Dates of 2006Article Free Pass
In a very brief ceremony accompanied by fisticuffs and catcalls in the Chamber of Deputies, Felipe Calderón is sworn in as president of Mexico.
The UN Security Council agrees to send personnel to monitor the peace agreement and elections in Nepal.
Hundreds of thousands of people turn out in the streets of Beirut to demand the resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora; demonstrations continue through the end of the year.
The Supreme Council (legislature) in Ukraine votes to remove Boris I. Tarasyuk as foreign minister, though the country’s new constitution makes it unclear whether the body has that authority.
The 15th Asian Games, featuring more than 10,500 athletes, open in Khalifa Stadium in Doha, Qatar.
The British newspaper The Independent commemorates World AIDS Day by donating a portion of its cover price to combating the disease in Africa.
Three car bombs explode in rapid succession in Baghdad, killing at least 51 people, while some 20 other people are killed in other incidents throughout the city.
On the final day of weeklong celebrations of the 80th birthday of Pres. Fidel Castro in Cuba, postponed from the time of his actual birthday in August, the president fails to appear.
The National World War I Museum opens in Kansas City, Mo.; it is the only American museum that focuses on that war.
The German film Das Leben der Anderen takes top honours at the European Film Awards in Warsaw.
Hugo Chávez wins reelection as president of Venezuela in a landslide.
In an interview with the BBC, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan says that Iraq is in a state of civil war.
The annual Kennedy Center Honors are presented in Washington, D.C., to film director Steven Spielberg, theatre composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, orchestra conductor Zubin Mehta, and singers Dolly Parton and Smokey Robinson.
Russia, led by Marat Safin, defeats Argentina in Moscow to win the Davis Cup in men’s team tennis.
In Tokyo, Brazil defeats Poland to win the 2006 men’s volleyball world championship for its second consecutive world title.
A merger between the Bank of New York and Pittsburgh’s Mellon Financial is announced; the new financial services giant is to be called Bank of New York Mellon Corp.
John R. Bolton resigns as U.S. ambassador to the UN.
NASA announces plans to establish a permanent base on the Moon beginning in about 2020.
Britain’s Turner Prize is presented to painter Tomma Abts (photo) by artist Yoko Ono.
Frank Bainimarama announces that the military has taken over the government in Fiji in the country’s fourth coup in 19 years.
Pres. Pervez Musharraf proposes self-government in Kashmir with a joint-supervision mechanism, which, if accepted by India, would result in Pakistan’s abandoning its claim to the region.
The New York City Board of Health bans the use of almost all trans fats in foods served in restaurants.
The bipartisan Iraq Study Group delivers its report to U.S. Pres. George W. Bush; the blue-ribbon panel recommends moving toward a policy of disengagement.
Joseph Kabila is sworn in as the first democratically elected president in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in over 40 years.
Frank Bainimarama, the leader of the coup that overthrew Fiji’s government on December 5, declares a state of emergency; Jona Senilagakali is sworn in as acting prime minister.
The UN Security Council authorizes the establishment of a force by the African Union and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development to provide protection and training to the interim government in Somalia.
Scientists report that photographs taken several years apart by the Mars Global Surveyor show evidence that strongly suggests the occasional flow of water on the surface of Mars.
At least 23 people are killed in various bombings and shootings in Iraq, and 35 bullet-riddled bodies are found in Baghdad.
Gen. Bantz J. Craddock of the U.S. Army is sworn in as supreme allied commander of NATO, replacing Gen. James L. Jones of the U.S. Marines.
The Seminole Tribe of Florida announces that it has bought Hard Rock International, the chain of restaurants, hotels, and casinos, from the Rank Group in Great Britain.
The Commonwealth suspends Fiji’s membership.
The U.S. House of Representatives passes a bill favoured by Pres. George W. Bush permitting the sale of civilian nuclear reactors and fuel to India.
In the Darfur region of The Sudan, unidentified gunmen on horseback attack a truck carrying medical and aid supplies and kill about 30 civilians, some shot and some burned alive.
Shiʿite militiamen overrun the Hurriyah neighbourhood of Baghdad, forcing all Sunni families from their homes and out of the area.
The space shuttle Discovery successfully takes off at night from Cape Canaveral, Florida, for a mission to do construction work on the International Space Station.
Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet dies in Santiago.
In the first world boxing title fight to take place in Russia, Kazakhstan-born American Oleg Maskaev wins a unanimous decision over Peter Okhello to retain the World Boxing Council heavyweight championship.
The European Union imposes a partial freeze on Turkey’s membership negotiations in response to Turkey’s refusal to open its ports to Cyprus.
Dubai’s port company DP World sells its holdings in the U.S. to a unit of the American International Group (AIG), an insurance company.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons grants the U.S. and Russia a five-year extension, to 2012, of the deadline for destroying their stockpiles of chemical weapons under the Chemical Weapons Convention.
