Kgalema Motlanthe is elected temporary President of the Republic of South Africa after the resignation of Mbeki

The Dow Jones index suffers its largest one-day fall (777 points) when the US House of Representatives rejects President Bush's emergency package

Hurricane Hanna causes more than 500 deaths in Haiti before moving on west to the United States (where it kills 7)

US President Bush signs into law a $700 billion emergency fund to purchase failing bank assets

In the face of a major financial crisis the Icelandic government takes control of the country's three largest banks

A huge fire at Garrick's Villa does enormous damage to building and several flats are gutted

Democratic candidate Barack Obama defeats John McCain to become the first African-American to be elected President of the USA

A series of terrorist attacks on several targets in Mumbai result in nearly 200 deaths

Israel begins an intense series of airstrikes against targets in the Gaza Strip, in response to rockets launched by Hamas

Uri Lupolianski, ends his five-year term as the first mayor of Jerusalem from the powerful ultra-orthodox section of Israeli society

Included in the URBIS exhibition in Venice is a retrospective show of Gaspare Manos, displaying 150 works

Archaeologists from Tübingen discover the Hohle Fels Venus, about 38,000 years old and the earliest known figurative sculpture in Europe

HTC Dream is the first smartphone to use Android, an open-source platform devised by Andy Rubin and backed by Google

Israel escalates its war against Hamas by launching a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip

The pilot of US Airways Flight 1549 lands his plane on Manhattan's Hudson River with no loss of life among his 155 passengers and crew

Amid unprecedented international enthusiasm Barack Obama is inaugurated as the fourteenth President of the USA

Israel completes a military withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, nearly three weeks after launching its invasion of the territory

One of President Obama's first acts in office is to sign an order that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp is to be closed within a year (a promise that fails to be fulfilled)

The prime minister of Iceland, Geir Haarde, resigns after the collapse of his country's banking system

In the Icelandic crisis Johanna Siguroardottir becomes prime minister and forms a new government

Iran launches a satellite into orbit on an Iranian-built rocket

Morgan Tsvangirai becomes prime minister of Zimbabwe, six months after agreeing to share power with Robert Mugabe

President Obama, applying Keynesian economics, announces a massive stimulus package for the US economy (its eventual cost turns out to be $862 bn)

The International Criminal Court in the Hague issues a warrant for the arrest of the Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir, on a charge of war crimes

Peru's Supreme Court finds Alberto Fujimori guilty of authorizing death squads and sentences him to 25 years in prison