2012 in Retrospect

Key world events in the year just ending: January 13: An Italian cruise liner carrying over 4,000 people strikes rocks and keels over off Italy's west coast. A total of 32 people die.
January 26: The head of a French firm making silicone breast implants is arrested after it emerges that many of the devices installed in women around the world may contain toxic substances.
February 2: Rioting at a football match in the Egyptian city of Port Said leaves at least 74 fans dead.
February 6: On the 60th anniversary of her accession to the British throne, Queen Elizabeth II kicks off five months of jubilee celebrations, which climax in June with a river parade in London.
February 7: The Indian Ocean island state of the Maldives is rocked by unrest which leads to the ouster of its first democratically elected president.
February 14: Around 350 inmates die in a fire at a prison in the central American nation of Honduras.
February 21: Violence breaks out in Afghanistan after it emerges that US troops there have burned copies of the Muslim holy book, the Koran.
February 21: Eurozone countries approve a 237-billion-euro rescue package for debt-stricken Greece, helping it avoid default and leaving the currency bloc.
February 22: Fifty-one passengers die and over 700 are hurt when a suburban train crashes in the Argentinian capital of Buenos Aires.
February 22: An American and a French reporter die while covering the increasingly violent conflict in Syria.
February 26: A silent French film made in black-and-white, 'The Artist' wins top honours at the annual Academy Awards in Hollywood.
February 26: A Florida man in a 'neighbourhood watch' group shoots dead an unarmed black teenager. The case rapidly becomes a cause celebre for anti-racism groups across the United States.
March 3: A string of tornadoes kills 38 people in the midwest of the United States.
March 4: Vladimir Putin returns as president of Russia after winning a crushing election victory that sparks unrest in Moscow.
March 5: Explosions at a munitions dump kill over 200 people in Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo.
March 11: A US soldier runs amok in Afghanistan, shooting dead 16 civilians, 12 of them women and children.
March 19: A gunman kills three children and a teacher at a Jewish school in France. The man, who is later found to have also killed three French soldiers of Arab origin, is later shot dead after a siege at his home.
March 25: Challenger Macky Sall is elected president of the west African state of Senegal, ousting veteran leader Abdoulaye Wade.
April 1: The democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi wins a seat in Myanmar's parliament, marking her return to open politics after some 22 years as a de facto political prisoner.
April 6: Tuareg and Islamist rebels who have seized much of northern Mali declare independence in the arid north African region.
April 12: Heavy fighting breaks out between Sudan and the newly-independent nation of South Sudan.
April 13: An attempt by North Korea to test a long-range missile fails, with the device disintegrating in mid-air.
April 14: The United Nations Security Council agrees to send observers to Syria.
April 15: Ceremonies in North America, Europe and the North Atlantic mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the ocean liner The Titanic.
April 18: Photos showing US soldiers urinating on the remains of rebels in Afghanistan cause a new upsurge in violence there.
April 20: All 127 people aboard a Pakistani passenger plane die when it crashes on trying to land near the capital Islamabad.
May 2: A version of Edvard Munch's painting "The Scream" sells for a record $119.9 million at Sotheby's in New York.
May 6: Socialist leader Francois Hollande is elected president of France, defeating the outgoing Nicolas Sarkozy. The Socialists go on to score a strong win in parliamentary elections.
May 6: An election in debt-stricken Greece strengthens both the far left and the far right, but no party is able to form a government.
May 18: The social networking site Facebook goes public on Wall Street, only to see its share price dive in subsequent weeks amid fears about its ability to collect advertising revenue from owners of mobile devices.
May 21: A suicide bomber blows himself up among troops in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, killing at least 96 and injuring hundreds.
May 30: A United Nations-backed court in the Netherlands sentences former Liberian president Charles Taylor to 50 years in jail for fuelling civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone.
May 31: Voters in Ireland approve a new European Union fiscal pact in a referendum.
June 2: A court in Cairo sentences the ousted Egyptian leader, Hosni Mubarak, to life in jail for ordering the deaths of protesters during the 'Arab spring' revolt of 2011.
June 3: All 153 people aboard a Nigerian airliner are killed, along with an unknown number on the ground, when the craft crashes onto a densely populated neighbourhood of Lagos.
June 5: The United States says a missile fired by one of its pilotless aircraft over Pakistan has killed al Qaeda's number-two leader, Abu Yahya al-Libi.
June 6: Astronomers world-wide get a once-in-a-lifetime chance to observe Venus track a near seven-hour path across the Sun.
June 12: The United Nations says the conflict in Syria, which is estimated to have killed over 14,000 people, has become a full-blown civil war.
June 17: Voting for the second time in only six weeks, Greeks give a working majority to parties willing to enact austerity policies. But both far left and far right groups make major gains.
June 19: Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, takes refuge in Ecuador's London embassy to avoid a Swedish extradition demand. A diplomatic stand-off ensues.
June 24: Mohamed Morsi, leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, is declared the winner of his country's presidential election. He calls for national unity.
June 28: The US Supreme Court upholds the validity of President Barack Obama's health care reform bill in the face of a challenge from conservatives.
