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The 2000s, pronounced "two thousands", was a decade that began on January 1, 2000, and ended on December 31, 2009.

The decade generally continued the technological and socioeconomic changes that started in the 1980s and accelerated in the 1990s. Globalization had accelerated in the 1990s after the fall of Communism and continued to be a force in the 2000s. Geopolitically, the century opened with the United States enjoying an economic peak that bestowed hegemonic political and military preeminence.

The growth of the Internet was one of the prime contributors to globalization during the decade, making it possible for people to interact with other people, express ideas, introduce others to different cultures and backgrounds, use goods and services, sell and buy online, and research and learn.

Although Islamist attacks date back to the 1983 United States embassy bombing, the September 11 attacks in 2001 led to the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Canada, and other nations invading Afghanistan, as well as implementing various anti-terrorist measures at home and abroad in what was known as the War on Terror. The European Union saw further integration and expansion throughout much of Europe.

The economic growth of the 2000s had considerable environmental consequences, raised demand for diminishing energy resources, and was still shown to be vulnerable as demonstrated during the Global Financial Crisis of the late 2000s.

Names for the decade

In the English-speaking world, a name for the decade was never universally accepted in the same manner as for decades such as the '80s, the '90s, etc.

Orthographically, the decade can be written as the "2000s" or the "'00s". Some people read "2000s" as "two-thousands", and thus simply refer to the decade as the "Two-Thousands", the "Twenty Hundreds", or the "Twenty-ohs". Some read it as the "00s" (pronounced "Ohs", "Oh Ohs", "Double Ohs" or "Ooze"), while others referred to it as the "Zeros". The single years within the decade are usually referred to as starting with an "Oh", such as "Oh-Seven" to refer to the year 2007. On January 1, 2000, the BBC listed the noughties (derived from "nought" a word used for zero in many English-speaking countries), as a potential moniker for the new decade. This has become a common name for the decade in the UK and Australia, as well as other Anglospheric countries.

Others have advocated the term "the aughts", a term widely used at the beginning of the 20th century for its first decade. The American Dialect Society holds a lighthearted annual poll for word of the year and related subcategories. For 2009, the winner in the "least likely to succeed" category was "Any name of the decade 2000–2009, such as: Naughties, Aughties, Oughties, etc."

Politics and wars

The War on Terror and War in Afghanistan began after the September 11 attacks in 2001. The International Criminal Court was formed in 2002. A United States-led coalition invaded Iraq, and the Iraq war led to the end of Saddam Hussein's rule as Iraqi President and the Ba'ath Party in Iraq. Al-Qaeda and affiliated Islamist militant groups performed terrorist acts throughout the decade. These acts included the 2004 Madrid train bombings, 7/7 London bombings in 2005, and the Mumbai attacks related to al-Qaeda in 2008. The European Union expanded its sanctions amid Iran's failure to comply with its transparency obligations under the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty and UN resolutions.

The War on Terror generated extreme controversy around the world, with questions regarding the justification for U.S. actions leading to a loss of support for the American government, both in and outside the United States. Additional armed conflict occurred in the Middle East, including between Israel and Hezbollah, then with Israel and the Hamas. The greatest loss of life due to natural disaster came from the 2004 tsunami, killing around a quarter-million people and displacing well over a million others. Cooperative international rescue missions by many countries from around the world helped in efforts by the most affected nations to rebuild and recover from the devastation. An enormous loss of life and property value came in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina flooded nearly the entire city of New Orleans. The resulting political fallout was severely damaging to the George W. Bush administration because of its perceived failure to act promptly and effectively. In 2008, Barack Obama was elected President of the United States and became the first African-American U.S. president when he succeeded Bush in 2009.

Terrorist attacks

The most prominent terrorist attacks committed against civilian population during the decade include:

• 2001, September 11 attacks in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pennsylvania (2,996 killed)
• 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States (5 killed, 17 infected)
• 2002 Bali bombings in Bali, Indonesia (202 killed)
• 2003 Istanbul bombings in Istanbul, Turkey (57 killed)
• 2004 Madrid train bombings (192 killed)
• 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis (334 killed)
• 2005 London bombings (56 killed)
• 2007 Yazidi communities bombings (796 killed)
• 2008 Mumbai attacks (175 killed)

Wars

The most prominent armed conflicts of the decade include:

International wars

• War on Terror (2001–present) – refers to several ideological, military, and diplomatic campaigns aimed at putting an end to international terrorism by preventing groups defined by the U.S. and its allies as terrorist (largely Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas) from posing a threat to the U.S. and its allies, and by putting an end to state sponsorship of terrorism. The campaigns were launched by the United States, with support from NATO and other allies, following the September 11, 2001 attacks that were carried out by al-Qaeda. Today the term has become mostly associated with Bush administration-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
  • War in Afghanistan (2001–present) – In 2001, the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, Canada and Australia invaded Afghanistan seeking to oust the Taliban and find al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden. In 2011, the US government claimed Navy Seals had killed Bin Laden and buried his body at sea. Fatalities of coalition troops: 1,553 (2001 to 2009).
  • Iraq War (2003–2011) – In 2003, the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, Australia and Poland invaded and occupied Iraq. Claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at its disposal were later found to be unproven. The war, which ended the rule of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, also led to violence against the coalition forces and between many Sunni and Shia Iraqi groups, and to al-Qaeda operations in Iraq. Casualties of the Iraq War: 110,600 violent deaths, March 2003 to April 2009. Saddam was eventually sentenced to death and hanged on December 30, 2006.

• Arab–Israeli conflict (Early 20th century–present)
  • 2006 Lebanon War (summer 2006) – took place in southern Lebanon and northern Israel. The principal parties were Hezbollah paramilitary forces and the Israeli military. The war that began as military operation in response to the abduction of two Israeli reserve soldiers by the Hezbollah, gradually strengthened and became a wider confrontation.
  • Israeli–Palestinian conflict (Early 20th century–present)
    • Second Intifada (2000–2005) – After the signing of the Oslo Accords failed to bring about a Palestinian state, in September 2000 the Second Intifada (uprising) broke out, a period of intensified Palestinian-Israeli violence, which has been taking place until the present day. As a result of the significant increase of suicide bombing attacks within Israeli population centers during the first years of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, in June 2002 Israel began the construction of the West Bank Fence along the Green Line border arguing that the barrier is necessary to protect Israeli civilians from Palestinian terrorism. The significantly reduced number of incidents of suicide bombings from 2002 to 2005 has been partly attributed to the barrier. The barrier's construction, which has been highly controversial, became a major issue of contention between the two sides. The Second Intifada has caused thousands of victims on both sides, both among combatants and among civilians – The death toll, including both military and civilian, is estimated to be 5,500 Palestinians and over 1,000 Israelis, as well as 64 foreign citizens. Many Palestinians consider the Second Intifada to be a legitimate war of national liberation against foreign occupation, whereas many Israelis consider it to be a terrorist campaign.
    • 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict – the frequent Hamas Qassam rocket and mortar fire launched from within civilian population centers in Gaza towards the Israeli southern civilian communities led to an Israeli military operation in Gaza, which had the stated aim of reducing the Hamas rocket attacks and stopping the arms smuggling into the Gaza Strip. Throughout the conflict Hamas further intensified its rocket and mortar attacks against Israel, hitting civilian targets and reaching major Israeli cities Beersheba and Ashdod for the first time. The intense urban warfare in densely populated Gaza combined with the use of heavy firepower by the Israeli side and the intensified Hamas rocket attacks towards populated Israeli civilian targets led to a high toll on the Palestinian side and among civilians.

• The Second Congo War (1998–2003) – took place largely in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The widest interstate war in modern African history, it directly involved nine African nations, as well as about twenty armed groups, and earned the epithet of "Africa's World War" and the "Great War of Africa." An estimated 3.8 million people died, mostly from starvation and disease brought about by the deadliest conflict since World War II. Millions more were displaced from their homes or sought asylum in neighboring countries.
• 2008 South Ossetia war – Russia invaded Georgia in response to Georgian aggression towards civilians and attack on South Ossetia. Both Russia and Georgia were condemned internationally for their actions.
• The Second Chechen War (1999–2000) – the war was launched by the Russian Federation on August 26, 1999 in response to the Invasion of Dagestan and the Russian apartment bombings, which were blamed on the Chechens. During the war Russian forces largely recaptured the separatist region of Chechnya. The campaign largely reversed the outcome of the First Chechen War, in which the region gained de facto independence as the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.
• The Eritrean–Ethiopian War came to a close in 2000.
• Kivu conflict (2004–2009) – an armed conflict between the military of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC) and the Hutu Power group Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).
• 2009 Nigerian sectarian violence – an armed conflict between Boko Haram, a militant Islamist group and Nigerian security forces.

Civil wars and guerrilla wars

• War in Darfur (2003–2009) – an armed conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan. The conflict began when the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) in Darfur took up arms, accusing the government of oppressing black Africans in favor of Arabs. One side was composed mainly of the Sudanese military and the Sudanese militia group Janjaweed, recruited mostly from the Afro-Arab Abbala tribes of the northern Rizeigat region in Sudan. The other side was made up of rebel groups, notably the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, recruited primarily from the non-Arab Muslim Fur, Zaghawa, and Masalit ethnic groups. Millions of people were displaced from their homes during the conflict. There are various estimates on the number of human casualties – Sudanese authorities claim a death toll of roughly 19,500 civilians while certain non-governmental organizations, such as the Coalition for International Justice, controversially claim that over 400,000 people have been killed during the conflict.
• Mexican Drug War (2006 – present) – an armed conflict fought between rival drug cartels and government forces in Mexico. Although Mexican drug cartels, or drug trafficking organizations, have existed for quite some time, they have become more powerful since the demise of Colombia's Cali and Medellín cartels in the 1990s. Mexican drug cartels now dominate the wholesale illicit drug market in the United States. Arrests of key cartel leaders, particularly in the Tijuana and Gulf cartels, have led to increasing drug violence as cartels fight for control of the trafficking routes into the United States. Roughly more than 16,851 people in total were killed between December 2006 until November 2009.

• In India, Naxalite–Maoist insurgency (1967– present) has grown alarmingly with attacks such as April 2010 Maoist attack in Dantewada, Jnaneswari Express train derailment, and Rafiganj train disaster. Naxalites are a group of far-left radical communists, supportive of Maoist political sentiment and ideology. It is presently the longest continuously active conflict worldwide. In 2006 Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called the Naxalites "The single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by our country." In 2009, he said the country was "losing the battle against Maoist rebels". According to standard definitions the Naxalite–Maoist insurgency is an ongoing conflict between Maoist groups, known as Naxalites or Naxals, and the Indian government. On April 6, 2010, Maoist rebels killed 75 security forces in a jungle ambush in central India in the worst-ever massacre of security forces by the insurgents. On the same day, Gopal, a top Maoist leader, said the attack was a "direct consequence" of the government's Operation Green Hunt offensive. This raised some voices of use of Indian Air Force against Naxalites, which were however declined citing "We can't use oppressive force against our own people".
• The Colombian Armed Conflict continues causing deaths and terror in Colombia. Beginning in 1964, the FARC and ELN narcoterrorist groups were taking control of rural areas of the country by the beginning of the decade, while terrorist paramilitaries grew in other places as businesspeople and politicians thought the State would lose the war against guerrillas. However, after the failure of the peace process and the activation of Plan Colombia, Álvaro Uribe Vélez was elected President in 2002, starting a massive attack on terrorist groups, with cooperation from civil population, foreign aid and legal armed forces. The AUC paramilitary organization disbanded in 2006, while ELN guerrillas have been weakened. The Popular Liberation Army demobilized while the country's biggest terrorist group, FARC has been weakened and most of their top commanders have been killed or died during the decade. During the second half of the decade, a new criminal band has been formed by former members of AUC who did not demobilize, calling themselves Aguilas Negras. Although the Colombian State has taken back control over most of the country, narcoterrorism still causes pain in the country. Since 2008, the Internet has become a new field of battle. Facebook has gained nationwide popularity and has become the birthplace of many civil movements against narcoterrorism such as "Colombia Soy Yo" (I am Colombia) or "Fundación Un Millón de Voces" (One Million Voices Foundation), responsible for the international protests against illegal groups during the last years.
• The Sierra Leone Civil War (1991–2002) came to an end when the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) finally laid down their arms. More than two million people were displaced from their homes because of the conflict (well over one-third of the population) many of whom became refugees in neighboring countries. Tens of thousands were killed during the conflict.
• The Sri Lankan Civil War (1983–2009) came to an end after the government defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Over 80,000 people were killed during the course of the conflict.
• War in North-West Pakistan (2004–present) – an armed conflict between the Pakistani Armed Forces and Islamic militants made up of local tribesmen, the Taliban, and foreign Mujahideen (Holy Warriors). It began in 2004 when tensions rooted in the Pakistani Army's search for al-Qaeda members in Pakistan's mountainous Waziristan area (in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas) escalated into armed resistance by local tribesmen. The violence has displaced 3.44 million civilians and led to more than 7,000 civilians being killed.
• The Angolan Civil War (1975–2002), once a major proxy conflict of the Cold War, the conflict ended after the anti-Communist organization UNITA disbanded to become a political party. By the time the 27-year conflict was formally brought to an end, an estimated 500,000 people had been killed.
• Sa'dah insurgency (2004 – present) – a civil war in the Sa'dah Governorate of Yemen. It began after the Shī‘a Zaidiyyah sect launched an uprising against the Yemeni government. The Yemeni government has accused Iran of directing and financing the insurgency. Thousands of rebels and civilians have been killed during the conflict.
• Somali Civil War (1991–present)
  • War in Somalia (2006–2009) – involved largely Ethiopian and Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) forces whom fought against the Somali Islamist umbrella group, the Islamic Court Union (ICU), and other affiliated militias for control of the country. The war spawned pirates who hijacked hundreds of ships off the coast of Somalia, holding ships and crew for ransom often for months (see also Piracy in Somalia). 1.9 million people were displaced from their homes during the conflict and the number of civilian casualties during the conflict is estimated at 16,724.
  • War in Somalia (2009 – present) – involved largely the forces of the Somali Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) assisted by African Union peacekeeping troops, whom fought against various militant Islamist factions for control of the country. The violence has displaced thousands of people residing in Mogadishu, the nation's capital. 1,739 people in total were killed between January 1, 2009 until January 1, 2010.
• Conflict in the Niger Delta (2004 – present) – an ongoing conflict in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. The conflict was caused due to the tensions between the foreign oil corporations and a number of the Niger Delta's minority ethnic groups who felt they were being exploited, particularly the Ogoni and the Ijaw. The competition for oil wealth has led to an endless violence cycle between innumerable ethnic groups, causing the militarization of nearly the entire region that was occupied by militia groups as well as Nigerian military and the forces of the Nigerian Police.
• Algerian Civil War (1991–2002) – the conflict effectively ended with a government victory, following the surrender of the Islamic Salvation Army and the 2002 defeat of the Armed Islamic Group. It is estimated that more than 100,000 people were killed during the course of the conflict.
• Civil war in Chad (1998–present)
  • Civil war in Chad (1998–2002) – involved the Movement for Justice and Democracy in Chad (MDJT) rebels that skirmished periodically with government troops in the Tibesti region, resulting in hundreds of civilian, government, and rebel casualties.
  • Civil war in Chad (2005–present) – involved Chadian government forces and several Chadian rebel groups. The Government of Chad estimated in January 2006 that 614 Chadian citizens had been killed in cross-border raids. The fighting still continues despite several attempts to reach agreements.

• Nepalese Civil War (1996–2006) – the conflict ended with a peace agreement was reached between the government and the Maoist party in which it was set that the Maoists would take part in the new government in return for surrendering their weapons to the UN. It is estimated that more than 12,700 people were killed during the course of the conflict.
• Second Liberian Civil War (1999–2003) – The conflict began in 1999 when a rebel group Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), with support from the Government of Guinea, took over northern Liberia through a coup. In early 2003, a different rebel group, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia, emerged in the south. As a result, by June–July 2003, president Charles Taylor's government controlled only a third of the country. The capital Monrovia was besieged by LURD, and that group's shelling of the city resulted in the deaths of many civilians. Thousands of people were displaced from their homes as a result of the conflict.
• Insurgency in the Maghreb (2002–present) – Algeria has been the subject of an Islamic insurgency since 2002 waged by the Sunni Islamic Jihadist militant group Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC). GSPC allied itself with the Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb against the Algerian government. The conflict has since spread to other neighboring countries.
• Ituri conflict (1999–2007) – a conflict fought between the Lendu and Hema ethnic groups in the Ituri region of northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). While there have been many phases to the conflict, the most recent armed clashes ran from 1999 to 2003, with a low-level conflict continuing until 2007. More than 50,000 people have been killed in the conflict and hundreds of thousands forced from their homes.
• Central African Republic Bush War (2004–2007) – began with the rebellion by the Union of Democratic Forces for Unity (UFDR) rebels, after the current president of the Central African Republic, François Bozizé, seized power in a 2003 coup. The violence has displaced around 10,000 civilians and has led to hundreds of civilians being killed.
• Civil war in Afghanistan (1996–2001) – an armed conflict that continued after the capture of Kabul by the Taliban, in which the formation of the Afghan Northern Alliance attempted to oust the Taliban. It proved largely unsuccessful, as the Taliban continued to make gains and eliminated much of the Alliance's leadership.

Coups

The most prominent coups d'état of the decade include:

• 2000 overthrow of Slobodan Milošević in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia - after Slobodan Milošević was accused by opposition figures of winning the 2000 election through electoral fraud, mass protests led by the opposition movement Otpor pressure Slobodan Milošević to resign. Milošević was later arrested in 2001 and sent to the Hague to face war crimes charges for his alleged involvement in war crimes of the Yugoslav Wars.
• 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt – a failed military coup d'état on April 11, 2002, which aimed to overthrow the president of Venezuela Hugo Chávez. During the coup Hugo Chávez was arrested and Pedro Carmona became the interim President for 47 hours. The coup led to a pro-Chávez uprising that the Metropolitan Police attempted to suppress. The pro-Chávez Presidential Guard eventually retook the Miraflores presidential palace without firing a shot, leading to the collapse of the Carmona government.
• 2004 Haitian coup d'état – a conflict fought for several weeks in Haiti during February 2004 that resulted in the premature end of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's second term, and the installment of an interim government led by Gérard Latortue.
• 2006 Thai coup d'état – on September 19, 2006, while the elected Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was in New York for a meeting of the UN, Army Commander-in-Chief Lieutenant General Sonthi Boonyaratglin launched a bloodless coup d'état.
• Fatah–Hamas conflict (2006–2009) – an armed conflict fought between the two main Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas with each vying to assume political control of the Palestinian territories. In June 2007, Hamas took control of the entire Gaza Strip, and established a separate government while Fatah remained in control of the West Bank. This in practice divided the Palestinian Authority into two. Various forces affiliated with Fatah engaged in combat with Hamas, in numerous gun battles. Most Fatah leaders eventually escaped to Egypt and the West Bank, while some were captured and killed.
• 2009 Honduras coup d'état – The armed forces of the country entered the president's residence and overthrew president Manuel Zelaya

Nuclear threats

• Since 2005, Iran's nuclear program has become the subject of contention with the Western world due to suspicions that Iran could divert the civilian nuclear technology to a weapons program. This has led the UN Security Council to impose sanctions against Iran on select companies linked to this program, thus furthering its economic isolation on the international scene. The U.S. Director of National Intelligence said in February 2009 that Iran would not realistically be able to a get a nuclear weapon until 2013, if it chose to develop one.
• In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq over concerns leader Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction including chemical and biological weapons. The Iraq Inquiry may explain more on this situation, but in the meantime, the U.S. ended the regime of Saddam Hussein. However a lot of controversy rages around the fact that no evidence of any nuclear programs has been found in Iraq, leading some to believe that the Bush administration declared war simply to gain influence over Middle-Eastern oil supplies.
• North Korea successfully performed two nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.
• Operation Orchard – during the operation, Israel bombed what was believed to be a Syrian nuclear reactor on September 6, 2007 which was thought to be built with the aid of North Korea. The White House and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) later declared that American intelligence indicated the site was a nuclear facility with a military purpose, though Syria denies this.
• The Doomsday Clock, the symbolic representation of the threat of nuclear annihilation, moved four minutes closer to midnight: two minutes in 2002 and two minutes in 2007 to 5 minutes to midnight.

National sovereignty

• East Timor regains independence from Indonesia in 2002. Portugal granted independence to East Timor in 1975, but it was soon after invaded by Indonesia, which only recognized East Timorese independence in 2002.
• Montenegro gains independence from State union with Serbia in 2006
• Kosovo gains independence from Serbia in 2008, though its independence remains unrecognized by many countries even today.
• On August 23, 2005, Israel's unilateral disengagement from 25 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and West Bank ends.
• On August 26, 2008 Russia formally recognises the disputed Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states. The vast majority of United Nations member states maintain that the areas belong to Georgia.

Democracy

During this decade, the peaceful transfer of power through elections first occurred in Mexico, Indonesia, Taiwan, Colombia, and several other countries. (See below.)

Political events

The prominent political events of the decade include:

Americas

• Vicente Fox was elected President of Mexico in the 2000 presidential election, making him the first president elected from an opposition party in 71 years, defeating the then-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
• George W. Bush was sworn in as the 43rd President of the United States on January 20, 2001 following a sharply contested election.
• On October 26, 2001 U.S. President George W. Bush signs the USA PATRIOT Act into law.
• On February 15, 2003 anti-war protests (which completely failed ) broke out around the world in opposition to the U.S. Invasion of Iraq, in what the Guinness Book of World Records called the largest anti-war rally in human history. In reaction, New York Times writer Patrick Tyler wrote in a February 17 article that: ...the huge anti-war demonstrations around the world this weekend are reminders that there may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion.
• On June 5, 2004, Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States, died after having suffered from Alzheimer's disease for nearly a decade. His seven-day state funeral followed, spanning June 5–11. The general public stood in long lines waiting for a turn to pay their respects. People passed by the casket at a rate of about 5,000 per hour (83.3 per minute resp. 1.4 per second) and the wait time was about three hours. In all, 104,684 passed through when Reagan lay in state.
• Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th President of the United States in 2009, becoming the nation's first biracial president.
• Álvaro Uribe is elected President of Colombia in 2002, the first political independent to do so in more than a century and a half. creating the centre-right political movement known as uribism. Uribe was re-elected in 2006.
• In 2006, Michele Bachelet is elected as the first female President of Chile.
• Left-wing governments emerge in South American countries. These governments include those of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela since 1999, Fernando Lugo in Paraguay, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, and Evo Morales in Bolivia. With the creation of the ALBA, Fidel Castro—leader of Cuba since 1959—and Hugo Chávez reaffirmed their opposition to the perceived imperialism of the United States.
• Paul Martin replaces Jean Chrétien as Prime Minister of Canada in 2003 by becoming the new leader of the Liberal Party. Stephen Harper was elected Prime Minister in 2006 following the defeat of Paul Martin's government in a motion of no confidence.
• Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected (2002) and reelected (2006) President of Brazil.
• May 23, 2008 – The Union of South American Nations, a supranational union, is made from joining together the Andean Community and Mercosur.

Asia

• On May 18, 2000, Chen Shui-bian was elected to be the president of Taiwan, ending the half-century rule of the KMT on the island, and became the first president of the DPP.
• Israeli withdrawal from the Israeli security zone in southern Lebanon – on May 25, 2000 Israel withdrew IDF forces from the Israeli Security Zone in southern Lebanon after 22 years.

• In July 2000 the Camp David 2000 Summit was held which was aimed at reaching a "final status" agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis. The summit collapsed after Yasser Arafat would not accept a proposal drafted by American and Israeli negotiators. Barak was prepared to offer the entire Gaza Strip, a Palestinian capital in a part of East Jerusalem, 73% of the West Bank (excluding eastern Jerusalem) raising to 90–94% after 10–25 years, and financial reparations for Palestinian refugees for peace. Arafat turned down the offer without making a counter-offer.
• January 4, 2006 – Powers are transferred from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to his deputy, Vice Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, after Sharon suffers a massive hemorrhagic stroke.
• 2007 – Nepal transforms into the newest democratic state in the world after centuries old monarch is overthrown on 15 January 2007.

• In 2003 the 12-year self-government in Iraqi Kurdistan ends, developed under the protection of the UN "No-fly zone" during the now-ousted Saddam Hussein regime.
• CPC General Secretary, President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, replaced former People's Republic of China leaders Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji.
• Manmohan Singh was elected (2004) and reelected (2009) Prime Minister in India. He is the only Prime Minister since Jawaharlal Nehru to return to power after completing a full five-year term. Singh previously carried out economic reforms in India in 1991, during his tenure as the Finance Minister.
• Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was elected as Prime Minister of Turkey in 2002. Abdullah Gül was elected as President of Turkey.
• 2007 political crisis in Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf retired after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto
• January 9, 2005 – Mahmoud Abbas is elected to succeed Yasser Arafat as Palestinian Authority President.
• 2008 – Nepal becomes the youngest republic of the world by transforming from a constitutional monarchy to a socialist republic on May 28. 2008.
• 2008–10 Thai political crisis
• 2009 Iranian election protests – The 2009 Iranian presidential election sparked massive protests in Iran and around the world against alleged electoral fraud and in support of defeated candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi. During the protests the Iranian authorities closed universities in Tehran, blocked web sites, blocked cell phone transmissions and text messaging, and banned rallies. Several demonstrators in Iran were killed or imprisoned during the protests. Dozens of human casualties were reported or confirmed.

Europe

• The Mayor of London is an elected politician who, along with the London Assembly of 25 members, is accountable for the strategic government of Greater London. The role, created in 2000 after the London devolution referendum, was the first directly elected mayor in the United Kingdom.
• The Netherlands becomes the first country in the world to fully legalize same-sex marriage on April 1st, 2001.
• 1–4 June 2002 - The Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II was the international celebration marking the 50th anniversary of the accession of Elizabeth II to the thrones of seven countries.
• European integration makes progress with the definitive circulation of the euro in twelve countries in 2002 and the widening of European Union to 27 countries in 2007. A European Constitution bill is rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005, but a similar text, the Treaty of Lisbon, is drafted in 2007 and finally adopted by the 27 members countries.
• Gordon Brown succeeds Tony Blair as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 2007.
• Tony Blair was officially confirmed as Middle East envoy for the United Nations, European Union, United States, and Russia. in 2007.
• José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero replaced José María Aznar as President of the Government of Spain in 2004.
• Dmitry Medvedev succeeded Vladimir Putin as the President of Russia in 2008.
• Angela Merkel becomes the first female Chancellor of Germany in 2005.
• Nicolas Sarkozy is elected President of France in 2007 succeeding Jacques Chirac, who had held the position for 12 years.
• Silvio Berlusconi becomes President of the Council of Ministers of Italy in 2001 and again in 2008, after two years of a government held by Romano Prodi.
• Parties broadly characterised by political scientists as being right-wing populist soar throughout the 2000s, in the wake of increasing anti-Islam and anti-immigration sentiment in most Western European countries. By 2010, such parties (albeit often significant differences between them) were present in the national parliaments of Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, Italy and Greece. In Austria, Italy and Switzerland, the Freedom Party of Austria, Lega Nord and Swiss People's Party, respectively, were at times also part of the national governments, and in Denmark, the Danish People's Party tolerated a right-liberal minority government from 2001 throughout the decade. While not being present in the national parliaments of France and the United Kingdom, Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front came second in the first round of the 2002 French presidential elections, and in the 2009 European Parliament election, the UK Independence Party came second, beating even the Labour Party, while the British National Party managed to win two seats for the first time.

Assassinations

The prominent assassinations of the decade included:

• Laurent-Désiré Kabila, the President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo was assassinated by a bodyguard on January 16, 2001. The motive remains unexplained.
• Israeli Minister of Tourism Rehavam Ze'evi was assassinated by three Palestinian assailants, members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, on October 17, 2001.
• Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was assassinated by environmentalist activist Volkert van der Graaf, on May 6, 2002.
• Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić was assassinated on March 12, 2003.
• Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh was assassinated on September 10, 2003, after being stabbed in the chest, stomach, and arms by Serbian national Mijailo Mijailović while shopping in a Stockholm department store.
• Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of the militant Islamist group Hamas, was killed in a targeted killing in the Gaza Strip in an operation conducted by the Israeli Air Force on March 22, 2004.
• Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh, a critic of Islamic culture, was assassinated in Amsterdam by Mohammed Bouyeri on November 2, 2004.
• Former Prime Minister of Lebanon Rafik Hariri was assassinated on February 14, 2005, when explosives equivalent to around 1,000 kg of TNT were detonated as his motorcade drove past the St. George Hotel in Beirut. The assassination attempt killed also at least 16 other people and injured 120 others.
• Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated at an election rally in Rawalpindi on December 27, 2007, by a bomb blast. The assassination attempt killed also at least 80 other people.
• The President of Guinea-Bissau, João Bernardo Vieira, was assassinated on March 2, 2009, during an armed attack on his residence in Bissau.
• Anti-abortion extremist Scott Roeder assassinates George Tiller, a pro-choice advocate and late-term abortion provider, on May 31, 2009, at Tiller's church in Wichita, Kansas.

Attempted assassinations:

• 2001 During the British election campaign, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party John Prescott was campaigning in Rhyl when farmer Craig Evans threw an egg at him, which struck him in the neck. Prescott, a former amateur boxer, responded immediately with a straight left to the jaw.

• May 19, 2004, a major alert was caused when two members of the Fathers 4 Justice group (a fathers’ rights organisation in the United Kingdom) threw purple flour bombs at Tony Blair during Prime Minister's Questions at the House of Commons.

• October 24, 2004, British national daily newspaper The Guardian's Charlie Brooker, wrote a column on George W. Bush and the forthcoming 2004 US Presidential Election which concluded:

  John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley, Jr. – where are you now that we need you?

The Guardian withdrew the article from its website and published and endorsed an apology by Brooker.

• December 14, 2008, Muntadhar al-Zaidi an Iraqi broadcast journalist shouted "This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog" and threw his shoes at then-U.S. president George W. Bush during a Baghdad press conference. Al-Zaidi suffered injuries as he was taken into custody and some sources said he was tortured during his initial detention.

• March 6, 2009, the environmental protester Leila Deen of anti-aviation group Plane Stupid, approached Peter Mandleson - a British Labour Party politician, outside a summit on the government's Low Carbon Industrial Strategy, and threw a cup of green custard in his face, in protest over his support for a third runway at Heathrow Airport.

• December 13, 2009, Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi was hit in the face with an alabaster statuette of Milan Cathedral after a rally in Milan's Piazza del Duomo. He suffered facial injuries, a broken nose and two broken teeth; he was subsequently hospitalised.

Disasters

Natural disasters

The 2000s experienced some of the worst and most destructive natural disasters in history.

Earthquakes (including tsunamis)

• On January 13, 2001, a 7.6 earthquake strikes El Salvador, killing 944 people.
• On January 26, 2001, an earthquake hits Gujarat, India, killing more than 12,000.
• On February 28, 2001, the Nisqually Earthquake hits the Seattle metro area. It caused major damage to the old highway standing in the urban center of Seattle.
• On February 13, 2001, a 6.6 magnitude earthquake hits El Salvador, killing at least 400.
• On May 21, 2003, an earthquake in the Boumerdès region of northern Algeria kills 2,200.
• On December 26, 2003, the massive 2003 Bam earthquake devastates southeastern Iran; over 40,000 people are reported killed in the city of Bam.
• On December 26, 2004, one of the worst natural disasters in recorded history hits Southeast Asia, when the strongest earthquake in 40 years hits the entire Indian Ocean region. The massive 9.3 magnitude earthquake, epicentered just off the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, generates enormous tsunami waves that crash into the coastal areas of a number of nations including Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Indonesia. The official death toll from the Boxing Day Tsunami in the affected countries stands at approximately 230,000 people dead or still missing.
• On October 8, 2005, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake kills about 80,000 people.
• On May 12, 2008, over 69,000 are killed in central south-west China by the Wenchuan quake, an earthquake measuring 7.9 Moment magnitude scale. The epicenter was 90 kilometers (56 mi) west-northwest of the provincial capital Chengdu, Sichuan province.

Tropical cyclones, other weather, and bushfires

• On May 3, 2008, Over 146,000 in Burma/Myanmar are killed by Cyclone Nargis.
• Several typhoons and hurricanes resulted in extreme destruction in this decade, especially in 2005 (the most active in recorded history) with Hurricane Katrina nearly destroying New Orleans, killing at least 1,833 people in the hurricane and subsequent floods, making it the deadliest U.S. hurricane since the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane; total property damage was estimated at $81 billion (2005 USD), followed by Hurricane Rita, which wreaked destruction along the U.S. Gulf Coast. In 2008 the massive Hurricane Ike became the third most destructive hurricane to ever make landfall in the United States.
• 2003 produced one of the worst heatwaves in recorded human history, as Europe was hit by a 40 °C (104 °F) heatwave killing thousands.
• The Black Saturday bushfires – the deadliest bushfires in Australian history took place across the Australian state of Victoria on and around Saturday February 7, 2009 during extreme bushfire-weather conditions, resulting in 173 people killed and, more than 500 injured and around 7,500 homeless. The fires came after Melbourne recorded the highest-ever temperature (46.4 °C, 115 °F) of any capital city in Australia. The majority of the fires were ignited by either fallen or clashing power lines or deliberately lit.
• The cold snap of 2009-2010 caused disturbed life in Europe, Asia and America. A total of 21 people were reported to have died during the cold spell in the UK. In Russia, by 26 December 2009 Saint Petersburg was under 35 cm of snow, creating the largest December snowfall recorded in the city since 1881. Winter of 2009–2010 in Europe.

Epidemics

Antibiotic resistance is a serious and growing phenomenon in contemporary medicine and has emerged as one of the eminent public health concerns of the 21st century, particularly as it pertains to pathogenic organisms (the term is not especially relevant to organisms which don't cause disease in humans).

The outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the United Kingdom in 2001 caused a crisis in British agriculture and tourism. This epizootic saw 2,000 cases of the disease in farms across most of the British countryside. Over 10 million sheep and cattle were killed.

Between November 2002 and July 2003, an outbreak of Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) occurred in Hong Kong, with 8,273 cases and 775 deaths worldwide (9.6% fatality) according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Within weeks, SARS spread from Hong Kong to infect individuals in 37 countries in early 2003.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus: the Office for National Statistics reported 1,629 MRSA-related deaths in England and Wales during 2005, indicating a MRSA-related mortality rate half the rate of that in the United States for 2005, even though the figures from the British source were explained to be high because of "improved levels of reporting, possibly brought about by the continued high public profile of the disease" during the time of the 2005 United Kingdom General Election. MRSA is thought to have caused 1,652 deaths in 2006 in UK up from 51 in 1993.

The 2009 H1N1 (swine flu) flu pandemic is also considered a natural disaster. On October 25, 2009 U.S. President Barack Obama officially declared H1N1 a national emergency Despite President Obama's concern, a Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind poll found in October 2009 that an overwhelming majority of New Jerseyans (74%) were not very worried or not at all worried about contracting the H1N1 flu virus.

A study conducted in coordination with the University of Michigan Health Service is scheduled for publication in the December 2009 American Journal of Roentgenology warning that H1N1 flu can cause pulmonary embolism, surmised as a leading cause of death in this current pandemic. The study authors suggest physician evaluation via contrast enhanced CT scans for the presence of pulmonary emboli when caring for patients diagnosed with respiratory complications from a "severe" case of the H1N1 flu.

March 21, 2010 worldwide update by the U.N.'s World Health Organization (WHO) states that "213 countries and overseas territories/communities have reported laboratory confirmed cases of pandemic influenza H1N1 2009, including at least 16,931 deaths."

As of May 30, 2010 worldwide update by World Health Organization(WHO) more than 214 countries and overseas territories or communities have reported laboratory confirmed cases of pandemic influenza H1N1 2009, including over 18,138 deaths.

Footnote:

The Walkerton Tragedy is a series of events that accompanied the contamination of the water supply of Walkerton, Ontario, Canada, by E. coli bacteria in May 2000. Starting May 11, 2000, many residents of the community of about 5,000 people began to simultaneously experience bloody diarrhea, gastrointestinal infections and other symptoms of E. coli infection. Seven people died directly from drinking the E. coli contaminated water, who might have been saved if the Walkerton Public Utilities Commission had admitted to contaminated water sooner, and about 2,500 became ill.

