* Ecuador and Venezuela are moving thousands of troops to Colombia's borders, a day after Colombian forces killed a Raúl Reyes in Ecuadorean territory. (4.03)
* Price of Crude Oil Soars to New Heights. The price per barrel is now $ 103.95 (4.03)
* Global demonstrations against "Church of Scientology" took place in many cities around the globe. More than 10 000 people worldwide joined today protesting against this church and raising global awareness of this problem. More than 2,2 million people have seen the "Message to Scientology" video, vast majority of them commenting positive on "Anonymous". (10.02.)
* Embryo created from DNA of two women and one man. (6.02.)
* Global Call for Action to raise awareness and advance the movement for a more equal and just world as part of the World Social Forum held in Switzerland. (26.01.)
* Iran opens its first space center and launches a a rocket to space. (4.02.)
* A group called «Anonymous» declares war on «Church of Scientology» via video posted on You Tube called "Message to Scientology", and calls for action against. (28.1.)
* Oil price per barrel reaches $100. (2.01.)
* Quantum radar patented.
* IPCC's fourth assessment says glacial shrinkage, ice loss and permafrost retreat are signs that climate change is already underway. Predicts higher risk of drought, floods and more powerful storms this century, increasing the probability of hunger, homelessness and water-borne disease.
* Former U.S. vice president Al Gore's docu-movie "An Inconvenient Truth" drives global warming up the U.S. political agenda.
* Implementation of the ITER - Fusion Power Reactor Project started in France. Construction is expected to be completed in 2016 with the hope that the research conducted there will allow the introduction of practical commercial fusion power plants by 2050.
* A scalable quantum computer chip for atomic qubits was built for the first time.
* The trials of Saddam Hussein started.
* The Kyoto Protocol goes into effect, without the support of the United States and Australia.
* First working pure state NMR quantum computer (based on parahydrogen) demonstrated at Oxford University and University of York.
* NASA's hypersonic Scramjet breaks a record by reaching a velocity of about 7,000 mph in an unmanned experimental flight. It obtains a speed of Mach 9.6, almost 10 times the speed of sound.
* John Paul II dies, Benedict XVI elected for 266. pope.
* Oil price rises above $55 a barrel.
* SpaceShipOne becomes the first privately-funded spaceplane to achieve spaceflight.
* Scientists in South Korea announce the cloningof 30 human embryos.
* The CIA admits that there was no imminent threat from weapons of mass destruction before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
* H5N1 bird flu recognised in Republic of Korea.
* "Dolly", cloned sheep, dies
* Saddam Hussein, former President of Iraq, is captured.
* Hubble Space Telescope starts Hubble Ultra Deep Field.
* The Human Genome Project is successfully completed, with 99% of the human genome sequenced to 99.99% accuracy.
* The United States and the United Kingdom begin their shock and awe campaign, with a massive air strike on military targets in Baghdad.
* The journal Nature reports that 350,000-year-old upright-walking human footprints had been found in Italy.
* Global protests against Iraq war. More than 10 million people protest in over 600 cities worldwide.
* Switzerland, known for its neutrality, finally joins the United Nations.
* The Organization of African Unity is officially disbanded and replaced by the African Union.
* The United States Department of Justice announces it will pursue a criminal investigation of Enron.
* The Open Skies mutual surveillance treaty, initially signed in 1992, officially enters into force.
* The USA PATRIOT Act signed into law. Full title: Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001.
* Word Trade Center & Pentagon attacked.
* The Russian space station Mir is decommissioned after 15 years. It is sent out of orbit to burn up on re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere over South Pacific.
* Bush rejects Kyoto Protocol.
* The first draft of the human genome is completed.
* A rare conjunction of seven celestial bodies (Sun, Moon, planets Mercury-Jupiter) occurs on the New Moon.
* Pope John Paul II begins the first official visit by a Roman Catholic pontiff to Israel.
* Nupedia, predecessor to Wikipedia is created.
* George W. Bush and Al Gore emerge victorious in the Republican and Democratic caucuses and primaries of the United States presidential election.
* Y2K passes without serious, widespread computer failures, despite fears to the contrary. Many computer programmers had long kept track of each year in shorthand as a two-digit offset from 1900. This modulo-100 assumption thereby treated 2000 instead as 1900, resulting in a 100-year error. Another glitch had the U.S. Naval Observatory web site indicating the date as 19100.
* Millennium celebrations take place throughout the world.
* A US firm buys the technology used to clone Dolly in a bid to clone cells from patients to produce new organs for transplanting.
* The human population of the world surpassed sixx billion.
* Ramanathan detects massive "brown cloud" of aerosols from South Asia.
* Hugo Chavez becomes President of Venezuela.
* European currency, the Euro, is introduced, locking the exchange rates of member state currencies.
* The on-orbit assembly of International Space Station began
* "Super El Niño" causes weather disasters and warmest year on record (approximately matched by 2005 and 2007). Borehole data confirm extraordinary warming trend.
* First RFID human implantation tested in the United Kingdom.
* Osama bin Laden publishes a fatwaa, declarin jihad against all Jews and Crusaders.
* Cosmologists announce that the universe's expansion rate is increasing.
* Kyoto Protocol - Adopted in Kyoto, Japan. Converts voluntary climate change treaty to binding international law.
* Toyota introduces Prius in Japan, first mass-market electric hybrid car; swift progress in large wind turbines and other energy alternatives.
* Internet2 organization created.
* NASA announces that the ALH 84001 meteorite, thought to originate from Mars, contains evidence of primitive life-forms.
* Dolly the sheep - first mammal to be successfully cloned from an adult cell, is born at the Roslin Institute in Midlothian, Scotland.
* Chess computer "Deep Blue" defeats world chess champion Garry Kasparov for the first time.
* Publication of the first complete genome of a free-living organism.
* DVD, an optical disc computer storage media format, is announced.
* Space Shuttle Atlantis docks with the Russian Mir space station for the first time.
* Hacker Kevin Mitnick is arrested by the FBI and charged with breaking into some of the United States' most "secure" computer systems.
* The World Trade Organization is established to replace GATT.
* Nelson Mandela is inaugurated as South Africa's first Black president.
* U.S. troops are withdrawn from Somalia.
* The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) goes into effect.
* The Maastricht Treaty takes effect, formally establishing the European Union.
* David Miscavige announces the IRS has granted full tax exemption to the Church of Scientology International and affiliated churches and organizations ending the Church's 40-year battle with the IRS and resulting in religious recognition in the United States.
* China performs a nuclear test, ending a worldwide de facto moratorium.
* CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to anyone, with no fees due.
* North Korea announces that it plans to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and refuses to allow inspectors access to nuclear sites.
* George H. W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin sign the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.* CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to anyone, with no fees due.
* Bill Clinton becomes president of USA defeating president George H.W. Bush and businessman H. Ross Perot.
* A magnitude 7.3 earthquake strikes Landers, California, followed by a magnitude 6.4 aftershock 8km south-east of Big Bear Lake, California.
* Four nuclear missiles are launched into the Pacific Ocean.
* Falun Gong introduced by Li Hongzhi.
* The People's Republic of China ratifies the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
* The Maastricht Treaty is signed, founding the European Union.
* Boris Yeltsin announces that Russia will stop targeting United States cities with nuclear weapons.
* Pope John Paul II issues an apology, and lifts the edict of the Inquisition against Galileo Galilei.
* The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia begins to break up officially.
* The Soviet Union officially ceases to exist.
* The Supreme Soviet meets and formally dissolves the Soviet Union.
* Russian KGB is replaced by the SVR.
* WWW is announced as a publicly available service on the Internet.
* The Hubble Space Telescope is launched aboard Space Shuttle Discovery.
* The first commercial supplier of dial-up access to the Internet comes on-line.
* The Human Genome project is set up, a collaboration between scientists from around 16 countries to work out the whole of the human genetic code.
* USSR begins to disintegrate.
* Berlin Wall falls.* An official news agency in the Soviet Union reports the landing of a UFO in Voronezh.
* Fossil fuel and other industries form Global Climate Coalition in US to lobby politicians and convince the media and public that climate science is too uncertain to justify action.