July 1: Spain beats Italy 4-0 in Kiev to win the Euro 2012 football trophy.
July 1: A European Union embargo on Iranian oil comes into effect followed by new western sanctions in response to Tehran's nuclear activities.
July 3: After a seven-month crisis, Pakistan agrees to reopen supply routes across its territory for Nato forces fighting in Afghanistan.
July 4: Physicists say they have found a new sub-atomic particle consistent with the Higgs boson, which is believed to confer mass.
July 7: Voters cast ballots in Libya's first free national elections for decades after the ouster of dictator Moamer Kadhafi.
July 18: Three close military aides of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are killed in a Damascus bomb attack.
July 20: Amid market panic and massive social unrest, Spain wins an aid package to help its stricken economy.
July 20: A young man in a party disguise mingles with fans at the premiere of a Batman film in Los Angeles, then opens fire, killing 12 people and injuring 59.
July 23: A wave of attacks across Iraq leaves 111 people dead.
July 27: The summer Olympic Games open in London with a lavish ceremony.
August 5: Gunmen kill 16 guards on Egypt's side of the joint border with Israel. Three days later Egypt says its forces have killed 20 militants in the same region.
August 6: Curiosity, a nuclear-powered American-built robot, lands on the planet Mars and starts an ambitious exploration mission.
August 11: Earthquakes kill at least 180 people in north-western Iran.
August 16: The UN Security Council orders an end to its observer mission in Syria, where fighting has notably intensified in the city of Aleppo.
August 17: In South Africa, police shoot dead 34 striking miners at a platinum mine.
August 17: A Moscow court hands two-year jail sentences to three feminist punk rockers who ridiculed President Vladimir Putin in a Moscow cathedral.
August 24: The Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik is found sane and sentenced to 21 years in prison for killing 77 people in July 2011.
August 24: The US cycling champion Lance Armstrong, who has been shown to have used drugs to win his many victories, is stripped of his seven Tour de France titles.
August 25: US astronaut Neil Armstrong, who in 1969 became the first man to set foot on the moon, dies at age 82.
September 8-9: A wave of more than 30 attacks claimed by al Qaeda kills 88 people and wounds more than 400 across Iraq.
September 11: Anger explodes in several Muslim countries over a anti-Islam film. In the Libyan city of Benghazi, the US ambassador to Libya and three other Americans are killed when a mob attacks the US consulate.
September 14: The US-led coalition in Afghanistan loses eight soldiers during a co-ordinated attack on one of the largest Nato bases in the country.
September 21: The last of the 33,000 US soldiers that Obama sent to Afghanistan nearly three years ago as part of a military surge leave the country.
October 9: Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, a teenage children's rights activist, is shot in the head on her school bus by the Pakistani Taliban. She is later taken to Britain for treatment.
October 11-12: Mo Yan of China wins the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Peace Prize goes to the European Union.
October 14: Austrian Felix Baumgartner breaks several records by jumping with a parachute from the edge of space.
October 18: Colombia's government and the FARC rebel group begin peace talks in Norway.
October 29: A massive storm wreaks havoc from the Caribbean to Canada, killing more than 200, including 43 in and around New York.
November 4: Disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai is formally expelled from the ruling Communist Party, clearing the way for a criminal trial.
November 6: Obama wins election to a second term, beating Republican candidate Mitt Romney.
November 9: David Petraeus, head of the US Central Intelligence Agency, resigns over an extramarital affair.
November 14: Israel launches a military offensive against the Gaza Strip by killing a Hamas military chief. In a week of attacks at least 174 Palestinians are killed, and six Israelis die from Hamas rocket fire.
November 15: China's Communist Party unveils a new seven-man leadership council steered by Xi Jinping, succeeding President Hu Jintao.
November 20: Rebels in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo take control of the city of Goma. They pull back 10 days later.
November 27: The remains of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat are briefly disinterred in a bid to ascertain whether he was poisoned or died of natural causes.
November 28: In one of the deadliest days to date in the Syrian conflict, car bombings kill at least 54 civilians in a suburb of Damascus.
November 29: The UN General Assembly votes to upgrade the diplomatic status of Palestine. Israel hits back by deciding to build more Jewish settlements on the West Bank.
December 1: Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party is sworn in as the new president of Mexico.
December 4: A typhoon leaves 1,067 dead and more than 800 missing in the Philippines.
December 5: More mass unrest breaks out in Egypt after the new president, Morsi, attributes himself draconian powers.
December 7: A United Nations climate conference winds up in Qatar, with little progress made on fighting global warming.
December 12: North Korea successfully launches a long-range rocket provoking global condemnation.
December 14: A heavily armed gunman massacres more than two dozen people, including 20 young children, at a suburban Connecticut elementary school.
December 16: Japan's opposition conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) returns to power in national polls, amid a dispute with China over the sovereignty of a small chain of islands in the East China Sea.
December 21: Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti resigns, bringing to an end a technocrat government brought in to save Italy from the eurozone debt crisis, and triggering early elections.