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 million today. Australia opened a 1,860-mile railway from Adelaide to Darwin.
MARCH On the morning of 11 March, bombs on commuter trains in Madrid killed 191. Three days later Spain voted for a socialist government. A suicide bomb at the Imam Hussein shrine at Karbala killed more than 80. Israel, plagued by suicide bombers, assassinated Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, as he was being brought home from the mosque in his wheelchair. Alistair Cooke died, aged 95. Sir Peter Ustinov died, aged 82. The number of prisoners in British jails reached an unprecedented 75,000.
APRIL Miss Beverley Hughes resigned as immigration minister after dubious applications from Bulgaria and Romania were exposed, most memorably a one-legged man seeking work as a roofer.
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