A month by month glance at 2007
January
Romania and Bulgaria's accession expands EU to
27.
Following Ethiopian invasion in late 2006, Somalia's leader enters Mogadishu for the first time since assuming "control" in 2004; US gunships strike at suspected al-Qaeda operatives.
Archbishop of Warsaw resigns, admitting to Soviet-era collaboration.
President Bush announces Iraq US troops "surge".
Democrat -dominated Congress opposes in non-binding resolutions. Daniel Ortega returns to power in Nicaragua. Turkish- Armenian journalist Hrant Dink shot dead in Istanbul.
February
Indonesian floods, 340,000 homeless.
Hamas and Fatah reach a deal in Mecca to stop escalating fighting and form a unity government, which the US determines to boycott.
North Korea agrees to dismantle nuclear facilities and allow international inspections in exchange for oil and aid.
March
UN Security Council unanimously bans weapons sales
to Iran and freezes assets of key Iranians to push Tehran into
suspending uranium enrichment.
Arab leaders offer to normalise relations with Israel if it withdraws to 1967 borders, allows Palestinian refugees right to return, and agrees to a Palestinian state.
Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai hospitalised after a beating during arrest at rally.
April
Fifteen British sailors who were captured by Iran in
disputed Gulf waters are freed. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says his
country has the ability to enrich uranium on an industrial
scale.
Nigeria's presidential election giving the ruling party candidate a landslide is "deeply flawed", say international observers.
Israeli PM Ehud Olmert's judgment is censured by a commission on the 2006 Lebanon war.
A male student kills 33, including himself, at a school in Virginia, the most deadly such shooting in US history.
May
Bush vetoes Iraq and Afghanistan troop withdrawals
in spending Bill.
In Scotland SNP leader Alex Salmond becomes first minister.
Nicolas Sarkozy defeats Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal, replacing Jacques Chirac as French president.
Paul Wolfowitz resigns as head of the World Bank in scandal over a pay rise for his girlfriend.
In Lebanon, dozens killed in battles between troops and militants in a Palestinian refugee camp.
US and Iran end a 27-year diplomatic rupture with talks on Iraq in Baghdad.
A Serbian court convicts 12 Serbs in the 2003 assassination of reformist PM Zoran Djindjic.
June
President Putin proposes a joint missile shield with
the US at G8 summit in Germany; summit is widely criticised after
agreeing to Bush plan to allow the world's top polluters set their
own emissions goals.
Hamas takes control of the Gaza Strip after weeks of fighting; in West Bank President Mahmoud Abbas swears in emergency government; US and EU announce they will resume aid but not to Gaza. In the Iraq war, the revered Shia Askariya mosque at Samarra is again bombed; Shias blow up two Sunni mosques in retaliation; "Chemical Ali" and others are convicted for the murder of 50,000 Kurds in 1988.
Five UN peacekeepers killed in southern Lebanon.
Gordon Brown takes over from Tony Blair as UK PM.
July
British police arrest Glasgow/London bomb
suspects.
Kidnapped BBC correspondent Alan Johnston freed in Gaza.
Troops storm Islamabad's Red Mosque ending a bloody stand-off with Islamists and kill dozens.
Bush commutes Lewis "Scooter" Libby's jail sentence.
Putin announces that Russia will suspend participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty.
Pakistan's supreme court reinstates chief justice Iftikar Muhammad Chaudhry, whose sacking caused riots in Karachi and 39 killings in May.
Ruling Justice and Development Party prevails in Turkish elections.
UN Security Council votes unanimously to spend a record $2bn deploying 26,000 Darfur peacekeepers.
Libya frees six Bulgarian medics and a Palestinian doctor accused of infecting children with the HIV virus, after talks involving the EU.
August
In the single deadliest insurgent attack of the Iraq
war, truck bombs kill at least 500 members of the Yazidi
community.
India celebrates 60 years of independence.
An earthquake in Peru kills at least 500.
Hurricane Dean hits the Caribbean.
