994 when his father died of a heart attack at age 82.
The enigmatic leader was a frequent thorn in the side of neighboring South Korea, as well as the United States. There had been reports in recent years about his health, as well as that power will be transitioned to his son, Kim Jong Un.
Kim Jong Il, who threatened the world with his nuclear weapons ambitions and suppressed his own people with imprisonment and isolation, died suddenly aged 69 from a heart attack.
His youngest son Kim Jong Un had been proclaimed as the new leader of North Korea.
Wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton
The wedding of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine Middleton took place on 29 April 2011 at Westminster Abbey in London. Their engagement on 20 October 2010 was announced on 16 November 2010. The build-up to the wedding and the occasion itself attracted much media attention and was compared and contrasted in many ways with the 1981 marriage of William’s parents, Charles, Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer.
Bhutan’s Royal WeddingThe wedding of Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, King of Bhutan, and Jetsun Pema took place on 13 October 2011 at the Punakha Dzong in Punakha, Bhutan. The current King of Bhutan, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, married Jetsun Pema, a commoner, who became Queen Jetsun Pema.
India Crowned ICC World ChampionsThe 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup was the tenth Cricket World Cup. It was played in India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. India won the tournament defeating Sri Lanka by 6 wickets in the final in Mumbai. India became the first nation to win a World Cup final on home soil. India’s Yuvraj Singh was declared the man of the tournament.
News International Scandal
The News International phone-hacking scandal is an ongoing controversy involving the News of the World and other British newspapers published by News International. Employees of the newspaper were accused of phone hacking, police bribery, and exercising improper influence in the pursuit of stories. Investigations from 2005–2007 concluded that the paper’s hacking activities were limited to celebrities, politicians and members of the British Royal Family. In July 2011, it was revealed that the phones of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, relatives of deceased British soldiers, and victims of the 7/7 London bombings were also accessed, resulting in public outcry against News Corporation and owner Rupert Murdoch. Advertiser boycotts contributed to the closure of the News of the World on 10 July, ending 168 years of publication.
Muammar Gaddafi Killed
Moammar Gadhafi, Libya’s dictator for 42 years until he was ousted in an uprising-turned-civil war, was killed on the 20th of October 2011 as revolutionary fighters overwhelmed his hometown of Sirte and captured the last major bastion of resistance two months after his regime fell.
The 69-year-old Gadhafi is the first leader to be killed in the Arab Spring wave of popular uprisings that swept the Middle East, demanding the end of autocratic rulers and the establishment of greater democracy.
2011 Egypt Uprising
The 2011 Egyptian revolution took place following a popular uprising that began on Tuesday, 25 January 2011 and is still continuing as of December 2011. The uprising was mainly a campaign of non-violent civil resistance, which featured a series of demonstrations, marches, acts of civil disobedience, and labour strikes. Millions of protesters from a variety of socio-economic and religious backgrounds demanded the overthrow of the regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Despite being predominantly peaceful in nature, the revolution was not without violent clashes between security forces and protesters, with at least 846 people killed and 6,000 injured. The uprising took place in Cairo, Alexandria, and in other cities in Egypt, following the Tunisian revolution that resulted in the overthrow of the long-time Tunisian president. On 11 February, following weeks of determined popular protest and pressure, Mubarak resigned from office.
Osama bin Laden’s Death
Osama bin Laden, then head of the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda, was killed in Pakistan on Monday, May 2, 2011, shortly after 1 a.m. local time by a United States special forces military unit. The operation, code-named Operation Neptune Spear, was ordered by United States President Barack Obama and carried out in a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operation by a team of United States Navy SEALs from the United States Naval Speciazal Warfare Development Group (also known as DEVGRU or, colloquially, by its former name, SEAL Team Six) of the Joint Special Operations Command, with support from CIA operatives on the ground. The raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan was launched from Afghanistan. After the raid, U.S. forces took bin Laden’s body to Afghanistan for identification, then buried it at sea within 24 hours of his death.
US pull out of Iraq
The withdrawal of American military forces from Iraq has been a contentious issue since the beginning of the Iraq War. In late April 2007, the U.S. Congress passed a supplementary spending bill for Iraq that sets a deadline for troop withdrawal, but President Bush vetoed this bill soon afterwards. All US Forces are mandated to withdraw from Iraqi territory by December 31, 2011 under the terms of a bilateral agreement signed in 2008. The U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq was completed on December 18, 2011 on an early Sunday morning.
Japan Tsunami
The 2011 earthquake off the Pacific coast of Tohoku was a magnitude 9.0 (Mw) earthquake that occurred at 14:46 JST on 11 March 2011. It was the most powerful known earthquake ever to have hit Japan. It triggered powerful tsunami waves, which reached heights of up to 40.5 metres in Miyako and which in the Sendai area travelled up to 10 kms inland. The tsunami caused a number of nuclear accidents, primarily the ongoing level 7 meltdowns at three reactors in the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant complex, and the associated evacuation zones affecting hundreds of thousands of residents.
Dennis Ritchie dies
Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie was an American computer scientist who “helped shape the digital era.” He created the C programming language and, with long-time colleague Ken Thompson, the UNIX operating system. Ritchie was found dead on October 12, 2011, at the age of 70 at his home in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, where he lived alone. First news of his death came from his former colleague, Rob Pike. The cause and exact time of death have not been disclosed. He had been in frail health for several years following treatment for prostate cancer and heart disease.
Steve Jobs dies
Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc. Jobs died at his California home around 3 p.m. on October 5, 2011, due to complications from a relapse of his previously treated islet-cell neuroendocrine pancreatic cancer, resulting in respiratory arrest. He had lost consciousness the day before, and died with his wife, children and sister at his side.
Oslo, Norway Killings
The 2011 Norway attacks were two sequential terrorist attacks in Norway on 22 July 2011.
The first was a car bomb explosion in Oslo. The car bomb was placed outside the office of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and other government buildings. The explosion killed eight people and wounded several others.
The second attack occurred less than two hours later at a summer camp on the island of Utøya in Tyrifjorden, Buskerud.
Anders Behring Breivik dressed in a police uniform gained access to the island and subsequently opened fire at the participants, killing 69 attendees, including personal friends of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and the stepbrother of Norway’s crown princess Mette-Marit. This makes it the deadliest attack in Norway since World War II.
