Portrait of 2004

JANUARY Lord Hutton’s report declared that the government was not ‘dishonourable, underhand or duplicitous’. Mr Mikhail Saakashvili, who had led popular demonstrations in Georgia against Mr Eduard Shevardnadze, won the presidential elections. Hundreds of reformist candidates were banned from standing in the Iranian elections. Hope was given up of hearing any signal from Beagle 2, the British craft sent to Mars. Dr Harold Shipman, who had murdered at least 215 patients, was found hanged in his prison cell. Parmalat, the Italian food group, was exposed in a vast fraud. The dollar weakened against the euro. Police in Madhya Pradesh were paid a bonus of 35p a month to grow moustaches to increase their authority.

FEBRUARY On different days, suicide bombers in Iraq killed more than 100 at Arbil; 50 at Iskandariyah; 36 in Baghdad; 25 in Fallujah. Twenty Chinese cockle-pickers drowned in Morecambe Bay. Frances Partridge died, aged 103. The UN body on Aids said that cases of HIV infection in Eastern Europe and Central Asia had risen from 30,000 in 1995 to 1.5