In 2001 a similar outbreak in North Battleford, Saskatchewan caused by the protozoan Cryptosporidium affected at least 5,800 people.

Non-natural disasters

Vehicular wrecks

• On July 25, 2000, Air France Flight 4590, a Concorde aircraft, crashes into a hotel in Gonesse just after takeoff from Paris, killing all 109 aboard and 4 in the hotel. This was the only Concorde accident in which fatalities occurred. It was the beginning of the end for Concorde as an airliner; the type was retired three years later.
• On August 12, 2000, the Russian submarine K-141 Kursk sinks in the Barents Sea, killing all 118 men on board.
• On November 12, 2001, American Airlines Flight 587 crashes in a neighborhood in Queens, New York City, killing all 260 aboard and 5 people on the ground.
• On May 25, 2002, China Airlines Flight 611 breaks up in-flight and plunges into the Taiwan Strait, killing all 225 on board.
• On July 1, 2002, a Tupolev Tu-154 passenger airliner and a Boeing 757 cargo plane collide above the German town of Überlingen. All 71 people on both aircraft die.
• On July 27, 2002, a Sukhoi Su-27 fighter crashes at an air show in Ukraine, killing 77 and injuring 543, making it the worst air show disaster in history.
• On February 1, 2003, at the conclusion of the STS-107 mission, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates during reentry over Texas, killing all seven astronauts on board.
• On July 17, 2007, TAM Airlines Flight 3054 skids off the runway at Congonhas-São Paulo Airport in Brazil and crashes into a nearby warehouse, leaving no survivors among its passengers and crew. In total, 199 people are killed in the worst plane crash in Brazilian history.
• On June 1, 2009, Air France Flight 447 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean following instrument failure. All 228 people on board die, making it the deadliest crash in Air France history.

Stampedes

At least 29 human stampedes occurred in the 2000s.

The 2005 Baghdad bridge stampede occurred on August 31, 2005 when 953 people died following a stampede on Al-Aaimmah bridge, which crosses the Tigris river in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

Economics

The most significant evolution of the early 2000s in the economic landscape was the long-time predicted breakthrough of economic giant China, which had double-digit growth during nearly the whole decade. To a lesser extent, India also benefited from an economic boom which saw the two most populous countries becoming an increasingly dominant economic force. The rapid catching-up of emerging economies with developed countries sparked some protectionist tensions during the period and was partly responsible for an increase in energy and food prices at the end of the decade. The economic developments in the latter third of the decade were dominated by a worldwide economic downturn, which started with the crisis in housing and credit in the United States in late 2007, and led to the bankruptcy of major banks and other financial institutions. The outbreak of this global financial crisis sparked a global recession, beginning in the United States and affecting most of the industrialized world.

• A study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research at United Nations University reports that the richest 1% of adults alone owned 40% of global assets in the year 2000. The three richest people possess more financial assets than the lowest 48 nations combined. The combined wealth of the "10 million dollar millionaires" grew to nearly $41 trillion in 2008.

• The sale of UK gold reserves, 1999-2002 was a policy pursued by HM Treasury when gold prices were at their lowest in 20 years, following an extended bear market. The period itself has been dubbed by some commentators as the Brown Bottom or Brown's Bottom.

The period takes its name from Gordon Brown, the then UK Chancellor of the Exchequer (who later became Prime Minister), who decided to sell approximately half of the UK's gold reserves in a series of auctions. At the time, the UK's gold reserves were worth about US$6.5 billion, accounting for about half of the UK's US$13 billion foreign currency net reserves.

• The 2001 AOL merger with Time Warner (a deal valued at $350 billion; which was the largest merger in American business history) was 'the biggest mistake in corporate history', believes Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes

• February 7, 2004 - EuroMillions transnational lottery, launched by France's Française des Jeux, Spain's Loterías y Apuestas del Estado, and the United Kingdom's Camelot.

• In 2007, it was reported that in the UK, one pound in every seven spent went to the Tesco grocery and general merchandise retailer.

• On October 9, 2007, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at the record level of 14,164.53. Two days later on October 11, the Dow would trade at its highest intra-day level ever, at the 14,198.10 mark. In what would normally take many years to accomplish; numerous reasons were cited for the Dow's extremely rapid rise from the 11,000 level in early 2006, to the 14,000 level in late 2007. They included future possible takeovers and mergers, healthy earnings reports particularly in the tech sector, and moderate inflationary numbers; fueling speculation the Federal Reserve would not raise interest rates. Roughly on par with the 2000 record when adjusted for inflation, this represented the final high of the cyclical bull. The index closed 2007 at 13,264.82, a level it would not surpass for nearly five years.

Economic growth in the world

Between 1999 to 2009, according to the World Bank statistics for GDP:

• The world economy by nominal GDP almost doubled in size from U.S. $30.21 trillion in 1999 to U.S. $58.23 trillion in 2009. This figure is not adjusted for inflation. By PPP, world GDP rose 78%, according to the IMF. But inflation adjusted nominal GDP rose only 42%, according to IMF constant price growth rates. The following figures are not inflation adjusted nominal GDP and should be interpreted with extreme caution:
• The United States (U.S. $14.26 trillion) retained its position of possessing the world's largest economy. However, the size of its contribution to the total global economy dropped from 28.8% to 24.5% by nominal price or a fall from 23.8% to 20.4% adjusted for purchasing power.
• Japan (U.S. $5.07 trillion) retained its position of possessing the second largest economy in the world, but its contribution to the world economy also shrank significantly from 14.5% to 8.7% by nominal price or a fall from 7.8% to 6.0% adjusted for purchasing power.
• China (U.S. $4.98 trillion) went from being the sixth largest to the third largest economy, and in 2009 contributed to 8.6% of the world's economy, up from 3.3% in 1999 by nominal price or a rise from 6.9% to 12.6% adjusted for purchasing power.
• Germany (U.S. $3.35 trillion), France (U.S. $2.65 trillion), United Kingdom (U.S. $2.17 trillion) and Italy (U.S. $2.11 trillion) followed as the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th largest economies, respectively in 2009.
• Brazil (U.S. $1.57 trillion) retained its position as the 8th largest economy, followed by Spain (U.S. $1.46 trillion), which remained at 10th.
• Other major economies included Canada (U.S. $1.34 trillion; 10th, down from 9th), India (U.S. $1.31 trillion; remaining at 11th from 12th), Russia (U.S. $1.23 trillion; from 16th to 12th) Mexico (U.S. $875 billion; 14th, down from 11th), Australia (U.S. $925 billion; from 14th to 13th) and South Korea (U.S. $832 billion; 15th, down from 13th).
• In terms of purchasing power parity in 2009, the ten largest economies were the United States (U.S. $14.26 trillion), China (U.S. $9.10 trillion), Japan (U.S. $4.14 trillion), India (U.S. $3.75 trillion), Germany (U.S. $2.98 trillion), Russia (U.S. $2.69 trillion), United Kingdom (U.S. $2.26 trillion), France (U.S. $2.17 trillion), Brazil (U.S. $2.02 trillion), and Italy (U.S. $1.92 trillion).

• The average house price in the UK, increased by 132% between the fourth quarter of 2000, and 91% during the decade; but the average salary increased only by 40%.

Globalization and its discontents

The removal of trade and investment barriers, the growth of domestic markets, artificially low currencies, the proliferation of education, the rapid development of high tech and information systems industries and the growth of the world economy lead to a significant growth of offshore outsourcing during the decade as many multinational corporations significantly increased subcontracting of manufacturing (and increasingly, services) across national boundaries in developing countries and particularly in China and India, due to many benefits and mainly because the two countries which are the two most populous countries in the world provide huge pools from which to find talent and as because both countries are low cost sourcing countries. As a result of this growth, many of these developing countries accumulated capital and started investing abroad. Other countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Brazil and Russia, benefited from increased demand for their mineral and energy resources that global growth generated. The hollowing out of manufacturing was felt in Japan and parts of the United States and Europe which had not been able to develop successful innovative industries. Opponents point out that the practice of offshore outsourcing by countries with higher wages leads to the reduction of their own domestic employment and domestic investment. As a result, many customer service jobs as well as jobs in the information technology sectors (data processing, computer programming, and technical support) in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom have been or are potentially affected.

While global trade rose in the decade (partially driven by China's entry into the WTO in 2001), there was little progress in the multilateral trading system. International trade continued to expand during the decade as emerging economies and developing countries, in particular China and South-Asian countries, benefited low wages costs and most often undervalued currencies. However, global negotiations to reduce tariffs did not make any progress, as member countries of the World Trade Organization did not succeed in finding agreements to stretch the extent of free trade. The Doha Round of negotiations, launched in 2001 by the WTO to promote development, failed to be completed because of growing tensions between regional areas. Nor did the Cancún Conference in 2003 find a consensus on services trade and agricultural subsidies.

The comparative rise of China, India, and other developing countries also contributed to their growing clout in international fora. In 2009, it was determined that the G20, originally a forum of finance ministers and central bank governors, would replace the G8 as the main economic council.

2007 Chinese export recalls In 2007 a series of product recalls and import bans were imposed by the product safety institutions of the United States, Canada, the European Union, Australia and New Zealand against products manufactured in and exported from the mainland of the People's Republic of China (PRC) because of numerous alleged consumer safety issues.

Events in the confidence crisis included recalls on consumer goods such as pet food, toys, toothpaste, lipstick, and a ban on certain types of seafood. Also included are reports on the poor crash safety of Chinese automobiles, slated to enter the American and European markets in 2008. This created adverse consequences for the confidence in the safety and quality of mainland Chinese manufactured goods in the global economy.

The age of turbulence

The decade was marked by two financial and economic crises. In 2000, the Dot-com bubble burst, causing turmoil in financial markets and a decline in economic activity in the developed economies, in particular in the United States. However, the impact of the crisis on the activity was limited thanks to the intervention of the central banks, notably the U.S. Federal Reserve System. Indeed, Alan Greenspan, leader of the Federal Reserve until 2006, cut the interest rates several times to avoid a severe recession, allowing an economic revival in the U.S.

As the Federal Reserve maintained low interest rates to favor economic growth, a housing bubble began to appear in the United States. In 2007, the rise in interest rates and the collapse of the housing market caused a wave of loan payment failures in the U.S. The subsequent mortgage crisis caused a global financial crisis, because the subprime mortgages had been securitized and sold to international banks and investment funds. Despite the extensive intervention of central banks, including partial and total nationalization of major European banks, the crisis of sovereign debt became particularly acute, first in Iceland, though as events of the early 2010s would show, it was not an isolated European example. Economic activity was severely affected around the world in 2008 and 2009, with disastrous consequences for carmakers.

In 2007, the UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, delivered his final Mansion House speech as Chancellor before he moved into Number 10. Addressing financiers: "A new world order has been created", Everyone needed to follow the City's "great example", "an era that history will record as the beginning of a new Golden Age".

Reactions of governments in all developed and developing countries against the economic slowdown were largely inspired by keynesian economics. The end of the decade was characterized by a Keynesian resurgence, while the influence and media popularity of left-wing economists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman (Nobel Prize recipients in 2001 and 2008, respectively) did not stop growing during the decade. Several international summits were organized to find solutions against the economic crisis and to impose greater control on the financial markets. The G-20 became in 2008 and 2009 a major organization, as leaders of the member countries held two major summits in Washington in November 2008 and in London in April 2009 to regulate the banking and financial sectors, and also succeeding in coordinating their economic action and in avoiding protectionist reactions.

Energy crisis

From the mid-1980s to September 2003, the inflation-adjusted price of a barrel of crude oil on NYMEX was generally under $25/barrel. During 2003, the price rose above $30, reached $60 by August 11, 2005, and peaked at $147.30 in July 2008. Commentators attributed these price increases to many factors, including reports from the United States Department of Energy and others showing a decline in petroleum reserves, worries over peak oil, Middle East tension, and oil price speculation.

For a time, geopolitical events and natural disasters indirectly related to the global oil market had strong short-term effects on oil prices. These events and disasters included North Korean missile tests, the 2006 conflict between Israel and Lebanon, worries over Iranian nuclear plants in 2006 and Hurricane Katrina. By 2008, such pressures appeared to have an insignificant impact on oil prices given the onset of the global recession. The recession caused demand for energy to shrink in late 2008 and early 2009 and the price plunged as well. However, it surged back in May 2009, bringing it back to November 2008 levels.

Many fast-growing economies throughout the world, especially in Asia, also were a major factor in the rapidly increasing demand for fossil fuels, which—along with fewer new petroleum finds, greater extraction costs, and political turmoil—forced two other trends: a soar in the price of petroleum products and a push by governments and businesses to promote the development of environmentally friendly technology (known informally as "green" technology). However, a side-effect of the push by some industrial nations to "go green" and utilize biofuels was a decrease in the supply of food and a subsequent increase in the price of the same. It partially caused the 2007 food price crisis, which seriously affected the world's poorer nations with an even more severe shortage of food.

The rise of the Euro

A common currency for most E.U.member states, the euro, was established electronically in 1999, officially tying all the currencies of each participating nation to each other. The new currency was put into circulation in 2002 and the old currencies were phased out. Only three countries of the then 15 member states decided not to join the euro (The United Kingdom, Denmark and Sweden). In 2004 the E.U.undertook a major eastward enlargement, admitting 10 new member states (eight of which were former communist states). Two more, Bulgaria and Romania, joined in 2007, establishing a union of 27 nations.

The euro has since become the second largest reserve currency and the second most traded currency in the world after the US$. As of October 2009, with more than €790 billion in circulation, the euro was the currency with the highest combined value of banknotes and coins in circulation in the world, having surpassed the US$.

Science and technology

Science

Space exploration

• The Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Mission successfully reached the surface of Mars in 2004, and sent detailed data and images of the landscape there back to Earth. Opportunity discovers evidence that an area of Mars was once covered in water. Both rovers were each expected to last only 90 days, however both completely exceeded expectations and continued to explore through the end of the decade and beyond.
• Space tourism/Private spaceflight begins with American Dennis Tito, paying Russia US$20 million for a week long stay to the International Space Station.
• The Voyager I spacecraft entered the heliosheath, marking its departure from our solar system.
• After having analyzed the data from the LCROSS lunar impact, in 2009 NASA announced that the discovery of a "significant" quantity of water in the Moon's Cabeus crater.
• Astrophysicists studying the universe confirm its age at 13.7 billion years, discover that it will most likely expand forever without limit, and conclude that only 4% of the universe's contents are ordinary matter (the other 96% being still-mysterious dark matter, dark energy, and dark flow).
• Beginning on November 2, 2000, the International Space Station has remained continuously inhabited. The Space Shuttles helped make it the largest space station ever, despite one of the Shuttles disintegrating upon re-entry in 2003. By the end of 2009 the station was supporting 5 long-duration crew members.

Biology

• The Human Genome Project was completed in 2003, with 99% of the human genome sequenced to 99.99% accuracy.
• National Geographic Society and IBM established The Genographic Project in 2005, which aims to trace the ancestry of every living human down to a single male ancestor.
• The world's first self-contained artificial heart was implanted in Robert Tools in 2001.

• In 2005 surgeons in France carried out the first successful partial human face transplant.
• In 2006, Australian scientist Ian Frazer developed a vaccine for the Human Papillomavirus, a common cause of cervical cancer.

Other

• In 2003, an old dwarf human species, Homo floresiensis was discovered (report published initially October 2004).
• As a result of the discovery of Eris, a Kuiper Belt object larger than Pluto, in August 2006, Pluto is demoted to a "dwarf planet" after being considered a planet for 76 years, redefining the solar system to have eight planets and three dwarf planets.

• Grigori Perelman is a Russian mathematician who has made landmark contributions to Riemannian geometry and geometric topology.

In 2003, he proved Thurston's geometrization conjecture. This consequently solved in the affirmative the Poincaré conjecture, posed in 1904, which before its solution was viewed as one of the most important and difficult open problems in topology.

In August 2006, Perelman was awarded the Fields Medal for "his contributions to geometry and his revolutionary insights into the analytical and geometric structure of the Ricci flow." Perelman declined to accept the award or to appear at the congress, stating: "I'm not interested in money or fame, I don't want to be on display like an animal in a zoo." On 22 December 2006, the journal Science recognized Perelman's proof of the Poincaré conjecture as the scientific "Breakthrough of the Year", the first such recognition in the area of mathematics.

• CERN's Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator ever made, was completed in 2008.

Technology

Computing and Internet

In the 2000s, the Internet became a mainstay, strengthening its grip on Western society while becoming increasingly available in the developing world.

• A huge jump in broadband internet usage globally – for example, from 6% of U.S. internet users in June 2000 to what one mid-decade study predicted would be 62% by 2010. By February 2007, over 80% of U.S. Internet users were connected via broadband and broadband internet has been almost a required standard for quality internet browsing.
• Wireless internet became prominent by the end of the decade, as well as internet access in devices besides computers, such as mobile phones and gaming consoles.
• Email became a standard form of interpersonal written communication, with popular addresses available to the public on Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo! Mail.
• Normalisation became increasingly important as massive standardized corpora and lexicons of spoken and written language became widely available to laypeople, just as documents from the paperless office were archived and retrieved with increasing efficiency using XML-based markup.

• Peer-to-peer technology gained massive popularity with file sharing systems enabling users to share any audio, video and data files or anything in digital format, as well as with applications which share real-time data, such as telephony traffic.
• VPNs (virtual private networks) became likewise accessible to the general public, and data encryption remained a major issue for the stability of web commerce.
• Boom in music downloading and the use of data compression to quickly transfer music over the Internet, with a corresponding rise of portable digital audio players. As a result, the entertainment industry struggled through the decade to find digital delivery systems for music, movies, and other media that reduce piracy and preserve profit.
• The USB flash drive replaces the Floppy disk as the preferred form of low-capacity mobile data storage.
• In February 2003, Dell announced floppy drives would no longer be pre-installed on Dell Dimension home computers, although they were still available as a selectable option and purchasable as an aftermarket OEM add-on. On 29 January 2007, PC World stated that only 2% of the computers they sold contained built-in floppy disk drives; once present stocks were exhausted, no more standard floppies would be sold.
• During the decade, Windows 2000 And Windows XP and Microsoft Office 2003 And Windows Vista And Microsoft Office 2008 (and later Windows 7) become the ubiquitous industry standards in personal computer software until the end of the decade, when Apple began to slowly gain market share.
• With the advent of the Web 2.0, dynamic technology became widely accessible, and by the mid-1990s, PHP and MySQL became (with Apache) the backbone of many sites, making programming knowledge unnecessary to publish to the web. Blogs, portals, and wikis become common electronic dissemination methods for professionals, amateurs, and businesses to conduct knowledge management typified by success of the online encyclopedia Misplaced Pages which launched on January 15, 2001, grew rapidly and became the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet as well as the best known wiki in the world and the largest encyclopedia in the world.