Bush loses his battle to retain his attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, after months of pressure.
Ex-Islamist Abdullah Gul sworn in as Turkish president.
September
Bush says by July 2008 Iraq troop levels could drop
to 130,000, endorsing a report by Gen David Petraeus.
Parents of missing four-year-old Madeleine McCann considered suspects by Portuguese police.
Bin Laden, in his first video broadcast in almost three years, promises to "continue to escalate the killing in Iraq".
Former Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif deported after trying to re-enter Pakistan; he returns in November.
In Burma, after a month of peaceful demonstrations, troops shoot at crowds, raid pagodas, arrest hundreds of monks, killing dozens.
After a furore over the killing of 17 Iraqis by members of security firm Blackwater USA, Washington decides the military will supervise all security convoys by contractors.
In Japan, Yasuo Fukuda replaces Shinzo Abe as PM.
October
Pervez Musharraf is re-elected president by
Pakistan's national and provincial assemblies, as the opposition
boycotts voting.
Gordon Brown announces that half of the 5,000 British troops in Basra will be removed by 2009.
Turkey recalls its ambassador after a US Congress committee recognises as "genocide" the mass killings of Armenians by Turks in 1915 and 1916. Turkey's parliament authorises incursions into northern Iraq to deal with Kurdish rebel attacks.
EU leaders agree reform treaty after Italian and Polish objections are overcome.
Returning former Pakistani PM Benazir Bhutto survives attack that kills at least 135 people.
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is elected Argentina's first woman president.
Al Gore, who in March warned of a "planetary emergency", shares Nobel Peace Prize with the UN climate panel.
NGOs say African wars cost $300 billion in lost development in the 15 years to 2005.
Poland's PM Jaroslaw Kaczynski ousted by Donald Tusk.
Three men found guilty of the 2004 Madrid train bombings, which killed 191.
Bush asks Congress to authorise an additional $46 billion in emergency spending for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Wildfires devastate southern California.
November
Sarkozy secures release of seven Europeans held in
Chad over a French charity's attempt to illegally take African
children to Europe.
Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili declares emergency after opposition protests but announces presidential elections for January.
US releases two of five Iranians held since January.
Commonwealth suspends Pakistan but, after promising January 8th elections, Gen Musharraf promises to end state of emergency, stands down as army chief and is sworn in as civilian president. 5,000 opponents have been arrested, chief justice Chaudhry placed under house arrest and lawyers continue violent street protests.
Following the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's final report saying evidence is now "unequivocal", UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon calls on the US and China to play a more constructive role.
Mexico's Tabasco state hit by severe flooding. Floods devastate Bangladesh killing many hundreds.
Environmentalists celebrate Canada's decision to protect 25 million acres of wilderness.
Conservative PM John Howard defeated in Australia.
At a Maryland summit in Annapolis, from which Hamas is excluded, Israeli and Palestinian leaders agree to start comprehensive negotiations on a two-state solution.
December
Arrested British teacher freed in Sudan after
allowing pupils to name teddy Muhammad.
Putin names successor, who proposes Putin as prime minister, after disputed elections.
In spite of a major US intelligence report saying Iran stopped developing nuclear weapons in 2003 Bush says Tehran is still a threat.
Venezuelan referendum proposing an end to presidential term-limits defeated.
Brown boycotts EU/Africa summit because of attendance of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe.
EU leaders sign Lisbon Treaty; in Brussels they pledge to concentrate on practical challenges facing citizens such as global warming..
Proposal to send a police mission to Kosovo angers Belgrade, which again rules out independence.
White House has "serious concerns" about the deal agreed at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali and which they signed.
Musharraf ends emergency.
Britain hands over in Basra.
Jacob Zuma wins ANC leadership from Thabo Mbeki.
Fidel Castro intimates he may retire.
Millions attend Hajj in Mecca.
Pro-business candidate wins landslide in South Korea.
In spite of "surge" American deaths in Iraq reach 893 - the highest annual total of the war.