A Brazilian citizen, Jean Charles de Menezes, is killed on the London underground by police mistaking him for a terrorist

US cyclist Lance Armstrong retires from competition after winning a seventh successive victory in the Tour de France

The Provisional IRA announces a formal end to armed conflict and orders units to dump all their weapons

Israel uses force to remove settlers who refuse to leave Gaza in accordance with Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan

Brokeback Mountain, directed by Ang Lee, is a sensitive account of a homosexual relationship between two Wyoming cowboys

Hurricane Katrina brings flooding and chaos to New Orleans and other coastal areas, causing more than 1500 deaths

In the New Zealand election Helen Clark wins a third term as prime minister

Controversial cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad are published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten

Just three years after the first attack, suicide bombers kill more than 25 people in the same Balinese town of Kuta

An earthquake kills more than 70,000 people in inaccessible regions near Muzaffarabad in the Pakistan part of Kashmir

Fliint tools from more than 800,000 years ago are discovered at Happisburgh in Norfolk, evidence of human habitation in Britain some 300,000 years earlier than previously thought

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad causes international outrage by describing Israel as a blot that should be 'wiped off the map'

The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, resigns from his party (Likud) with the intention of forming a new one (Kadima)

Angela Merkel, leader of the CDU, replaces Gerhard Schröder and becomes Germany's first woman chancellor

French surgeon Bernard Devauchelle and his team in Amiens carry out the first human face transplant

David Cameron wins the Tory leadership election, succeeding Michael Howard as the Leader of the Opposition in Britain

The first general election is held in Iraq, for 275 members of a permanent Iraqi General Assembly

Conceptual artist Simon Starling wins the Turner Prize with Shedboatshed, a shed which he turned into a boat, sailed down the Rhine and turned back into a boat again

Blackberry launches its first smartphones, including the BlackBerry 7730 with a colour screen

The Royal Shakespeare Company launches a unique Shakespeare festival, presenting in a single year all thirty plays, together with the long poems and sonnets

Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest nearly 20 years after winning Burma' only free election

Stephen Harper, leader of the Conservative Party, wins the federal election in Canada and forms a minority government

Yoweri Museveni wins his third term as president of Uganda, in an election result provoking riots by opposition supporters

Latin Americans in the USA stage the Great American Boycott, a day of non-cooperation to demand immigration reform

Warren Buffett pledges a multi-billion dollar grant to the Bill & Melina Gates Foundation, spread over the next 20 years