• Open Source software, such as the Linux operating system and the Mozilla Firefox web browser, gain ground.
• Internet commerce became standard for reservations; stock trading; promotion of music, arts, pornography, literature, and film; shopping; and other activities.
• During this decade certain websites and search engines became prominent worldwide as transmitters of goods, services and information. Some of the most popular and successful online sites or search engines of the 2000s included Google, Yahoo!, Misplaced Pages, Amazon, eBay, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
• More and more businesses began providing paperless services, clients accessing bills and bank statements directly through a web interface.
• In 2007 - The fast food chain McDonald's announced the introduction of free high speed wireless internet access at most of its 1,200 restaurants by the end of the year in a move which will make it the UK's biggest provider of such a service.

Video

• Digital cameras become widely popular due to rapid decreases in size and cost while photo resolution steadily increases. As a result, the digital cameras largely supplanted the analog cameras and the integration into mobile phones increase greatly. Since 2007, digital cameras started being manufactured with the face recognition feature built in.
• Flat panel displays started becoming widely popular in the second half of the decade displacing cathode ray tubes.
• Handheld projectors enter the market and are then integrated into cellphones.
• DVR devices such as TiVo became popular, making it possible to record television broadcasts to a hard drive-based digital storage medium and allowing many additional features including the option to fast-forward through commercials or to use an automatic Commercial skipping feature. This feature created controversy, with major television networks and movie studios claiming it violates copyright and should be banned. With the commercial skipping feature, many television channels place advertisements on the bottom on the TV screen.
• VOD technology became widely available among cable users worldwide, enabling the users to select and watch video content from a large variety of available content stored on a central server, as well as gaining the possibility to freeze the image, as well as fast-forward and rewind the VOD content.
• DVDs, and subsequently Blu-ray Discs, replace VCR technology as the common standard in homes and at video stores.
• Free Internet video portals like YouTube, Hulu, and Internet TV software solutions like Joost became new popular alternatives to TV broadcasts.
• TV becomes available on the networks run by some mobile phone providers, such as Verizon Wireless's Vcast.
• "High-definition television" becomes very popular towards the second half of the decade, with the increase of HD television channels and the conversion from analog to digital signals.

Communications

• The popularity of mobile phones and text messaging surged in the 2000s in the Western world. The advent of text messaging made possible new forms of interaction that were not possible before, leading to positive implications such as having the ability to receive information on the move. Nevertheless, it also led to negative social implications such as "cyberbullying" and the rise of traffic collisions caused by drivers who were distracted as they were texting while driving. One such problem was the fad of Happy Slapping in Europe, in which an individual assaults an unwitting victim while others record the assault (commonly with a camera phone or a smartphone). Though the name usually refers to relatively minor acts of violence such as hitting or slapping the victim, more serious crimes such as manslaughter, rape, and sexual assault have been classified as "happy slapping" by the media.
• Mobile internet, first launched in Japan with the i-mode in 1999, became increasingly popular with people in developed countries throughout the decade, thanks to improving cell phone capabilities and advances in mobile telecommunications technology, such as 3G.
• E-mail continued to be popular throughout the decade, and began to replace "snail mail" (also known, more neutrally, as paper mail, postal mail, land mail, or simply mail or post) as the primary way of sending letters and other messages to people in faraway locations, though it has been available since 1971.
• Social networking sites arose as a new way for people to stay in touch no matter where they are, as long as they have an internet connection. * Smartphones, which combine mobile phones with the features of personal digital assistants and portable media players, first emerged in the 1990s but did not become very popular until late in the 2000s. Smartphones are rich in features and often have high resolution touchscreens and web browsers.
• Due to the major success of broadband Internet connections, Voice over IP begins to gain popularity as a replacement for traditional telephone lines.

Robotics

• The U.S. Army used increasingly effective unmanned aerial vehicles in war zones, such as Afghanistan.
• Emerging use of robotics, especially telerobotics in medicine, particularly for surgery.
• Home automation and home robotics advance in North America; iRobot's "Roomba" is the most successful domestic robot and has sold 1.5 million units.

Automobiles

• Automotive navigation systems become widely popular making it possible to direct vehicles to any destination in real-time as well as detect traffic and suggest alternate routes with the use of GPS navigation devices.
• Greater interest in future energy development due to global warming and the potential exhaustion of crude oil. Photovoltaics increase in popularity as a result.
• The Hybrid vehicles market, which became somewhat popular towards the middle of the decade, underwent major advances notably typified by such cars as the Toyota Prius, Ford Escape, and the Honda Insight though by December 2010 they accounted for less than 0.5% of the world cars.

• Many more computers and other technologies were implemented in vehicles throughout the decade such as: Xenon HID headlights, GPS, DVD players, self-diagnosing systems, memory systems for car settings, back-up sensors and cameras, in-car media systems, MP3 player compatibility, USB drive compatibility, keyless start and entry, satellite radio, voice-activation, cellphone connectivity, HUD (Head-Up-Display) and infrared cameras. In addition, more safety features were implemented in vehicles throughout the decade such as: advanced pre-collision safety systems, Backup cameras, Blind spot monitor, Adaptive cruise control, Adaptive headlamps, Automatic parking, Lane departure warning systems and the Advanced Automatic Collision Notification system Onstar (on all GM models).
• Car styling in the 2000s differed throughout the decade. Many automakers strayed from the round and ovoid designs of the 1990s in favor of more boxy, angular designs – the Dodge Charger and Chrysler 300 being notable examples. Many vehicles, especially crossovers, were abstract and futuristic, a trend started by the successful Nissan Murano and Infiniti FX crossovers.

Transportation

• Concorde a turbojet-powered supersonic passenger airliner or supersonic transport (SST), was retired in 2003 due to a general downturn in the aviation industry after the type's only crash in 2000, the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 and a decision by Airbus, the successor firm of Aerospatiale and BAC, to discontinue maintenance support.

• December 9, 2005 - The London Transport Executive Routemaster double-decker bus was officially withdrawn from 51 years general service in the UK. In the 2008 London mayoral election campaign, prospective mayor Boris Johnson made several commitments to change the London Buses vehicle policy, namely to introduce a new Routemaster, and remove the bendy buses.

Other

• GPS (Global Positioning System) becomes very popular especially in the tracking of items or people, and the use in cars (see Automotive navigation systems). Games that utilize the system, such as geocaching, emerge and become popular.

• Green laser pointers appeared on the market circa 2000, and are the most common type of DPSS lasers (also called DPSSFD for "diode pumped solid state frequency-doubled").

In late 2004 and early 2005, came a significant increase in reported incidents linked to laser pointers - see Lasers and aviation safety. The wave of incidents may have been triggered in part by "copycats" who read press accounts of laser pointer incidents. In one case, David Banach of New Jersey was charged under federal Patriot Act anti-terrorism laws, after he allegedly shone a laser pointer at aircraft.

• Chip and PIN is the brand name adopted by the banking industries in the United Kingdom and Ireland for the rollout of the EMV smart card payment system for credit, debit and ATM cards.

Chip and PIN was trialled in Northampton, England from May 2003, and as a result was rolled out nationwide in the United Kingdom in 2004 with advertisements in the press and national television touting the "Safety in Numbers" slogan.

• In 2009, Tesco (a British multinational grocery and general merchandise retailer) opened its first UK branch at which service robots were the only option at the checkout, in Kingsley, Northampton – its US chain, Fresh & Easy, already operates several branches like this.

• September 7, 2009, an EU watchdog warns of an "alarming increase" in cash machine fraud by organised criminal gangs across Europe using sophisticated skimming technology, together with an explosion in ram-raiding attacks on ATMs.

ATM crime in Europe jumped to €485m (£423m) in 2008 following a 149% rise in attacks on cash machines. Gangs are turning to Bluetooth wireless technology to transmit card and pin number details to nearby laptops and using increasingly sophisticated techniques to skim cards.

More conventional smash-and-grab attacks are also on the rise, says Enisa, the European Network and Information Security Agency. It reports a 32% rise in physical attacks on ATMs, ranging from ram raids to the use of rotary saws, blowtorches and diamond drills. It blames the increase on gangs from eastern Europe.

Religion

New Atheism is the name given to the ideas promoted by a collection of modern atheist writers who have advocated the view that "religion should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises."

The term is commonly associated with individuals such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens (together called "the Four Horsemen of New Atheism" in a taped 2007 discussion they held on their criticisms of religion, a name that has stuck), along with Victor J. Stenger, Lawrence M. Krauss and A.C. Grayling. Several best-selling books by these authors, published between 2004 and 2007, form the basis for much of the discussion of New Atheism.

Several groups promoting no religious faith or opposing religious faith altogether – including the Freedom From Religion Foundation, American Atheists, Camp Quest, and the Rational Response Squad – have witnessed large increases in membership numbers in recent years, and the number of secularist student organizations at American colleges and universities increased during the 2000s.

David Bario of the Columbia News Service wrote:

Under the Bush administration, organizations that promote abstinence and encourage teens to sign virginity pledges or wear purity rings have received federal grants. The Silver Ring Thing, a subsidiary of a Pennsylvania evangelical church, has received more than $1 million from the government to promote abstinence and to sell its rings in the United States and abroad.

• Increasing Islamophobia and Islamophobic incidents during the 2000s associated with the September 11 attacks or with the increased presence of Muslims in the Western world.

• In 2000, the Italian Supreme Court ruled that Scientology is a religion for legal purposes.

• In 2001, lawsuits were filed in the United States and Ireland, alleging that some priests had sexually abused minors and that their superiors had conspired to conceal and otherwise abet their criminal misconduct. In 2004, the John Jay report tabulated a total of 4,392 priests and deacons in the U.S. against whom allegations of sexual abuse had been made.

• Zam Zam Cola is a cola-flavoured soft drink produced in Iran by Zamzam Soft Drink Mfg. Co. It is particularly popular in parts of the Arab World, having gained a status there as a Muslim alternative to "Western" products such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

Following the 2002 boycott of Coca-Cola by Saudi Arabia, Zam Zam Cola was unofficially dubbed the soft drink of the Hajj.

• The American stand-up comedian Chris Rock from his Never Scared performance HBO, 2004:

"The number one reason people hate America: the number one reason is because of our religion. Americans worship money, we worship money. Separate God from school, separate God from work, separate God from government, but on your money it says in God we trust."

• The French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools bans wearing conspicuous religious symbols in French public (i.e. government-operated) primary and secondary schools; and came into effect on 2 September 2004.

• Criticism of Family Guy - the American animated sitcom: An example of anti-religious sentiment would be in the episode, "Road to the Multiverse", the "World Without Christianity", which is depicted as being a futuristic, happy world where Christianity ceases to exist. The reason it is so advanced is said to be because the Dark Ages never happened. Entertainment Weekly TV critic Ken Tucker criticized the show for being anti-Semitic.

The Parents Television Council has criticized what it perceives as Family Guy's negative treatment of religion, concluding in its 2006 report Faith in a Box: Entertainment Television and Religion 2005-2006 that "mockery of God is a constant" on the show.

On October 3, 2007, the Bourne Company publishing house, sole owner of the song "When You Wish upon a Star", filed a lawsuit against the makers of Family Guy, claiming copyright infringement over the song "I Need a Jew". The suit claims harm to the value of the song due to the offensive nature of the lyrics.

• In 2005, David Bell, the head of the Office for Standards in Education said "Faith should not be blind. I worry that many young people are being educated in faith-based schools, with little appreciation of their wider responsibilities and obligations to British society. This growth in faith schools needs to be carefully but sensitively monitored by government to ensure that pupils receive an understanding of not only their own faith but of other faiths and the wider tenets of British society". He criticised Islamic schools in particular, calling them a "threat to national identity".

• June 27, 2005, - The Supreme Court of the United States ruled on in a 5-4 decision, that a Ten Commandments display at the McCreary County courthouse in Whitley City, Kentucky and a Ten Commandments display at the Pulaski County courthouse—were unconstitutional: McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union

• France created in 2006 the first French parliamentary commission on cult activities which led to a report registering a number of cults considered as dangerous. Supporters of such movements have criticized the report on the grounds of the respect of religious freedom. Proponents of the measure contend that only dangerous cults have been listed as such, and state secularism ensures religious freedom in France.

• On 28 July 2006, American actor, film director, producer and screenwriter Mel Gibson, was arrested for driving under the influence (DUI) while speeding in his vehicle with an open container of alcohol, which is illegal in much of the United States. According to the arrest report, Gibson then exploded into an angry tirade at the arresting officer. Gibson climaxed with the words, "F*cking Jews... the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world."

• Ted Arthur Haggard is an American evangelical pastor. Known as Pastor Ted to the congregation he served, he was the founder and former pastor of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado; a founder of the Association of Life-Giving Churches; and was leader of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) from 2003 until November 2006.

In November 2006, escort and masseur Mike Jones alleged that Haggard had paid him for sex for three years and had also purchased and used crystal methamphetamine. A few days later Haggard resigned from all of his leadership positions.

After the scandal was publicized, Haggard entered three weeks of intensive counseling, overseen by four ministers.

• On December 7, 2006, at a City Hall reception marking the launch of the London Jewish Forum, the Mayor of London Ken Livingstone apologised for any offence that he had caused the Jewish community stating

  I'd like to apologise for occasions when I may have caused offence to you... I am rude to everyone. Next time just pick up the phone – don't make an official bloody complaint at vast expense.'

• The American weekly news magazine Newsweeks Evan Thomas declared President Barack Obama as being a God-like figure:

“In a way, Obama’s standing above the country — above the world,” Thomas said during a 2009 interview on MSNBC. “He’s sort of God. He’s going to bring all different sides together.”

Many have been describing Obama as a type of messiah even before his first four years in office. Writer Dave Jolly notes that during the last election, Maggie Mertens, associate editor for the Smith College newspaper, penned an article entitled “I Will Follow Him: Obama as My Personal Jesus.”

“Obama is my homeboy. And I’m not saying that because he’s black – I’m saying that in reference to those Urban Outfitters t-shirts from a couple years ago that said, ‘Jesus is my homeboy,’” she wrote. “Yes, I just said it. Obama is my Jesus.”

Jolly also pointed to an editorial in the Danish newspaper Politiken, which stated, “Obama is, of course, greater than Jesus.”

• November 2009, Minaret controversy in Switzerland. A referendum, a constitutional amendment banning the construction of new Mosque minarets was approved, sparking reactions from governments and political parties throughout of the world.

• 2009 - In Pope Benedict XVI's third encyclical Caritas in Veritate, he warns that a purely technocrat mindset where decisions are made only on grounds of efficiency will not deliver true development. Technical decisions must not be divorced from ethics. Benedict discusses bioethics and states that practices such as abortion, eugenics and euthanasia are morally hazardous and that accepting them can lead to greater tolerance for various forms of moral degradation. He turns to another consequence of the technocratic mindset, the viewing of people's personalities in purely psychological terms at the exclusion of the spiritual, which he says can lead to people feeling empty and abandoned even in prosperous societies.

• March 2009 - Muslims protest against The Royal Anglian Regiment's Iraq war soldiers' home-coming parade through streets of Luton UK

• The UK's Scotland Yard says it has conducted 83 investigations into cases of faith-based child abuse in the past decade including those of Victoria Climbie who was eight when she was murdered in 2000 and the headless torso of "Adam", a five or six-year-old boy, which was found in the Thames in 2001.

• South Park is an American animated sitcom. Its frequent portrayal of religion for comic effect has generated controversy and debate throughout the world over the course of its 16 seasons. Its creators reject the notion of political correctness.

November 19, 2003 - Cameron Adams of the Herald Sun highlighted the episode "All About Mormons" among "Top Choice" picks in television. Chris Quinn of the San Antonio Express-News placed the episode at number 7 on his list of: "Top 10 Most Offensive South Park Episodes and Therefore, Maybe The Best, List". The episode was used as an exhibit in discussing Mormonism in popular culture, by Utah Valley State College religious studies professor Dennis Potter, in a presentation titled: "The Americanization of Mormonism Reflected in Pop Culture". The LDS Church called the episode a "gross portrayal of Church history".

Several Catholics took offense to the season nine (2005) finale "Bloody Mary". In the episode, a statue of the Virgin Mary is portrayed as releasing copious amounts of actual blood while undergoing overt menstruation, while characters had declared the phenomenon as a miracle when they had initially thought the blood was flowing from her rectum. Another scene also features Pope Benedict XVI closely inspecting the anal and vaginal regions of the statue before being sprayed with blood. The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights demanded an apology from Comedy Central and unsuccessfully campaigned to have the episode both removed permanently from the network's rotation and never be made available on DVD. Viacom board member Joseph A. Califano, Jr. and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued formal complaints with then-Viacom CEO Tom Freston.

In February 2006, leaders from the New Zealand Catholic Bishops' Conference, the Council of Christians and Muslims, and other religious groups together lobbied media conglomerate CanWest to stop the episode's debut airing and potential rebroadcasts in New Zealand on the music channel C4, while protesters condemned the lobby for attempting to take advantage of the New Zealand people's lack of a guaranteed right to the freedom of speech. The network rejected the plea, and was allowed to air the episode, doing so ahead of schedule to take advantage of the media attention surrounding the campaign.

March 13, 2006, Isaac Hayes, the voice of the character Chef, quit South Park. A press release cited his objections to the show's attitudes toward and depiction of various religions. While the press release did not specifically mention "Trapped in the Closet", Parker and Stone assert that he quit due to the episode and its treatment of Scientology, as Hayes was a member. Stone commented that Hayes practiced a double standard regarding the treatment of religion on South Park: " never heard a peep out of Isaac in any way until we Scientology. He wants a different standard for religions other than his own, and to me, that is where intolerance and bigotry begin".

