Significant events of the past decade

	Influential political figures of this decade
	Barack Obama: Elected as the first black President of the United States
Hugo Chavez	Hugo Chavez: Socialist President of Venezuela and persistent critic of the United States
	Fidel Castro: Cuban revolutionary and former prime minister who transferred his responsibilities to his younger brother in 2006
	Benazir Bhutto: former prime minister of Pakistan who was assassinated in 2007
Vladimir Putin What's the most important international story of the past decade? What's the most underrated film of the decade?	Vladimir Putin: former Russian president who is now his country’s Prime Minister
	Osama bin Laden: Leader of Al-Qaeda
	George W. Bush: Led the U.S. into the War on Terror and into a precipitous ecnomic decline.
	Tony Blair: Bush's staunch ally, suffered politically in Britain for his support of the U.S. invasion of Iraq
	Robert Mugabe: In 2000, the Zimbabwe president inaugurated a program of land redistribution whose effect was to evict white farmers and transfer their lands to his supporters. Mugabe rigged the 2002 election to ensure he remained president.
	Nicholas Sarkozy: The right-wing French president was elected in May 2007.
	Notable Scandals
	Eliot Spitzer: The governor of New York, resigned in the wake of news of his involvement in a high-priced prostitution ring in 2008
	Silvio Berlusconi: Italian Prime Minister and successful businessman and television pioneer, has endured a string of scandals from his alleged affairs to his numerous inaapropriate remarks, including recent comments about the colour of Barak Obama's skin
	Sen. John Edwards: The senator from North Carolina fathered a child from a former campaign worker even as his wife Elizabeth was fighting breast cancer
	The Sponsorship Scandal: Also known as AdScam. Members of the Liberal Party of Canada and political figures in Quebec were accused of misuse of funds after rumours about a fund that had been set up in the wake of the 1995 referendum on Quebec sovereignty to help promote federalism.
	Conflicts
	Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. terrorist attacks
	The Iraq war
	The Afghanistan war
	The 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks in 2008
	The Second Intifada of 2000 between Palestinian and Israeli forces
	Mexican Drug War, since 2006 violence has escalated between army forces and drug cartels
	The Somali Civil War
	Significant Events
	The 2000 U.S. presidential election, in which George W. Bush prevailed over Al Gore
	Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. terrorist attacks
	SARS strikes Toronto (2002)
	The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, which killed all seven crew members during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere over Texas (2003)
	The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed more than 300,000 people
	The death of Pope John Paul II in 2005
	The capture (2003) and execution (2006) of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein