The 'Rose Revolution' in Georgia forces the resignation of president Eduard Shevardnadze after rigged elections

Ian Paisley's hard-line Democratic Unionist Party wins in elections to the suspended Northern Ireland Assembly

Mikheil Saakashvili, the real winner of Georgia's November 2003 presidential election, has a resounding victory in the replay

Lord Hutton publishes his report into the circumstances leading up to the suicide of Dr David Kelly

Bombs explode simultaneously on several commuter trains in Madrid during the morning rush hour, killing 190 people

In Russia's presidential election Vladimir Putin easily wins a second term

The Annan UN plan for the reunification of Cyprus is approved by the Turkish community but rejected by the Greeks

Chechen terrorists take an entire school hostage, in Beslan in southern Russia, resulting in more than 300 deaths

Palestinian president Yasser Arafat dies in a hospital near Paris

Prime minister Viktor Yanukovych is at first declared winner of a rigged (and subsequently annulled) presidential election in Ukraine

Tests reveal that Viktor Yushchenko, opposition candidate in Ukraine's presidential election, has been poisoned with dyoxin

Armed robbers, suspected of links with the IRA, steal more than £25 million from the Northern Bank in Belfast

Opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko easily wins the re-run of the rigged presidential election in the Ukraine

John Paul II, dying after 26 years on the papal throne, is the third longest-serving pope in history

The Prince of Wales marries Camilla Parker Bowles, subsequently to be known as the Duchess of Cornwall

Joseph Ratzinger is elected pope and takes the name Benedict XVI

The superjumbo Airbus A380 makes its first test flight from Toulouse

Tony Blair wins the Labour party an unprecedented third successive term, but with a majority reduced from 167 to 66

The French people become the first to reject, in a referendum, the proposed European Constitution

Four English suicide bombers cause 52 deaths on London's transport system during the morning rush hour

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

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

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