In late 2008, a group of prosecutors in Moscow, on behalf of Muslim activists and members of the Russian Pentecostalist Church, sought to have the Russian channel 2×2 closed in an attempt to prevent them from broadcasting the series, which they claimed promoted "hatred between religions". Their appeal was rejected by Russian media officials, and the channel's broadcasting license was extended until 2013.

Population and social issues

• The decade saw further expansion of LGBT rights, with many European, Oceanic, and American countries recognizing civil unions and partnerships and a number of countries extending civil marriage to same-sex couples. The Netherlands was the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage in 2001. By 2010, same-sex marriage was legal and performed in 10 countries worldwide, although only in some jurisdictions in Mexico and the United States.

• Population continued to grow in most countries, in particular in developing countries, though overall the rate slowed. According to United Nations estimates, world population reached six billion in late 1999, and continued to climb to 6.8 billion in late 2009. In 2007 the population of the United States reached 300 million inhabitants, and Japan's population peaked at 127 million before going into decline.

• In a 2003 memo to a staff member, Britain's Charles, Prince of Wales wrote:

'What is wrong with everyone nowadays? Why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their technical capabilities? This is to do with the learning culture in schools as a consequence of a child-centred system which admits no failure. People think they can all be pop stars, high court judges, brilliant TV personalities or infinitely more competent heads of state without ever putting in the necessary work or having natural ability. This is the result of social utopianism which believes humanity can be genetically and socially engineered to contradict the lessons of history ...'

• Obesity is a leading preventable cause of death worldwide, with increasing prevalence in adults and children, and authorities view it as one of the most serious public health problems of the 21st century.

• In 2001, 46.4% of people in sub-Saharan Africa were living in extreme poverty. Nearly half of all Indian children are undernourished, however, even among the wealthiest fifth one third of children are malnourished.

• 5 A Day is the name of a number of programs in countries such as the USA, the United Kingdom and Germany, to encourage the consumption of at least five portions of fruit and vegetables each day, following a recommendation by the World Health Organization that individuals consume at least 400g of vegetables daily.

• The programme was introduced by the UK Department of Health in the winter of 2002-2003, and received some adverse media attention because of the high and rising costs of fresh fruit and vegetables. After ten years, research suggested that few people were meeting the target.

• The London congestion charge is a fee charged on most motor vehicles operating within the Congestion Charge Zone (CCZ) in central London between 07:00 and 18:00 Monday to Friday. It is not charged at weekends, public holidays or between Christmas Day and New Year's Day (inclusive). The charge, which was introduced on 17 February 2003, remains one of the largest congestion charge zones in the world.

• On 3 December 2003, New Zealand passed legislation to progressively implement a smoking ban in schools, school grounds, and workplaces by December 2004. On 29 March 2004, Ireland implemented a nationwide ban on smoking in all workplaces. In Norway, similar legislation was put into force on 1 June the same year. Smoking was banned in all public places in the whole of the United Kingdom in 2007, when England became the final region to have the legislation come into effect (the age limit for buying tobacco was also raised from 16 to 18 on 1 October 2007). From 2004 to 2009, the UK’s Merseyside police officers, conducted 1,389 section 60 stop and searches (without reasonable suspicion), rising to 23,138 within five years.

• In 2005 the cost of alcohol dependence and abuse was estimated to cost the US economy approximately 220 billion dollars per year, more than cancer and obesity.

• The number of antidepressants prescribed by the NHS in the United Kingdom almost doubled during one decade, authorities reported in 2010. Furthermore the number highly increased in 2009 when 39.1 million prescriptions were issued compared with 20.1 million issued in 1999.

• In the United States a 2005 independent report stated that 11% of women and 5% of men in the non-institutionalized population (2002) take antidepressants. The use of antidepressants in the United States doubled over one decade, from 1996 to 2005.

• Antidepressant drugs were prescribed to 13 million in 1996 and to 27 million people by 2005. In 2008, more than 164 million prescriptions were written.

• In the UK, the number of weddings in 2006 was the lowest for 110 years.

• Jamie Oliver, is a British chef, restaurateur, media personality, known for his food-focused television shows and cookbooks. In 2006, Oliver began a formal campaign to ban unhealthy food in British schools and to get children eating nutritious food instead. Oliver's efforts to bring radical change to the school meals system, chronicled in the series Jamie's School Dinners, challenged the junk-food culture by showing schools they could serve healthy, cost-efficient meals that kids enjoyed eating. Jamie's efforts brought the subject of school dinners to the political forefront and changed the types of food served in schools.

• In 2006, nearly 11 million Plastic surgery procedures were performed in the United States alone. The number of cosmetic procedures performed in the United States has increased over 50 percent since the start of the century.

• Fundamental is the sixteenth album, the ninth of entirely new music, by the British band Pet Shop Boys. It was released in May 2006. The album has been noted for being more political than any other of the duo's albums to date; even the title, in one sense, is a reference to religious fundamentalism — portrayed here in a light, critical manner, which singer Neil Tennant attributes to the relatively relaxed status of religious freedom in the United Kingdom. Specific contemporary issues discussed in the lyrics include tensions and fears in the United States caused by the War on Terrorism, addressed in songs such as "Psychological" and "Luna Park" ("Luna Park" being the name of various amusement parks around the world). Other songs refer to the politics of the band's home country; "Indefinite leave to remain" refers to an immigration status in the United Kingdom, while "Integral" criticizes the Identity Cards Act 2006. (A statement from a band spokesman cites the issue as the reason that Neil Tennant ceased his well-publicized support of Tony Blair's Labour Party.) "I'm with Stupid", meanwhile, touches upon both countries by satirizing Blair's alliance with George W. Bush. (See also special relationship.)

• In November 2006, the Office of Communications (Ofcom) announced that it would ban television advertisements for junk food before, during and after television programming aimed at under-16s in the United Kingdom. These regulations were originally outlined in a proposal earlier in the year. This move has been criticized on both ends of the scale; while the Food and Drink Federation labelled the ban "over the top", others have said the restrictions do not go far enough (particularly due to the fact that soap operas would be exempt from the ban). On 1 April 2007, junk food advertisements were banned from programmes aimed at four to nine-year-olds. Such advertisements broadcast during programmes "aimed at, or which would appeal to," ten to fifteen-year-olds will continue to be phased out over the coming months, with a full ban coming into effect on 1 January 2009.

• November 10, 2006 - referring to the UK's annual poppy appeal, British journalist and presenter Jon Snow claimed: there is a rather unpleasant breed of poppy fascism out there condemning the attitude of those who insist remembrance poppies are worn.

• In January 2007, the British Retail Consortium announced that major UK retailers, including Asda, Boots, Co-op, Iceland, Marks and Spencer, Sainsbury's, Tesco and Waitrose intended to cease adding trans fatty acids to their own products by the end of 2007.

• In October 2008 AFP reported on the further expansion of killings of albinos to the Ruyigi region of Burundi. Body parts of the victims are then smuggled to Tanzania where they are used for witch doctor rituals and potions. Albinos have become "a commercial good", commented Nicodeme Gahimbare in Ruyigi, who established a local safe haven in his fortified house.

• A 2009 study, found a 30% increase in Chinese diabetes over 7 years.

• AIDS continued to expand during the decade, mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa. New diseases of animal origin appeared for a short time, the mad cow disease in 2003 and the bird flu in 2007. Swine flu was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization in 2009.

Environment and climate change

Climate change and global warming became household words in the 2000s. Predictions tools made significant progress during the decade, UN-sponsored organisations such as the IPCC gained influence, and studies such as the Stern report influenced public support for paying the political and economic costs of countering climate change.

The global temperature kept growing during the decade. In December 2009, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) announced that the 2000s may have been the warmest decade since records began in 1850, with four of the five warmest years since 1850 having occurred in this decade. The WMO's findings were later echoed by the NASA and the NOAA.

Major natural disasters became more frequent and helped change public opinion. One of the deadliest heat waves in human history happened during the 2000s, mostly in Europe, with the 2003 European heat wave killing 37,451 people over the summer months. In February 2009, a series of highly destructive bushfires started in Victoria, Australia, lasting into the next month. While the fires are believed to have been caused by arson, they were widely reported as having been fueled by an excessive heatwave that was due in part to climate change. It has also been alleged that climate change was a cause of increased storms intensity, notably in the case of Hurricane Katrina.

International actions

Climate change became a major issue for governments, populations and scientists. Debates on global warming and its causes made significant progress, as climate change denials were refuted by most scientific studies. Decisive reports such as the Stern Review and the 2007 IPCC Report almost established a climate change consensus. NGOs' actions and the commitment of political personalities (such as former U.S. Vice President Al Gore) also urged to international reactions against climate change. Documentary films An Inconvenient Truth and Home may have had a decisive impact.

Under the auspices of The UN Convention on Climate Change the Kyoto Protocol (aimed at combating global warming) entered into force on February 16, 2005. As of November 2009, 187 states have signed and ratified the protocol. In addition The UN Convention on Climate Change helped coordinate the efforts of the international community to fight potentially disastrous effects of human activity on the planet and launched negotiations to set an ambitious program of carbon emission reduction that began in 2007 with the Bali Road Map. However, the representatives of the then 192 member countries of the United Nations gathered in December 2009 for the Copenhagen Conference failed to reach a binding agreement to reduce carbon emissions because of divisions between regional areas.

However, as environmental technologies were to make up a potential market, some countries made large investments in renewable energies, energy conservation and sustainable transport. Many governments launched national plans to promote sustainable energy. In 2003, the European Union members created an emission trading scheme, and in 2007 they assembled a climate and energy package to reduce further their carbon emission and improve their energy-efficiency. In 2009, the United States Obama administration set up the Green New Deal, a plan to create millions of jobs in sectors related to environmentalism.

The Household Waste Recycling Act 2003 requires local authorities in England to provide every household with a separate collection of at least two types of recyclable materials by 2010.

Additional notable world-wide events

2000

• • The Year 2000 problem (also known as the Y2K problem, the Millennium bug, the Y2K bug, or simply Y2K) was a problem for both digital (computer-related) and non-digital documentation and data storage situations which resulted from the practice of abbreviating a four-digit year to two digits. Companies and organizations worldwide checked, fixed, and upgraded their computer systems.
  • The fuel protests in the United Kingdom were a series of campaigns held in the United Kingdom over the cost of petrol and diesel for road vehicle use. There have been three notable campaigns amongst many other protests in the 21st century. The first protest in 2000 was primarily led by lorry drivers and farmers.
  • In 2000 in London, England, an eight-year-old Ivorian girl Victoria Adjo Climbié was tortured and murdered by her guardians. Her death led to a public inquiry and produced major changes in child protection policies in England.
  • The Tesco bomb campaign was an attempted extortion against British supermarket chain Tesco which started in Bournemouth, Dorset, in August 2000 and led to one of the largest and most secretive operations ever undertaken by Dorset Police.
  • November 7, 2000 - The United States presidential election, 2000 was noteworthy for a controversy over: the awarding of Florida's 25 electoral votes, the subsequent recount process in that state, and the unusual event of the winning candidate having received fewer popular votes than the runner-up.
  • November 7, 2000 - The Millennium Dome raid was an attempted robbery of the Millennium Dome's diamond exhibition in Greenwich, South East London. The De Beers diamond exhibition had a number of jewels on display including the Millennium Star, a flawless 203.04 carats (40.61 g) gem with an estimated worth of £200 million and considered one of the most perfect gems in the world. The operation to foil the robbery was the biggest operation undertaken in the flying squad's history.
  • 2000 - Almost all world leaders (e.g., China, Japan, South Africa, Pacific islands) expressed their disappointment over President George W. Bush's decision not to support the Kyoto Protocol.
  • January 31, 2000, a jury found one of the most prolific serial killers in recorded history - English doctor Harold Shipman guilty of 15 murders.
  • June 28, 2000 – Elian Gonzalez returns to Cuba with his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, ending a protracted custody battle.

2001

• • Terror alert systems are standardised emergency population warning systems for describing and disseminating information about terrorism-related threats. They became more popular after the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001.
  • July 20, 2001 - Carlo Giuliani was an Italian anti-globalist who was shot dead by a police officer during the demonstrations against the Group of Eight summit that was held in Genoa from July 19 to July 21, 2001. Giuliani was also run over, and may have been alive when it happened.
  • The Enron scandal, revealed in October 2001, eventually led to the bankruptcy of the Enron Corporation, an American energy company. In addition to being the largest bankruptcy reorganization in American history at that time, Enron was attributed as the biggest audit failure.

2002

• • Beginning in 2002, and continuing after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, large-scale protests against the Iraq War were held in many cities worldwide; 36 million people took part in almost 3,000 protests.
  • Not in Our Name (NION) was a United States organization founded on March 23, 2002 to protest the U.S. government's course in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks; it disbanded on March 31, 2008.
  • On 30 March 2002, at 3:15 pm, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother died in her sleep at the Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, with her surviving daughter, Queen Elizabeth II, at her bedside. She had been suffering from a cold for the last four months of her life. She was 101 years old, and at the time of her death was the longest-lived member of the royal family in British history.
  • The Beltway sniper attacks took place during three weeks in October 2002 in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. 10 people were killed and three other victims were critically injured in several locations throughout the Washington Metropolitan Area and along Interstate 95 in Virginia.
  • November 25, 2002 - The United States Department of Homeland Security was established by the Homeland Security Act of 2002.
  • Murder of Laci Peterson - an American woman, who was the subject of a highly discussed murder case after she went missing while seven and a half months pregnant with her first child. Peterson was reportedly last seen alive on December 24, 2002. Her husband, Scott Peterson, was later convicted of murder in the first degree for Laci's death, and in the second degree for the death of their prenatal son Conner.

2003

• • 2003-2004 Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal. During the War in Iraq, human rights violations, in the form of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, including torture, reports of rape, sodomy, and homicide of prisoners held in the Abu Ghraib prison Iraq.
  • In early 2003 Robin Cook a British Labour Party politician, was reported to be one of the cabinet's chief opponents of military action against Iraq, and on 17 March he resigned from the Cabinet. According to The Economists obituary, his resignation speech was the first (of any type) ever to receive a standing ovation in the history of the House of Commons.
  • February 2003 UK Prime Minister Tony Blair ordered light tanks to guard Heathrow airport and was citicized for over-reacting.
  • March 23, 2003 - American filmmaker Michael Moore was both applauded and booed at the Academy Awards when he used his Best Documentary Feature acceptance speech for Bowling for Columbine as an opportunity to proclaim his opposition to the United States-led invasion of Iraq, which had begun just a few days prior.
  • May 2003 - Concrete blocks were been placed around the British parliament buildings as London stepped up anti-terrorism measures.
  • July 17, 2003, Suicide of David Kelly - a British scientist and expert on biological warfare, employed by the British Ministry of Defence, and formerly a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq. Two days after aggressive televised questioning by the parliamentary foreign affairs select committee.
  • On September 5, 2003, American illusionist and endurance artist David Blaine began a 44-day endurance stunt sealed inside a transparent Plexiglas case suspended 9 metres (30 ft) in the air next to Potters Fields Park on the south bank of the River Thames, the area between City Hall and Tower Bridge in London; which became the subject of much media attention. The Guardian wrote, "Blaine has created one of the most eloquent and telling visual images of our time."

2004

• • In 2004, Martha Stewart an American: business magnate, author, magazine publisher, television personality; was entangled in the ImClone stock trading case. Stewart was imprisoned for: conspiracy, obstruction of an agency proceeding, and making false statements to federal investigators.
  • January 30, 2004, - Armin Meiwes a German man who achieved international notoriety for killing and eating a voluntary victim whom he had found via the Internet; was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to eight years in prison.
  • 5 February 2004 - The 2004 Morecambe Bay cockling disaster occurred at Morecambe Bay in North West England, when at least 21 Chinese cockle pickers were drowned by an incoming tide off the Lancashire/Cumbrian coast.
  • April 18, 2004 - Spain's new prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has given orders for Spanish troops in Iraq to be brought home in "as short a time as possible". In a televised address to the nation, he said he could not ignore what he called the will of the Spanish people.
  • Nick Berg was an American businessman who went to Iraq after the US invasion of Iraq. He was abducted and later beheaded in response to the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal, according to a video released on the Internet in May 2004.
  • September 15, 2004 - Parliament of the United Kingdom was suspended after five protesters burst into the House of Commons' chamber while MPs debated whether to ban hunting with dogs.
  • December 20, 2004 - The Northern Bank robbery was a large robbery of cash from the Donegall Square West headquarters of Northern Bank in Belfast, Northern Ireland. the gang seized the equivalent of £26.5 million in pounds sterling and small amounts of other currencies, largely euros and U.S. dollars. This made it the largest bank robbery in UK or Irish history.

2005

• • March 21, 2005 The Red Lake massacre was an incident of spree killing by Jeffrey Weise (aged 16) that occurred in two places on the Ojibwe Red Lake reservation in Red Lake, Minnesota, United States. 10 killed.
  • March 30, 2005 – Steve Fossett breaks a world record by completing the first non-stop, non-refueled, solo flight around the world in the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer.
  • April 2, 2005 - Pope John Paul II dies at 84 after an almost 26 1/2 year papacy.
  • April 7, 2005 - The UK Government passed a provision banning all unlicensed protests, permanent or otherwise, in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (sections 132 to 138).
  • April 19, 2005 - Papal conclave, 2005 elects Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI, the second non-Italian pontiff after John Paul II.
  • June 13, 2005 - In the child abuse trial of Michael Jackson; the jury found the singer not guilty on 10 charges, plus four lesser-included misdemeanor counts.
  • July 22, 2005 - Jean Charles de Menezes was a Brazilian man shot dead by the London Metropolitan Police at Stockwell tube station on the London Underground after he was misidentified as one of the fugitives involved in the previous day's failed bombing attempts.
  • August 2, 2005 – Air France Flight 358 crashes on landing at Toronto Pearson International Airport and engulfs in flames. All 309 people on board survive.
  • September 2, 2005, during a televised benefit concert for Hurricane Katrina relief on NBC, A Concert for Hurricane Relief, American singer Kanye West said "George Bush doesn't care about black people." At this point, the telethon producer cut off the microphone. West's comment reached much of the United States. Bush stated in an interview that the comment was "one of the most disgusting moments” of his presidency.
  • September 30, 2005 – Controversial drawings of Muhammad are printed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.
  • December 9, 2005 - The London Transport Executive Routemaster double-decker bus was officially withdrawn from general service in the UK.

2006

• • Cash for Honours (also Cash for Peerages, Loans for Lordships, Loans for Honours or Loans for Peerages) is the name given by some in the media to a political scandal in the United Kingdom in 2006 and 2007 concerning the connection between political donations and the award of life peerages.
  • The Identity Cards Act 2006 (c 15) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It provided National Identity Cards, a personal identification document and European Union travel document, linked to a database known as the National Identity Register (NIR).
  • In 2006, the UK government raised the possibility of loosening the prostitution laws and allowing small brothels in England and Wales, but in the end the plans to allow "mini brothels" were abandoned. Reform to UK prostitution laws
  • February 11, 2006, 46th Vice President of the United States Dick Cheney shot Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old Texas attorney, while participating in a quail hunt at Armstrong ranch in Kenedy County, Texas. Secret Service agents and medical aides, who were traveling with Cheney, came to Whittington's assistance and treated his birdshot wounds to his right cheek, neck, and chest.
  • February 21, 2006 - The Securitas depot robbery was the largest cash robbery in British history. Several men abducted and threatened the family of the manager, tied up fourteen staff members and stole £53,116,760 in bank notes from a Securitas Cash Management Ltd depot in Vale Road, Tonbridge, Kent.
  • September 4, 2006 - Australian wildlife expert, television personality, and conservationist Steve Irwin died after being pierced in the chest by a stingray barb while filming an underwater documentary film. News of his death prompted reactions around the world. In the weeks following, at least ten stingrays were found dead and mutilated on the beaches of Queensland, with their tails cut off, prompting speculation as to whether they might have been killed by fans of Irwin as an act of revenge.
  • October 17, 2006, US president George W. Bush signed into law the Military Commissions Act of 2006, a law which allows the U.S. government to prosecute unlawful enemy combatants by military commission rather than a standard trial. The law also denies them access to habeas corpus and allows the president to determine what constitutes torture.
  • November 3, 2006 - Malachi Ritscher was a musician, recording engineer, human rights activist, and anti-war protester. He came into the national spotlight through his self-immolation, an act of protest against the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

2007

• • The Celebrity Big Brother racism controversy was a series of events related to incidents of allegedly racist behaviour by contestants on the television series Celebrity Big Brother shown on British television station Channel 4. Which resulted in national and international media coverage, responses from the UK and Indian governments, and the show's suspension during the 2008 season.
  • April 16, 2007 – The Virginia Tech massacre killed 32 people and maimed many others before the gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, committed suicide. It became the deadliest shooting on a school campus as well as the deadliest shooting carried out by a single gunman in United States history.
  • June 16, 2007 Author Salman Rushdie was controversially knighted for services to literature in Queen Elizabeth II's Birthday Honours. Many nations with Muslim majorities protested. Parliamentarians of several of these countries condemned the action.
  • June 22, 2007 - Canadian professional wrestler Chris Benoit murdered his wife and son and subsequently hanged himself on June 24, 2007.
  • Titan Prison or Titan gaol was a proposed new classification of prison in England and Wales, designed to increase the overall prison capacity and improve operational efficiency. In plans announced in December 2007, the Titan concept included the proposed construction of three new prisons each housing 2,500 inmates, well above the 1,461 capacity of the largest prison at the time, HMP Wandsworth in London.
  • In December 2007, (UK) Asda, Sainsburys and the former Safeway supermarkets, admitted that they acted covertly against the interests of consumers while publicly claiming that they were supporting 5,000 farmers recovering from the foot-and-mouth crisis. They were fined a total of £116 million.

2008

• • Between 2008 and 2009 in the UK - Plans to cut the £150m-a-year subsidy for rural post offices, led to the announcement that 2500 local Post Offices were to be closed. This announcement resulted in a backlash from local communities that rely on the service. Post Office Ltd.
  • January 3, 2008 - English television presenter Mark Speight was arrested on suspicion of the actress and model Natasha Collins' murder. In April, Speight was reported missing and later discovered to have committed suicide by hanging himself near Paddington Station. The report of Speight's death on the BBC's children's news programme Newsround provoked complaints that it upset young viewers.
  • February 14, 2008 Northern Illinois University shooting. Steven Kazmierczak shot multiple people on the campus of Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois, United States, killing 5 and injuring twenty-one, before committing suicide.
  • February 25, 2008 - Footage showing the 2004 beheading of 12 Nepalese workers working for a Jordanian firm in Iraq, surfaced on the Internet.
  • In April 2008, The Office of Fair Trading named 112 companies that it says colluded to inflate the cost of a wide range of contracts worth billions of pounds, including tenders for schools, universities and hospitals. The list includes several publicly listed companies, including Balfour Beatty, Kier Group and Carillion, with 80 of the firms have already admitted participating in some form of bid-rigging, or have applied for leniency in return for assisting the OFT.
  • The Stafford Hospital scandal arose due to unusually high mortality rates amongst patients at the Stafford Hospital, Stafford, England. Many press reports suggested that because of the substandard care between 400 and 1200 more patients died between 2005 and 2008 than would be expected for the type of hospital.
  • August 22, 2008 – Somali pirates hijack German, Iranian, and Japanese cargo ships off the coast of Somalia, in seven such attacks since June 20.
  • October 13, 2008, The Act to extend the limit on the period of detention of terror suspects without charge in England and Wales, from 28 to 42 days, was dropped from the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 by a vote in the House of Lords.
  • November 27, 2008 - Damian Green - a British Conservative Member of Parliament, was arrested by the Metropolitan Police at his constituency home on suspicion of “aiding and abetting misconduct in public office” and “conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office”.
  • December 11, 2008 - The Madoff investment scandal. American Bernard Madoff was arrested for the largest Ponzi scheme in history. A $64.8bn fraud.

2009

• • Cash for Influence (also Cash for Amendments or Cash for Laws) is the name given by some in the media to a political scandal in the United Kingdom in 2009 concerning four Labour Party Life Peers offering to help make amendments to legislation for up to £120,000.
  • The United Kingdom parliamentary expenses scandal, was a major political scandal triggered by the leak and subsequent publication by the Telegraph Group of expense claims made by members of the United Kingdom Parliament over several years.
  • In 2009, American record producer and songwriter Phil Spector was convicted of second-degree murder in the 2003 shooting death of actress Lana Clarkson in his Alhambra, California home. He is serving a prison sentence of 19 years to life.
  • January 13, 2009 - Former UK Prime minister Tony Blair was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by US President George W. Bush.
  • January 15, 2009 – US Airways Flight 1549, an Airbus A320-214 N106US ditches in the Hudson River, New York City after both engines are disabled by a birdstrike. All passengers and crew are rescued.
  • March 19, 2009 - The Austrian Josef Fritzl case concluded with the accused sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for 15 years; for: murder, rape, incest, kidnapping, false imprisonment and slavery.
  • April 12, 2009, Capt. Richard Phillips was rescued, reportedly in good condition, from his pirate captors. U.S. Navy SEAL snipers opened fire and killed three pirates. Maersk Alabama hijacking.
  • May 23, 2009, - Former President of the Republic of Korea, Roh Moo-hyun, committed suicide by jumping from a mountain cliff, after leaving a suicide note on his personal computer.
  • The Iraq Inquiry, also referred to as the Chilcot Inquiry after its chairman, Sir John Chilcot, was a British public inquiry into the nation's role in the Iraq War. The inquiry was announced on 15 June 2009 by Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
  • Ian Clement was Deputy Mayor of London and a member of the Conservative Party, before being suspended following incidents involving financial issues. on 22 June 2009, Clements submitted his resignation, which London's Mayor Boris Johnson accepted.
  • August 6, 2009 - The Graff Diamonds robbery two men posing as customers entered the premises of Graff Diamonds in New Bond Street, London and stole jewellery worth nearly £40 million (US$65 million). It was believed to be the largest ever gems heist in Britain at the time, and the second largest British robbery.
  • October 9, 2009 - a national Iraq service of remembrance, attended by the queen and prime minister, held in England's St Paul's Cathedral; where a killed soldier's father refused to shake former prime minister Tony Blair's proferred hand saying: "I believe Tony Blair is a war criminal. I can't bear to be in the same room as him. I can't believe he's been allowed to come to this reception."
  • Nov 02, 2009 – US: 3.8 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles again recalled due to floor mat problem, this time for all driver's side mats 2009–11 Toyota vehicle recalls.
  • November 15, 2009, Delroy Easton Grant was arrested in connection with over 100 sexual offences in the South London area UK. The operation was the largest and most complex rape investigation ever undertaken by the Metropolitan Police.
  • December 10, 2009, - The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to U.S. President Barack Obama "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."
  • On December 18, 2009 - The 5-metre (16 ft), 41-kilogram (90 lb) wrought-iron "Arbeit macht frei" sign over the entrance to Auschwitz concentration camp was stolen. The sign was made by Polish workers on Nazi orders after the Auschwitz barracks were converted into a labor camp to house captured Polish resistance fighters in 1940. Police found the sign, cut into three parts, in northern Poland two days later in the home of one of five men who were arrested.

Culture

In November 2007, Time magazine published an article titled: The Death of French Culture

For French of all political colors, déclinisme has been a hot topic in recent years. Bookstores are full of jeremiads like France is Falling, The Great Waste, The War of the Two Frances and The Middle Class Adrift. Talk-show guests and opinion columnists decry France's fading fortunes,

Fine Arts

• Lucian Freud, was a German-born British painter. Known chiefly for his thickly impastoed portrait and figure paintings, he was widely considered the pre-eminent British artist of his time.

During a period from May 2000 to December 2001, Freud painted Queen Elizabeth II. There was criticism of this portrayal of the Queen in some sections of the British media. The highest selling tabloid newspaper, The Sun, was particularly condemnatory, describing the portrait as "a travesty".

• The Hockney–Falco thesis is a controversial theory of art history, advanced by artist David Hockney and physicist Charles M. Falco, suggesting that advances in realism and accuracy in the history of Western art since the Renaissance were primarily the result of optical aids such as the camera obscura, camera lucida, and curved mirrors, rather than solely due the development of artistic technique and skill. In a 2001 book, Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters, Hockney analyzed the work of the Old Masters and argued that the level of accuracy represented in their work is impossible to create by "eyeballing it". Since then, Hockney and Falco have produced a number of publications on positive evidence of the use of optical aids, and the historical plausibility of such methods.

• Rolf Harris is an Australian entertainer. He is a musician, a singer-songwriter, a composer, a painter, and a television personality.

In 2005 he painted an official portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, which was the subject of a special episode of Rolf on Art. Harris's portrait of The Queen was voted by readers of the Radio Times the third favourite portrait of Her Majesty. The royal portrait was exhibited at Buckingham Palace, the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, and was exhibited on a tour of public galleries in the UK.

• From April - June 2003, the English visual artists often known as The Chapman Brothers, held a solo show at Modern Art Oxford entitled The Rape of Creativity in which "the enfants terribles of Britart, bought a mint collection of Goya's most celebrated prints - and set about systematically defacing them". The Francisco Goya prints referred to his Disasters of War set of 80 etchings. The duo named their newly defaced works Insult to Injury. BBC described more of the exhibition's art: "Drawings of mutant Ronald McDonalds, a bronze sculpture of a painting showing a sad-faced Hitler in clown make-up and a major installation featuring a knackered old caravan and fake dog turds." The Daily Telegraph commented that the Chapman brothers had "managed to raise the hackles of art historians by violating something much more sacred to the art world than the human body - another work of art"

As a protest against this piece, Aaron Barschak (who later gate-crashed Prince William's 21st birthday party dressed as Osama bin Laden in a frock) threw a pot of red paint over Jake Chapman during a talk he was giving in May 2003.

• On May 5, 2004, a 1905 painting titled Garçon à la Pipe (English: Boy with a Pipe) by Pablo Picasso was sold for US$104,168,000 at Sotheby's auction in New York City. At the time, it broke the record for the amount paid for an auctioned painting (when inflation is ignored). The amount, US$104 million, includes the auction price of US$93 million plus the auction house’s commission of about US$11 million.

Many art critics have stated that the painting's high sale price has much more to do with the artist's name than with the merit or historical importance of the painting. The Washington Post's article on the sale contained the following characterisation of the reaction:

Picasso expert Pepe Karmel, reached in New York the morning after the sale, was waxing wroth about the whole affair. "I'm stunned," he said, "that a pleasant, minor painting could command a price appropriate to a real masterwork by Picasso. This just shows how much the marketplace is divorced from the true values of art."

• In May 24, 2004 - More than 100 artworks from the famous collection of art collector and sponsor of the Young British Artists (YBAs) Charles Saatchi's were destroyed in a warehouse fire on an industrial estate in Leyton, east London.

Modern art classics such as Tracey Emin's tent and works by Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas and Gary Hume were lost. Works by Patrick Caulfield, Craigie Horsfield and 20 pieces by Martin Maloney were also destroyed. They represent some of the cream of the so-named "Britart" movement of celebrated modern artists.

• In 2004, during Channel 5 (UK)'s 'Big Art Challenge' television program, despite proclaiming: "I hold video and photography in profound contempt." English art critic Brian Sewell noted for artistic conservatism and has been described as "Britain's most famous and controversial art critic".

went on to at least 3 times hail video artist (and ultimately the competition's winner) Chris Boyd (aged 21) a "genius".

• In June 2007, the English artist, entrepreneur and art collector Damien Hirst gained the European record for the most expensive work of art by a living artist, when his Lullaby Spring, (a 3-metre-wide steel cabinet with 6,136 pills) sold for 19.2 million dollars.

• In September 2008, Damien Hirst took an unprecedented move for a living artist by selling a complete show, Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, at Sotheby's by auction and by-passing his long-standing galleries. The auction exceeded all predictions, raising £111 million ($198 million), breaking the record for a one-artist auction.

• December 9, 2009 - Is when the most expensive drawing by an Old Master ever, was sold in an auction. Titled 'Head of a Muse' by Raphael; costing £29,200,000 ($47,788,400), at Christie's, London, UK.

Literature

Carol Ann Duffy, CBE, FRSL (born 23 December 1955) is a British poet and playwright. She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Britain's poet laureate in May 2009. She is the first woman, the first Scot, and the first openly LGBT person to hold the position.

Architecture

Commercialization and globalization resulted in mass migration of people from rural areas to urban areas resulting in high profile skyscrapers in Asia and Europe. In Asia skyscrapers were constructed in India, China, Thailand, South Korea, and Japan.

• The Millennium Bridge, London officially known as the London Millennium Footbridge, is a steel suspension bridge for pedestrians crossing the River Thames in London, England, linking Bankside with the City.

Londoners nicknamed the bridge the "Wobbly Bridge" after participants in a charity walk on behalf of Save the Children to open the bridge felt an unexpected, and, for some, uncomfortable, swaying motion on the first two days after the bridge opened. The bridge was closed later that day, and after two days of limited access the bridge was closed for almost two years while modifications were made to eliminate the wobble entirely. It was reopened in 2002.

• 30 St Mary Axe (informally also known as "the Gherkin" and previously the Swiss Re Building) is a skyscraper in London's financial district, the City of London, completed in December 2003 and opened at the end of May 2004.

The building has become an iconic symbol of London and is one of the city's most widely recognised examples of modern architecture.

• Wembley Stadium is a football stadium located in Wembley Park, in the Borough of Brent, London, England. It opened in 2007 and was built on the site of the previous 1923 Wembley Stadium. The earlier Wembley stadium, originally called the Empire Stadium, was often referred to as "The Twin Towers" and was one of the world's most famous football stadia until its demolition in 2003.

• A major redevelopment of London's Trafalgar Square led by WS Atkins with Foster and Partners as sub-consultants was completed in 2003. The work involved closing the main eastbound road along the north side, diverting the traffic around the other three sides of the square, demolishing the central section of the northern retaining wall and inserting a wide set of steps leading up to a pedestrianised terrace in front of the National Gallery. The construction includes two lifts for disabled access, public toilets, and a small café. Previously, access between the square and the Gallery was by two crossings at the northeast and northwest corners of the square.

• Taipei 101 became the tallest building in the world ever built after it officially opened on December 31, 2004, a record it held until the opening of the Burj Khalifa (Formerly known as Burj Dubai) in January 2010, standing at 828 m (2,717 ft).

Popular culture

The American comedian Chris Rock from his Never Scared stand-up performance HBO, 2004:

• Everybody's so busy wanting to be down with the gang. "I'm conservative", "I'm liberal", "I'm conservative".

...Crime, I'm conservative. Prostitution, I'm liberal!

• If you mention to a woman that the song is disgusting and mysoginistic, they all give you the same answer: "He ain't talking 'bout me!"

• Hey, man don't let all this celebrity garbage fool you. It's all just a trick to get your mind...off...the...war.

• When did clear heels become the new whore uniform? When did that happen? Was there a big ho convention, and all the hoes got together and said: "We need something new! Something that just says nasty"...And one girl said: "I got it!

Clear heels!" Ooh, girl, you disgusting!"

Yahoo!'s Victoria Leigh Miller, described 2000-2009 as: 'a Decade Filled with Sudden Celebrity Deaths'.

Film

Usage of computer-generated imagery became more widespread in films during the 2000s. Documentary and mockumentary films, such as March of the Penguins and Super Size Me, were popular in the 2000s. 2004's Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore is the highest grossing documentary of all time. Online films become popular, and conversion to digital cinema started, but was not finished. This conversion is still continuing into the 2010s.

December 2009's Avatar is an American epic science fiction film written and directed by James Cameron. It made extensive use of cutting edge motion capture filming techniques, and was released for traditional viewing, 3D viewing (using the RealD 3D, Dolby 3D, XpanD 3D, and IMAX 3D formats), and for "4D" experiences in select South Korean theaters. The stereoscopic filmmaking was touted as a breakthrough in cinematic technology.

3D films became more and more successful throughout the 2000s, culminating in the unprecedented success of 3D presentations of Avatar.

• Roger Ebert is an American journalist, film critic and screenwriter, who has been described by Forbes as "the most powerful pundit in America";

has been skeptical of the recent resurgence of 3D effects in film, which he has found unrealistic and distracting.

• In August 2004, American horror author Stephen King, in a column, criticized what he saw as a growing trend of leniency towards films from critics. His main criticism was that films, citing Spider-Man 2 as an example, were constantly given four star ratings that they did not deserve.

"formerly reliable critics who seem to have gone remarkably soft -- not to say softhearted and sometimes softheaded -- in their old age."

• In July 2005, it was reported that the Scottish actor and producer Sir Sean Connery had decided to retire, due to disillusionment with the "idiots now in Hollywood"' Telling the New Zealand Herald: "I'm fed up with the idiots... the ever-widening gap between people who know how to make movies and the people who greenlight the movies."

• Oscar winners: Gladiator (2000), A Beautiful Mind (2001), Chicago (2002), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Million Dollar Baby (2004), Crash (2005), The Departed (2006), No Country for Old Men (2007), Slumdog Millionaire (2008), The Hurt Locker (2009)

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is a 2003 epic fantasy-drama film directed by Peter Jackson based on the second and third volumes of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. It was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and won all the categories for which it was nominated. The film is tied for largest number of awards won with Ben-Hur (1959) and Titanic (1997).

• The 20 highest-grossing films of the decade are (in order from highest to lowest grossing): Avatar, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, The Dark Knight, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Shrek 2, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Spider-Man 3, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Finding Nemo, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Shrek the Third.
• The top 15 highest-grossing film series of the decade are (in order from highest to lowest grossing): Harry Potter-film series, Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Pirates of the Caribbean-film series, Spider-Man-film series, Shrek-film series, Ice Age-film series, Transformers-film series, X-Men-film series, Batman-film series' Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Star Wars Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons, The Matrix-film series' The Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions, The Chronicles of Narnia-film series, Mission: Impossible-film series' and The Mummy-film series.

• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is a 2007 American adventure fantasy swashbuckler, the third film in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, and was the most expensive film ever made, with a budget of 300 million US dollars.

• The Passion of the Christ is a 2004 American film directed by Mel Gibson and starring Jim Caviezel as Jesus Christ. The film has been highly controversial and received mixed reviews; however, it was a major commercial hit, grossing in excess of $600 million during its theatrical release, becoming the highest grossing R-rated film of all time.

• For five years, between 2004's Home on the Range and 2009's The Princess and the Frog animated, musical, comedy films; Walt Disney Animation Studios stopped their production of traditional 2D animated films.

Music

The Internet allowed unprecedented access to music and allowed artists to distribute music freely without label backing. Innumerable online outlets and sheer volume of music has resulted in a culture of many niches and no center, a process begun at the mainstream level with the rise of alternative rock in the 1990s. It also offers musicians a plethora of musical influences to draw from.

By the 2000s, Rap and Hip Hop had reached their commercial peaks, inspired the Bling-bling culture, and the genre continued to dominate the music scene of the decade The best-selling artist of the decade was the American rapper Eminem, who sold 32 million albums, followed by The Beatles (who split in 1970 but have stayed extremely popular since). The best-selling female artist of the decade was Britney Spears.

Billboard magazine named Eminem as the artist with the best performance on the Billboard charts and named Beyoncé as the female artist of the decade. In the UK, the biggest selling artist of the decade is Robbie Williams* and the biggest selling band of the decade is Westlife. The American recording artist Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009, creating the largest public mourning since the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997. On August 25, 2001, Aaliyah Haughton - an American recording artist, dancer, actress and model and eight others, were killed in an airplane crash in The Bahamas after filming the music video for the single "Rock the Boat". On April 25, 2002, Lisa Lopes an American: rapper, dancer, and singer-songwriter, best known as a member of the R&B/hip-hop girl group TLC by her stage name Left Eye, was killed in a car crash in La Ceiba, Honduras. On October 30, 2002, Jason William Mizell (Jam Master Jay) from the Run-D.M.C hiphop group, was shot and killed in a Merrick Boulevard recording studio in Jamaica, Queens. Innovator, inventor, performer and guitar virtuoso Les Paul also died on August 12, 2009 at the age of 94.

• In 2002, Robbie Williams signed a record-breaking £80 million contract with EMI. So far it is the biggest music deal in British history.

In Alternative rock, the so-called garage rock or Post-punk revival saw commercial success with The Strokes, Interpol, Arctic Monkeys and The White Stripes having mainstream success. The late 2000s displayed a new trend in music, Auto-Tune. In the early 2000s, autotune had been common with artists such as *NSYNC and Eiffel 65. The decade also brought in more dance and electronic music toward the end of the decade and even less rock music in the mainstream. Hip hop music also saw a decline in the mainstream during the late 2000s because of electronic music's rising popularity. According to The Guardian, music styles during the 2000s changed very little from how they were at last half of the 1990s. The 2000s had a profound impact on the condition of music distribution. Recent advents in digital technology have fundamentally altered industry and marketing practices as well as players in unusual rapidity. According to Nielsen Soundscan, by 2009 CDs accounted for 79 percent of album sales, with 20 percent coming from digital, representing both a 10 percent drop and gain for both formats in 2 years.

Grime is a style of music that emerged from Bow, East London, England in the early 2000s, primarily as a development of UK garage, drum & bass, hip hop and dancehall. Pioneers of the style include English rappers Dizzee Rascal, Wiley, Roll Deep and Skepta.

The Invincible (Michael Jackson album), released in October 30, 2001, and costing $30m, was the most expensive ever made.

In July 2002, the release of English musician George Michael's song "Shoot the Dog" proved to be controversial. It was critical of George W. Bush and Tony Blair in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The video showed a cartoon version of Michael astride a nuclear missile in the Middle East and Tony and Cherie Blair in bed with President Bush.

The Dixie Chicks are an American country music band. During a London concert ten days before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, lead vocalist Maines said, "we don't want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas". The positive reaction to this statement from the British audience contrasted with the boycotts that ensued in the U.S., where "the band was assaulted by talk-show conservatives", while their albums were discarded in public protest.

The original music video for the title song from American pop singer Madonna's American Life album, was canceled as Madonna thought that the video, featuring violence and war imagery, would be deemed unpatriotic since America was then at war with Iraq.

Live 8 was a string of benefit concerts that took place on 2 July 2005, in the G8 states and in South Africa. They were timed to precede the G8 conference and summit held at the Gleneagles Hotel in Auchterarder, Scotland from 6–8 July 2005; they also coincided with the 20th anniversary of Live Aid. Run in support of the aims of the UK's Make Poverty History campaign and the Global Call for Action Against Poverty, ten simultaneous concerts were held on 2 July and one on 6 July. On 7 July, the G8 leaders pledged to double 2004 levels of aid to poor nations from US$25 billion to US$50 billion by the year 2010. Half of the money was to go to Africa.

More than 1,000 musicians performed at the concerts, which were broadcast on 182 television networks and 2,000 radio networks.

Joyce Hatto (5 September 1928 – 29 June 2006) was a British concert pianist and piano teacher. Married in 1956 to William Barrington-Coupe, a British record producer convicted of fraud in 1966, Hatto became famous very late in life when unauthorised copies of commercial recordings made by other pianists were released under her name, earning her high praise from critics. The fraud did not come to light until a few months after her death.

By November 2006, the Rolling Stones English rock band's A Bigger Bang tour, had been declared the highest-grossing tour of all time, earning $437 million.

In December 2009, a campaign was launched on Facebook by Jon and Tracy Morter, from South Woodham Ferrers, which generated publicity in the UK and took the 1992 Rage Against The Machine track "Killing in the Name" to the Christmas Number One slot in the UK Singles Chart, which had been occupied the four consecutive years from 2005 by winners from the TV show The X Factor.

Rage's Zack de la Rocha spoke to BBC1 upon hearing the news, stating that:

"...We want to thank everyone that participated in this incredible, organic, grass-roots campaign. It says more about the spontaneous action taken by young people throughout the UK to topple this very sterile pop monopoly."

A chiptune (also known as chip music or 8-bit music) is synthesized electronic music often produced with the sound chips of vintage computers, video game consoles, and arcade machines, as well as with other methods such as emulation.

While it has been a mostly underground genre, chiptune has had periods of moderate popularity in the 1980s and 21st century, and has influenced the development of electronic dance music.

During the late 2000s, a new wave of chiptune culture took place, boosted by the release of software such as LittleSoundDJ for the Game Boy. This new culture has much more emphasis on live performances and record releases than the demoscene and tracker culture, of which the new artists are often only distantly aware.

Reunions

Duran Duran are an English New Wave band, formed in Birmingham in 1978. The original five members reunited in the early 2000s.

On February 23, 2003, Simon and Garfunkel reunited to perform in public for the first time in a decade, singing "The Sound of Silence" as the opening act of the Grammy Awards.

On 9 May 2006, British five-piece vocal pop Take That returned to the recorded music scene after more than ten years of absence, signing with Polydor Records. The band's comeback album, Beautiful World, entered the UK album chart at no. 1.

On 10 December 2007 English rock band Led Zeppelin reunited for the one-off Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert at The O2 Arena in London. According to Guinness World Records 2009, Led Zeppelin set the world record for the "Highest Demand for Tickets for One Music Concert" as 20 million requests for the reunion show were rendered online.

Television

American television in the 2000s saw the sharp increase in popularity of reality television, with numerous competition shows such as American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, Survivor and The Apprentice attracting large audiences, as well as documentary or narrative style shows such as Big Brother, The Hills, The Real Housewives, Cheaters, among many others. The decade has since seen a steady decline in the number of sitcoms and an increase in reality shows, crime and medical dramas, such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, House M.D., and Grey's Anatomy, paranormal/crime shows like Medium (2005–2011) and Ghost Whisperer (2005–2010), and action/drama shows, including 24 and Lost. Comedy-dramas have became more serious, dealing with such hot button issues, such as drugs, teenage pregnancy, and gay rights. Popular comedy-drama programs include Desperate Housewives, Ugly Betty, and Glee. Adult-oriented animated programming also continued a sharp upturn in popularity with controversial cartoons like *South Park (1997-today) and Family Guy (1999–2002, 2005-today) along with the longtime running cartoon The Simpsons (1989-today). The decade also saw the return of prime time soap operas, a genre that had been popular in the 1980s and early 1990s, these include; Dawsons Creek (1998-2003) The O.C. (2003-2007), One Tree Hill (2003–2012), Desperate Housewives (2004-2012) was perhaps the most popular television series of this genre since Dallas and Dynasty in the 1980s, ER although started in 1994 ended its run in 2009 after 15 years.

• South Park controversies: Action for Children's Television founder Peggy Charren, despite being an outspoken opponent of censorship, claims that South Park's use of language and racial slurs represents the depravity of Western civilization, and is "dangerous to the democracy".

Brass Eye is a UK television series of satirical spoof documentaries. A series of six aired on Channel 4 in 1997, and a further episode in 2001. The series was created by Chris Morris.

The series was repeated in 2001 along with a new show. It tackled paedophilia and the moral panic in parts of the British media following the murder of Sarah Payne, focusing on the name-and-shame campaign conducted by the News of the World in its wake.

Around 3,000 complaints were received and politicians spoke out against Morris. Beverley Hughes described the show as "unspeakably sick" but later admitted she had not seen it, and David Blunkett said he was "dismayed" by it. It later emerged that he also had not seen the episode, because he is blind. Tessa Jowell, after watching, asked the Independent Television Commission to reinstate censorship to ban similar programmes. There was also a tabloid campaign against Morris, who refused to discuss the issue.

The X Factor in the UK has been subject to much controversy and criticism since its launch in September 2004. Controversy and criticism of The X Factor (UK).

Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy: Super Bowl XXXVIII, which was broadcast live on February 1, 2004 from Houston, Texas on the CBS television network in the United States, was noted for a controversial halftime show in which singer Janet Jackson's breast, adorned with a nipple shield, was exposed by singer Justin Timberlake for about half a second, in what was later referred to as a "wardrobe malfunction". The incident, sometimes referred to as Nipplegate, was widely discussed. Along with the rest of the halftime show, it led to an immediate crackdown and widespread debate on perceived indecency in broadcasting.

January 2005 - Jerry Springer: The Opera was the subject of controversy, when its UK television broadcast on BBC Two elicited 55,000 complaints. The most complained about television event ever.

In May 2005, UK viewers inundated the Advertising Standards Authority with complaints regarding the continuous airing of the latest Crazy Frog advertisements. The intensity of the advertising was unprecedented in British television history. According to The Guardian, Jamster bought 73,716 spots across all TV channels in May alone — an average of nearly 2,378 slots daily — at a cost of about £8 million, just under half of which was spent on ITV. 87% of the population saw the Crazy Frog adverts an average of 26 times, 15% of the adverts appeared twice during the same advertising break and 66% were in consecutive ad breaks. An estimated 10% of the population saw the advert more than 60 times. This led to many members of the population finding the crazy frog, as its original name suggests, immensely irritating.

In December 2005, English comedian, actor, singer-songwriter, screenwriter and director Victoria Wood declared: "The sitcom is dead. I think it died when The Royle Family and The Office came on. You couldn't go back to a studio audience sitcom because The Office was too good. Everything is naturalistic now, where before it was contrived."

Blue Peter (the world's longest-running children's television programme) rigged a phone-in competition supporting the UNICEF "Shoe Biz Appeal" on 27 November 2006. The person who appeared to be calling in the competition was actually a Blue Peter Team Player who was visiting that day. The visitor pretended to be a caller from an outside line who had won the phone-in and the chance to select a prize. The competition was rigged due to a technical error with receiving the calls.

In July 2007, Blue Peter was given a £50,000 fine, by the Office of Communications (OFCOM) as a result of rigging the competition.

I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! is a reality television game show series, originally created in the United Kingdom, and licensed globally to other countries. In its 2009 series, celebrity chef Gino D'Acampo killed, cooked and ate a rat. The Australian RSPCA investigated the incident and sought to prosecute D'Acampo and actor Stuart Manning for animal cruelty after this episode of the show was aired. ITV was fined £1,600 and the two celebrities involved were not prosecuted for animal cruelty despite being charged with the offense by the New South Wales Police.

Although there were less in this decade than there were in the 1990s, the 2000s still saw many popular and notable sitcoms, including Will and Grace, Malcolm in the Middle, The King of Queens, Arrested Development, How I Met Your Mother, Scrubs, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Office, Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and 30 Rock, among many others. A trend seen in several sitcoms of the late 2000s was the absence of a laugh track.

The decade also saw the rise of premium cable dramas such as The Sopranos, Deadwood, The Wire, Battlestar Galactica, Breaking Bad and Mad Men, all of which received critical accolades and attention from academe. The nuanced scripts, character depth, and allusiveness of these shows helped set new standards for quality on television. The critic Daniel Mendelsohn wrote a critique of Mad Men in which he also claimed this last decade was a golden age for episodic television, citing Battlestar Galactica, The Wire, and the network series Friday Night Lights as especially deserving of critical and popular attention.

Ended series

Tomorrow's World was a long-running BBC television series, showcasing new developments in the world of science and technology. First aired on 7 July 1965 on BBC1, it ran for 38 years until it was cancelled at the beginning of 2003.

Brookside is a British soap opera set in Liverpool, England. The series began on the launch night of Channel 4 on 2 November 1982, and ran for 21 years until 4 November 2003.

In January 2004, the BBC cancelled the Kilroy show (which had ran for 18 years), after an article entitled 'We owe Arabs nothing' written by its host Robert Kilroy-Silk was published in the Sunday Express tabloid newspaper.

Friends is an American sitcom which aired on NBC from September 22, 1994, to May 6, 2004. Friends received positive reviews throughout its run, becoming one of the most popular sitcoms of all time.

Frasier is an American sitcom that was broadcast on NBC for eleven seasons from September 16, 1993, to May 13, 2004. It was one of the most successful spin-off series in television history, as well as one of the most critically acclaimed comedy series.

On 20 June 2006, after 42 years, British music chart show Top of the Pops was formally cancelled and it was announced that the last edition would be broadcast on 30 July 2006.

Grandstand is a British television sport programme. Broadcast between 1958 and 2007, it was one of the BBC's longest running sports shows.

After 30 years, British television drama series Grange Hill (originally made by the BBC) was cancelled and the last episode was shown on 15 September 2008.

Series returns

The Flower Pot Men is a British children's programme, produced by BBC television, first transmitted in 1952, and repeated regularly for more than twenty years, which was produced in a new version in 2000.

Absolutely Fabulous, also known as Ab Fab, is a British sitcom. The show has had an extended and sporadic run. The first three series were broadcast on the BBC from 1992 to 1995, followed by a series finale in the form of a two-part television film entitled The Last Shout in 1996. Creator Jennifer Saunders revived the show for a fourth series in 2001.

Gadget and the Gadgetinis is a spinoff of the classic series Inspector Gadget (1983 to 1986), developed by DiC in cooperation with Haim Saban's SIP Animation and produced from 2001 to 2003. There are 52 episodes.

Basil Brush from 1962 to 1984, The Basil Brush Show from 2002 to 2007. Basil Brush is a fictional anthropomorphic red fox, best known for his appearances on daytime British children's television. He is primarily portrayed by a glove puppet.

Shooting Stars is a British television comedy panel game broadcast on BBC Two as a pilot in 1993, then as 3 full series from 1995 to 1997, then on BBC Choice from January to December 2002 with 2 series before returning to BBC Two for another 3 series from 2008 until its cancellation in 2011.

Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The show is a significant part of British popular culture. The programme originally ran from 1963 to 1989. After an unsuccessful attempt to revive regular production in 1996 with a backdoor pilot in the form of a television film, the programme was relaunched in 2005.

Family Fortunes is a British game show, based on the American game show Family Feud. The programme ran on ITV from 6 January 1980 to 6 December 2002 before being revived by the same channel in 2006 under the title of All Star Family Fortunes. Revived episodes are currently being shown on ITV on Sunday evenings and have been presented by Vernon Kay since 2006.

Gladiators is a British television entertainment series, produced by LWT for ITV, and broadcast between October 10, 1992 and January 1, 2000. It is an adaptation of the American format American Gladiators. The success of the British series spawned further adaptations in Australia and Sweden. The series was revived in 2008, before again being cancelled in 2009.

Rab C. Nesbitt is a British sitcom which began in 1988. The first series began on 27 September 1990 and continued for seven more, ending on 18 June 1999 and returning with a one-off special on 23 December 2008.

