President Obama's radical bill of health care reform is passed by a margin of seven votes in the House of Representatives and is signed into law two days later

Violent riots break out in Kyrgyzstan, causing the president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, to flee from the capital, Bishek

A plane carrying the president of Poland, Lech Kaczynski, and other high Polish officials crashes on the way to a commemoration of the Katyn massacre, killing all 96 people on board

Volcanic ash from Eyjafjallajökull, a volcano beneath a glacier in Iceland,disrupts northern Europe air traffic for several days

President Bakyev of Kyrgyzstan resigns and escapes into exile in Belarus

An explosion destroys BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig, killing eleven people and starting a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico

Greece is promised an EU and IMF bail-out package of 45 billion euros to cope with its high level of national debt

Greece's credit rating is downgraded by Standard & Poor to BB+ ('junk'), causing a run on global stock markets

Severe austerity measures in Greece persuade Germany to back an increased EU and IMF bail-out package of 110 billion euros

The UK general election results in no overall majority, with the Conservatives winning 306 seats, the Labour party 258 and the Libereral Democrats 57

Conservative leader David Cameron becomes UK prime minister, forming a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats and appointing Nick Clegg as his deputy prime minister

Geneticist Craig Venter announces that his team have inserted the genome of a bacterium into a cell to create the world's first synthetic life form

Israeli soldiers board an aid flotilla headed for Gaza and in the resulting violence kill nine Turkish activists on the Mavi Marmara

Ethnic violence against the Uzbek minority erupts in the Jalal-Abad region of Kyrgyzstan, lasting several days and resulting in more than 200 deaths

The Solar Impulse, promoted by Bertrand Piccard and piloted by André Borschberg, becomes the first solar-powered aircraft to fly for more than 24 hours

Spain beats the Netherlands 1-0 in the final of the FIFA World Cup in the Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg

BP announces that a newly fitted cap has finally stopped the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico

President Obama signs into law a sweeping and radical package of reforms in the control of the US financial sector

The website Wikileaks publlishes more than 90,000 classified internal reports about US involvement in Afghanistan since 2004

Disastrous monsoon floods strike northwest Pakistan, killing more than 1600 people, displacing as many as 20 million and ruining crops

US Federal estimates are that more than 200 million gallons of oil have spilled into the sea from the Deepwater Horizon disaster (the Exxon Valdez figure was 11 million)

Thirty-three miners are brought safely to the surface after being trapped deep underground for 69 days in the San José mine in Chile

Aung San Suu Kyi is released from house arrest in Rangoon under certain conditions

CERN announces its successful production and brief capture of atoms of antihydrogen, the first observed example of antimatter

North Korea shells the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong, causing four deaths and a dangerous deterioration in relations with South Korea