An international conference on the Holocaust convenes in Iran; it is attended by Holocaust deniers, white supremicists, and discredited scholars, none of whom apparently supports the idea that the Holocaust actually took place.
It is announced that the National Basketball Association will return to playing with leather balls on Jan. 1, 2007; synthetic microfibre balls were introduced at the beginning of the season and were profoundly disliked by players.
At the end of a 12-year case in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian High Court finds former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam and 70 of his officials guilty of genocide; Mengistu, who ruled Ethiopia in 1977–91, is in exile in Zimbabwe.
At a policy meeting in Kandahar, Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai warns that Taliban elements are being supported in Pakistan and that a failure to bring peace to Afghanistan would destabilize the entire region.
Geophysical Research Letters publishes a modeling study showing that it is likely that during the summer months the Arctic Ocean will be largely open water as early as 2040, decades earlier than expected.
Alyaksandr Milinkevich, an opposition politician and unsuccessful presidential candidate in Belarus, is awarded the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.
A court in Botswana rules that the Basarwa (San) people were wrongly evicted from their ancestral lands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and are entitled to live and hunt there but that the government is not required to provide services to them should they return to the reserve.
The UN General Assembly unanimously adopts an international convention for civil and political rights of the disabled, including accessibility rights.
The day after the murder of three young sons of senior Palestinian security officer and Fatah member Baha Balousha in Gaza City, prominent Hamas militant Bassam al-Farah is ambushed and executed in the southern Gaza Strip.
Sultan Mizan Zainal Abidin of Terengganu state is sworn in as Malaysia’s 13th king in a traditional ceremony in Kuala Lumpur; after five years the kingship will rotate to the sultan of another state.
South Korean Ban Ki-moon is sworn in as secretary-general of the United Nations.
Israel stops Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya from returning to the Gaza Strip from Egypt for seven hours until he agrees to leave behind the large amounts of cash he is carrying; cash brought in from other countries is the only means now open to the Palestinian Authority to pay government expenses.
New Jersey becomes the third U.S. state to allow same-sex couples to form civil unions.
U.S. Pres. George W. Bush awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Ruth Johnson Colvin, Norman C. Francis, Paul Johnson, B.B. King, Joshua Lederberg, David McCullough, Norman Y. Mineta, Buck O’Neil, William Safire, and Natan Sharansky.
King Jigme Singye Wangchuk of Bhutan abdicates, two years earlier than previously announced, in favour of his son, Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuk.
Palestinian Authority Pres. Mahmoud Abbas orders early presidential and parliamentary elections; Hamas officials declare the edict illegal.
A day of internecine violence in the Gaza Strip ends with a cease-fire agreement between the forces of Fatah and Hamas.
In a legally problematic move, two large and five small parishes in Virginia vote to secede from the Episcopal Church, USA, and affiliate themselves with the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, which is presided over by the conservative archbishop of Nigeria.
Nigeria’s ruling People’s Democratic Party chooses Umaru Yar’Adua as its candidate in the 2007 presidential election.
France announces that it is pulling some 200 special forces troops from Jalalabad, Afg., where they have been engaging in counterinsurgency actions with U.S. troops.
The Sport Club Internacional do Pôrto Alegre of Brazil defeats FC Barcelona in Japan to win the FIFA Club World Cup in association football (soccer).
The Algerian film Barakat! is named best film at the third Dubai International Film Festival.
Representatives of China, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Russia, and the U.S. meet in Beijing in renewed negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear program.
The NASA Ames Research Center and the Internet search-engine company Google sign the Space Act Agreement, a technology-sharing pact that will involve collaboration on an array of projects.
Milan’s fashion industry agrees to ban models with a body mass index (BMI) of less than 18.5 from the runways during its fashion week, considered the world’s top show, to take place in February 2007.
A controversial staging by the Deutsche Oper in Berlin of Mozart’s opera Idomeneo that features the severed heads of Jesus Christ, Buddha, the Prophet Muhammad, and Poseidon is produced under heavy security.
An arrest is made in the death of five prostitutes near Trimley St. Martin, Suffolk, Eng., in a case that has riveted the country; later a different man is charged with the murders.
For the second time, five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor are sentenced to death in Libya for having deliberately infected children in a hospital in Benghazi with HIV; experts have suggested that the 1998 outbreak of HIV in the hospital predated the arrival of the defendants. (Photo)
Battles between masked gunmen from Fatah and Hamas leave five people dead in Gaza City, in spite of public pleas from both Pres. Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniya of Palestine.
In a ceremony Al-Najaf becomes the third Iraqi province transferred to Iraqi control from U.S. control; in Baghdad at least 114 people are killed or found dead.
The UN Security Council extends its ban on the export of diamonds from Liberia, first imposed in 2001, until further review in June 2007.
