Vietnam News Agency (VNA) has released its selection of the ten most significant world events in 2010:
1. ASEAN’s strong development – Over the past year, ASEAN spared no efforts to implement its Community-building Roadmap and Charter, enhanced relations with partners, promoted cooperation for peace, security, sustainable development and effective response to global challenges, and strengthened solidarity, raising its status and ensuring ASEAN’s central role in the region.
2. Increasing tension in Northeast Asia – The sinking of the Republic of Korea (RoK)’s Cheonan naval ship on March 26 that killed 46 crew members and the artillery fire exchange between the two Koreas on Nov. 23, made the region and relations between the RoK and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) seriously tense. The events were considered as the most severe developments on the Korean peninsula since the cease-fire agreement was signed in 1953 – seriously tense.
3. WikiLeak’s revelation – WikiLeaks, a Sweden-registered website revealing sensitive news and government-level secrets, unveiled a series of leaks on US involvement in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and US internal diplomatic telegrams, shaking the world and raising major questions around national security capacity in the 21 st century era of digital technology.
4. Public debt crisis in Europe – A public debt crisis occurred in Greece, then spread to Ireland and is now threatening to engulf several European economies, affecting to the Eurozone. The European Union and the International Monetary Fund provided hundreds of billions of euro to prevent the crisis from spreading. Many economies in the region implemented austerity policies.
5. NATO strategy change – The summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in November adopted a new strategy to cope with non-traditional security issues and warm up the roadmap of troop withdrawals from Afghanistan after nearly 10 years of involvement without resolution of the conflict. Russia agreed with the NATO proposal to cooperate with the European missile shield system.
6. US completed the withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq – On August 19, US combat troops pulled out of Iraq after being present in the country for more than seven years in a war launched by the US to overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime. Costing 737 billion USD, the war claimed the lives of at least 4,413 US servicemen and caused injuries to 31,897 others.
7. Miraculous rescue saves 33 miners in Chile – After being trapped 700m underground in San Jose mine for 70 days, 33 Chilean miners were brought to the surface safe and sound thanks to tireless efforts made by rescuers with cutting-edge equipment.
8. Earthquake devastates Haitians – In 2010 the world suffered a great number of damaging disasters with the most horrific being an earthquake in Haiti. Reported as the strongest in the past 200 years, it claimed the lives of 230,000 Haitians. Also in the year, thousands of people lost their lives as earthquakes struck in Chile, volcano eruptions in Greece, Iceland, and Indonesia, and floods caused havoc in Asian countries.
9. BP oil rig explodes in the Gulf of Mexico – The explosion of BP’s drilling platform Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20 triggered the most damaging oil spill in US history. An estimated volume of 20 million gallons of crude oil was able to spew out of control into the sea, seriously affecting Louisiana delicate coastal ecosystem.
10. “Antimatter” atoms trapped – The European Nuclear Research Centre (CERN), the world’s largest particle physics lab, announced that they had trapped 38 antihydrogen atoms and kept them for 170ms – long enough to potentially study their properties. This breakthrough could help physicists develop a better understanding about the nature and origins of the universe. Scientists have believed that the Big Bang gave birth to the universe almost 14 billion years ago and equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created. Under this theory, antimatter is ordinary matter in reverse. When matching matter and antimatter particles meet they instantly annihilate each other in a tremendous outburst of energy./.
(VNA)