Denver is paralyzed when a major blizzard covers the metro area with 51–127 cm (20–50 in) of snow, bringing all travel, from cars and light rail to aviation, to a halt.
A judge in Vienna frees David Irving from prison after he has served 13 months of a three-year sentence for denying the Holocaust.
Saparmurad Niyazov, Turkmenistan’s capricious and autocratic president, dies unexpectedly.
The U.S. Marine Corps charges four Marines with murder in the killing of 24 civilians in the Iraqi village of Haditha in November 2005; also, four officers are charged with dereliction of duty.
The forces of the transitional national government in Somalia, backed by Ethiopian troops, defeat Islamist fighters in a major battle near Baidoa.
The First Emperor, an opera by Chinese American composer Tan Dun—featuring a libretto by Tan Dun and novelist Ha Jin, staged by film producer Zhang Yimou, and starring tenor Plácido Domingo in the title role—receives its premiere performance at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
Six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program end with no discernible progress, owing largely to intransigence on the part of both North Korea and the U.S.
Georgia signs a short-term contract with Russia’s gas monopoly Gazprom to purchase natural gas at double the previous price even as Georgia negotiates an alternative supply of gas from a platform in the Caspian Sea run by BP.
After a 13-day mission to rewire and make other improvements to the International Space Station, the space shuttle Discovery safely returns to Earth in Florida.
A report appears in the journal Science describing the discovery of a new archaeon microbe in highly toxic drain water from the Iron Mountain mine in California’s Shasta county that is some 200 nanometres (billionths of a metre) in width; scientists believe that the microbe could be the smallest organism ever found.
The UN Security Council approves a limited program of sanctions against Iran intended to stop its program of uranium enrichment.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and Palestinian Authority Pres. Mahmoud Abbas hold their first official meeting in several years, and some progress is made in their talks.
The British embassy in Dublin reports that Irish rock star and activist Bono is to receive an honorary knighthood in the annual year-end honours from Queen Elizabeth II.
Although it has been involved for some time, Ethiopia now massively enters the war against the forces of the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia.
Troops of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam board a disabled Jordanian ship drifting near Sri Lanka; the LTTE considers the act a rescue mission, but the Sri Lankan government calls it an act of piracy.
Christmas is celebrated throughout most of the Christian world.
British and Iraqi forces storm a police station in Basra, Iraq, killing seven people and rescuing 127 prisoners who had been tortured and faced likely execution; the police unit had been infiltrated by death squads.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert orders the removal of some 25 checkpoints inside the West Bank and promises steps to ease the flow of goods to and from the Gaza Strip; the previous day he had authorized the release of $100 million in Palestinian tax revenue to be used for humanitarian needs.
An appeals court in Iraq upholds the death sentence against deposed president Saddam Hussein and rules that it must be carried out within 30 days.
The Russian natural gas monopoly Gazprom threatens to cut off gas supplies to Belarus if the country does not agree to pay more than double the previous price by the beginning of the new year.
Israel announces its intention to build the first new settlement in a decade in the West Bank.
Former U.S. president Gerald R. Ford (1974–77) dies in Rancho Mirage, Calif., at the age of 93.
Georgia’s Parliament amends the country’s constitution to extend its term and shorten that of the president so that they will both end at the same time in late 2008.
Israel orders its military to resume responding to rocket attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip.
The U.S. Department of the Interior proposes listing polar bears as a threatened species; the proposal is the first step in a formal designation for which the final determination must be made within a year.
Forces of Somalia’s transitional national government, backed by the Ethiopian military, retake Mogadishu from the Islamist forces.
A wave of violent attacks by drug gangs in Rio de Janeiro leaves at least 19 people dead.
Wild Oats XI wins the 2006 Sydney–Hobart Yacht Race in Australia for the second consecutive year.
A ferry on the final leg of a two-day trip from Borneo to Java in Indonesia breaks apart in heavy seas; some 400 people are lost.
The Medicaid Commission established in 2005 by Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael O. Leavitt to find ways to modernize the U.S. health care system delivers its final report.
The dance/performance art work titled When I say bad I mean seriously hip (mind to motion know the notion) by Icelandic choreographer Margrét Sara Gudjónsdóttir receives its premiere performance at the SAFN gallery in Reykjavík.
Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein is hanged before dawn.
Three car bombs in Baghdad kill 36 people, while another car bomb, in Kufah, kills 31.
A car bomb goes off in a parking garage in Madrid’s international airport; two people are feared dead.
A video taken on a cell phone of the hanging of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein is widely circulated; the execution has the look of a Shiʿite lynching, which causes international controversy.
Nine small bombs go off in scattered places in Bangkok, killing 2 people and injuring some 30.
The death toll of American troops in Iraq since March 2003 reaches 3,000 with the death of Dustin Donica of Texas; estimates of total Iraqi deaths range from 30,000 (Pres. George W. Bush in December 2005) to 655,000 (Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, October 2006).
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