Red Dwarf is a British comedy franchise which primarily comprises ten series (including a ninth mini-series named Back To Earth) of a television science fiction sitcom that aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1993 and from 1997 to 1999 and on Dave in 2009.

Radio

The 2000s saw a decrease in the popularity of radio as more listeners starting using MP3 players in their cars to customize driving music. Satellite radio receivers started selling at a much higher rate, which allowed listeners to pay a subscription fee for thousands of ad-free stations. Clear Channel Communications was the largest provider of radio entertainment in the United States with over 900 stations nation-wide. Many radio stations began streaming their content over the Internet, allowing a market expansion far beyond the reaches of a radio transmitter.

During the 2000s, FM radio faced its toughest competition ever for in-car entertainment. iPod, satellite radio, and HD radio were all new options for commuters. CD players had a steady decline in popularity throughout the 2000s but stayed prevalent in most vehicles, while cassette tapes became virtually obsolete.

• August 27, 2001 - Hot 97 shock jock Star (real name Troi Torain) was suspended indefinitely for mocking R&B star Aaliyah's death on the air. by playing a tape of a woman screaming while a crash is heard in the background. Close to 32,000 people signed a "No More Star" online petition.

• In a 2008 edition of his (American) radio show, John Gibson commented on actor Heath Ledger's death the day before. He opened the segment with funeral music and played a clip of Jake Gyllenhaal's famous line "I wish I knew how to quit you" from Ledger's film Brokeback Mountain; he then said "Well, I guess he found out how to quit you." Among other remarks, Gibson called Ledger a "weirdo" with "a serious drug problem". The next day, he addressed outcry over his remarks by saying that they were in the context of jokes he had been making for months about Brokeback Mountain, and that "There's no point in passing up a good joke." Gibson later apologized on his television and radio shows.

Video games

The world of video games reached the 7th Generation in the form of consoles like the Wii, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 by the mid-2000s. The number-one-selling game console as of the decade, the PlayStation 2, was released in 2000 and remained popular up to the end of the decade, even after the PlayStation 3 was released. The Playstation 2 discontinued in January 2013. MMORPGs, originating in the mid-to-late 1990s, become a popular PC trend and virtual online worlds become a reality as games such as RuneScape (2001), Final Fantasy XI (2002), Eve Online (2003), Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided (2003), World of Warcraft (2004), and Everquest II (2004), The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar (2007) and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (2008) are released. These worlds come complete with their own economies and social organization as directed by the players as a whole. The persistent online worlds allow the games to remain popular for many years. World of Warcraft, premiered in 2004, remains one of the most popular games in PC gaming and is still being developed into the 2010s.

The Grand Theft Auto series sparked a fad of Mature-rated video games based on including gang warfare, drug use, and perceived "senseless violence" into gameplay. Though violent video games date back to the early 1990s, they became much more common after 2000.

Grand Theft Auto IV is a 2008 Open world action-adventure video game developed by Rockstar North. Prior to and since its release, the game has been subject to a great deal of controversy. Controversies surrounding Grand Theft Auto IV.

October 29, 2007 - Manhunt 2 - a controversial stealth-based psychological horror video game published by Rockstar Games was suspended by Take-Two Interactive (Rockstar's parent company) when it was refused classification in the United Kingdom, Italy and Ireland, and given an Adults Only (AO) rating in the United States. As neither Sony nor Nintendo allow AO titles on their systems, this effectively meant the game was banned in the US.

The 7th generation sparked a rise in first person shooting games led by Halo: Combat Evolved, which changed the formula of the first person shooter. Halo 2 started online console gaming and was on top of the Xbox live charts until its successor, Halo 3, took over. Some other popular first-person shooters during the 2000s include the Medal of Honor series, with Medal of Honor: Frontline's release in 2002 bringing the first game in the series to 7th generation consoles.

In the late 2000s, motion controlled video games grew in popularity, from the PlayStation 2's EyeToy to Nintendo's successful Wii console. During the decade 3D video games become the staple of the video-game industry, with 2D games nearly fading from the market. Partially 3D and fully 2D games were still common in the industry early in the decade, but these have now become rare as developers look almost exclusively for fully 3D games to satisfy the increasing demand for them in the market. An exception to this trend is the indie gaming community, which often produces games featuring 'old-school' or retro gaming elements, such as Minecraft and Shadow Complex. These games, which are not developed by the industry giants, are often available in the form of downloadable content from services such as Microsoft's Xbox Live or Apple's App Store and usually cost much less than more major releases.

Dance Dance Revolution was released in Japan and later the United States, where it became immensely popular among teenagers. Another music game, Guitar Hero, was released in North America in 2005 and had a huge cultural impact on both the music and video games industries. It became a worldwide billion-dollar franchise within three years, spawning several sequels and leading to the creation of a competing franchise, Rock Band.

Japanese media giant Nintendo released 9 out of the 10 top selling games of the 2000s, further establishing the company's dominance over the market.

Arcade video games had declined in popularity so much by the late 1990s, that revenues in the United States dropped to $1.33 billion in 1999, and reached a low of $866 million in 2004. Furthermore, by the early 2000s, networked gaming via computers and then consoles across the Internet had also appeared, replacing the venue of head-to-head competition and social atmosphere once provided solely by arcades.

The arcades also lost their status as the forefront of new game releases.

Worldwide, arcade game revenues gradually increased from $1.8 billion in 1998 to $3.2 billion in 2002, rivalling PC game sales of $3.2 billion that same year. In particular, arcade video games are a thriving industry in China, where arcades are widespread across the country. The US market has also experienced a slight resurgence, with the number of video game arcades across the nation increasing from 2,500 in 2003 to 3,500 in 2008, though this is significantly less than the 10,000 arcades in the early 1980s. As of 2009, a successful arcade game usually sells around 4000 to 6000 units worldwide.

Sega Corporation usually styled as SEGA, is a Japanese multinational video game software developer and an arcade software and hardware development company headquartered in Japan, with various offices around the world. Sega previously developed and manufactured its own brand of home video game consoles from 1983 to 2001, but a restructure was announced on January 31, 2001 that ceased continued production of its existing home console, effectively exiting the company from the home console business.

Neo Geo is a family of video game hardware developed by SNK. The brand originated in 1990 with the release of an arcade system, the Neo Geo MVS and its home console counterpart, the Neo Geo AES. The Neo Geo brand was officially discontinued in 2004.

Sports

The Sydney Games, held in 2000, followed the hundredth anniversary of the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996. The Athens Games, in 2004, were also a strong symbol, for modern Olympic Games were inspired by the competitions organized in Ancient Greece. Finally, the Beijing Games saw the emergence of China as a major sports power, with the highest number of titles for the first time. The 2002 Salt Lake City and the 2006 Turin Winter Olympic Games were also major events, though less popular.

A number of concerns and controversies over the 2008 Summer Olympics surfaced before, during, and after the 2008 Summer Olympic games, and which received major media coverage. Leading up to the Olympics, there were concerns about human rights in China, such that many high-profile individuals, such as politicians and celebrities, announced intentions to boycott the games to protest China's role in the Darfur conflict, and Myanmar, its stance towards Tibet, or other aspects of its human rights record.

In a 2008 TIME magazine article entitled 'Why Nobody's Boycotting Beijing' Vivienne Walt wrote: 'Leaders in power are more mindful of China's colossal clout in an increasingly shaky world economy, and therefore of the importance of keeping good relations with its government.'

One of the most prominent events of the 2008 Summer Olympics held in Beijing was the achievement of Michael Phelps the American swimmer, frequently cited as the greatest swimmer and one of the greatest Olympians of all time. He has won 14 career Olympic gold medals, the most by any Olympian. As of August 2, 2009, Phelps has broken thirty-seven world records in swimming. Phelps holds the record for the most gold medals won in a single Olympics, his eight at the 2008 Beijing Games surpassed American swimmer Mark Spitz's seven-gold performance at Munich in 1972.

Usain Bolt of Jamaica dominated the male sprinting events at the Beijing Olympics, in which he broke three world records, allowing him to be the first man to ever accomplish this at a single Olympic game. He holds the world record for the 100 metres (despite slowing down before the finish line to celebrate), the 200 metres and, along with his teammates, the 4x100 metres relay.

In 2001, after the 9/11 attacks, both the National Football League and Major League Baseball canceled their upcoming games for a week. As a result, the World Series would be played in November for the first time and the Super Bowl would be played in February for the first time.

The Fox hunting sport is controversial, particularly in the UK, where it was banned in Scotland in 2002, and in England and Wales in November 2004 (law enforced from February 2005), though shooting foxes as vermin remained legal.

Ron Atkinson, is an English former football player and manager. In recent years he has become one of Britain's best-known football pundits. Ron Atkinson's media work came to an abrupt halt on 21 April 2004, when he was urged to resign from ITV by Brian Barwick after he broadcast a racial remark live on air about the black Chelsea player Marcel Desailly; believing the microphone to be switched off, he said, "...he is what is known in some schools as a lazy nigger".

Association football's important events included two World Cups, one organized in South Korea, Japan, which saw Brazil win a record fifth title, and the other in Germany, which saw Italy's fourth title. The regional competitions Copa América and Euro Cup saw 5 nations rising the cup, Colombia (2001) and Brazil (2004, 2007) won the Copa América, and France (2000), Greece (2004) and Spain (2008) won the Euro Cup.

Rugby increased in size and audience, as the Rugby World Cup became the third most watched sporting event in the world with the 2007 Rugby World Cup organized in France.

Bloodgate is the nickname for a rugby union scandal involving the English team Harlequins in their Heineken Cup match against the Irish side Leinster on 12 April 2009. It was so called because of the use of fake blood capsules, and has been seen by some as one of the biggest scandals in rugby since professionalisation in the mid-1990s, indeed even as an argument against the professional ethos. The name is a pun on Watergate.

The New York Yankees won the first Major League Baseball World Series of the decade (2000), as well as the last World Series of the decade (2009).

The Boston Red Sox won the World Series of Major League Baseball in 2004, their first since 1918, and then again in 2007.

The Pittsburgh Steelers won a record sixth Super Bowl on February 1, 2009, against the Arizona Cardinals

In September 2004, Chelsea F.C. footballer Adrian Mutu failed a drugs test for cocaine and was released on 29 October 2004. He also received a seven-month ban and a £20,000 fine from the FA.

Michael Schumacher, the most titled F1 driver, won five F1 World Championships during the decade and finally retired in 2006, yet eventually confirming his come-back to F1 for 2010. Lance Armstrong won all the Tour de France between 1999 and 2005, also an all-time record, but was later stripped of all his titles when evidence emerged of his use of performance enhancing drugs. Swiss tennis player Roger Federer won 16 Grand Slam titles to become the most titled player.

The 2006 Italian football scandal involved Italy's top professional football leagues, Serie A and Serie B. The scandal was uncovered in May 2006 by Italian police, implicating league champions Juventus, and other major teams including AC Milan, Fiorentina, Lazio, and Reggina when a number of telephone interceptions showed a thick network of relations between team managers and referee organisations. Juventus were the champions of Serie A at the time. The teams have been accused of rigging games by selecting favourable referees.

2006 FIFA World Cup Final in Berlin, Zinedine Zidane widely considered by experts and fans as one of the greatest football players of all time, was sent off in the 110th minute of the game, which was to be the last match of his career; after headbutting Marco Materazzi in the chest, so he did not participate in the penalty shootout which Italy won 5–3. It was later discovered through interviews that Materazzi had insulted Zidane's mother and sister that last moment which is what led to Zidane's heightened anger and reaction.

January 11, 2007 - When English footballer David Beckham joined the Major League Soccer's Los Angeles Galaxy, he was given the highest player salary in the league's history; with his playing contract with the Galaxy over the next three years being worth US$6.5m per year.

October 2007 - US world champion track and field athlete Marion Jones admitted that she took performance-enhancing drugs as far back as the 2000 Summer Olympics, and that she had lied about it to a grand jury investigating performance-enhancer creations.

November 29, 2007 - Portsmouth F.C. football manager Harry Redknapp angrily denied any wrongdoing after being arrested by police investigating alleged corruption in football: "If you are telling me this is how you treat anyone, it is not the society I grew up in."

The 2008 Wimbledon final between Roger Federer of Switzerland and Rafael Nadal of Spain, has been lauded as the greatest match ever by many long-time tennis analysts.

British Formula One racing driver Lewis Hamilton, was disqualified from the 2009 Australian Grand Prix for providing "misleading evidence" during the stewards' hearing. He later privately apologised to FIA race director Charlie Whiting for having lied to the stewards.

In 2009, the World football transfer record was set by the Spanish football club Real Madrid C.F.'s buying of Manchester United's player Cristiano Ronaldo, for 80 million GBP (93 million euros).

Manchester United veteran Sir Bobby Charlton said the world-record offer shocked him:

"It's a lot of money, it's crazy really. If you want to be in the race, you have to pay the price, it seems sometimes a little bit vulgar."

Steroids also spread the sports world throughout the decade, mainly used in Major League Baseball. Players such as Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa, and Alex Rodriguez.

Writing

• The decade saw the rise of digital media as opposed to the use of print, and the steady decline of printed books in countries where e-readers had become available.
• The deaths of John Updike, Hunter S. Thompson, and other authors marked the end of various major writing careers influential during the late 20th century.
• Popular book series such as Harry Potter, Twilight and Dan Brown's "Robert Langdon" (consisting of The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, and The Lost Symbol) saw increased interest in various genres such as fantasy, romance, vampire fiction, and detective fiction, as well as young-adult fiction in general.
• Manga (also known as Japanese comics) became popular among the international audience, mostly in English-speaking countries. Such popular manga works include Lucky Star, FullMetal Alchemist, and Naruto.

• July 19, 2001, an English author and former politician Jeffrey Archer, was found guilty of perjury and perverting the course of justice at a 1987 libel trial. He was sentenced to four years' imprisonment.

• Peter Pan in Scarlet is a novel by Geraldine McCaughrean. It is an official sequel to Scottish author and dramatist J. M. Barrie's Peter and Wendy, authorised by Great Ormond Street Hospital, to whom Barrie granted all rights to the character and original writings in 1929. McCaughrean was selected following a competition launched in 2004, in which novelists were invited to submit a sample chapter and plot outline.

Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up or Peter and Wendy is J. M. Barrie's most famous work, in the form of a 1904 play and a 1911 novel, respectively.

• October 2, 2006 - Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion becomes an international bestseller, provokes many responding books and its success has been seen by many as indicative of a change in the contemporary cultural zeitgeist.

Fashion

Fashion trends of the decade drew much inspiration from 1930s, 1960s and 1980s styles. Original fashion trends of the 2000s include Crocs and Ugg boots for feet. Hair styles included the wings haircut for boys, which slowly but surely increased to a very high level by 2009 and semi-long and straight hair for girls continued, as well as many other hairstyles from the 1990s. Many films followed the fashion trends of the time, and for head gear, the Chullo became a very popular winter wear in the late 2000s. In the first part of the 2000s Nike was the dominant sneaker brand for adults and Sketchers were popular for children. Starting in 2004, trends for sneakers started to shift toward brands like Converse and Vans high tops.

By 2004, shirts that exposed the belly button and low rise baggy cargo pants which debuted in the late 1990s, became mainstream. Tube tops were extremely popular in the mid-2000s. Spaghetti straps were popular until about 2007.

The 2000s saw a huge revival of 1980s fashion trends such as off-the-shoulder tops, and neon colors. Skinny jeans became a staple clothing for young women and men by 2009, with mass brands Gap and Levi launching their own lines. High top Converse and basketball shoes such as Nike and Reebok became very popular. Studded belts and tucked in shirts became popular once again. A dramatic shift in fashion from tightly fitted clothing on top and baggy clothing on the bottom shifted to loose clothing on top and extremely tight clothing on the bottom.

"Geek chic" refers to a minor fashion trend that arose in the mid-2000s in which young individuals adopted stereotypically "geeky" fashions, such as oversized black Horn-rimmed glasses, suspenders/braces, and highwater trousers. The glasses- worn with non-prescription lenses or without lenses—quickly became the defining aspect of the trend, with the media identifying various celebrities as "trying geek" or "going geek" for their wearing such glasses, such as David Beckham, Justin Timberlake and Myleene Klass. Meanwhile, in the sports world, many NBA players wore "geek glasses" during post-game interviews, drawing comparisons to Steve Urkel. As many of the other identifying characteristics of the trend—such as clip-on suspenders worn with short-sleeved shirts—were unsuitable for the business environment into which young adherents were entering, the trend quickly died out.

Emo fashion became popular amongst teenagers in the early-mid 2000s, largely as a result of the commercial success of bands associated with the subculture (such as My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy). The style is commonly identified with wearing black/dark coloured skinny jeans, T-shirts bearing the name of emo music groups and long side-swept bangs, often covering one or both eyes. The associated subculture provoked controversy over perceived links with self-harm and suicide, with the Daily Mail notoriously describing emo as a "sinister cult".

In cosmetic applications, a Botox injection, consisting of a small dose of Botulinum toxin, can be used to prevent development of wrinkles by paralyzing facial muscles. As of 2007, it is the most common cosmetic operation, with 4.6 million procedures in the United States, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.

Print media

• The decade saw the steady decline of books, magazines and newspapers as the main conveyors of information and advertisements in favor of the Internet and other digital forms of information.
• News blogs grew in readership and popularity; cable news and other online media outlets became competitive in attracting advertising revenues and capable journalists and writers are joining online organizations. Books became available online, and electronic devices such as Amazon Kindle threatened the popularity of printed books.
• According to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the decade showed a continuous increase in reading, although circulation of newspapers has declined in conjunction with the Economic Recession.
• Following the United States-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Saddam Hussein's sons Uday Hussein and Qusay Hussein were killed by a secretive combined Special Operations Task Force during a 6-hour gunfight in Mosul.

The U.S. Administration released graphic pictures of the Hussein brothers' bodies. When criticized, the U.S. military's response was to point out that these men were no ordinary combatants, and to express hope that confirmation of the deaths would bring closure to the Iraqi people.

Journalism

• "It was, we were soon told, 'the day that changed everything', the 21st century's defining moment, the watershed by which we would forever divide world history: before, and after, 9/11." ~ The Guardian

• The BBC's foreign correspondent John Simpson on Rupert Murdoch (March 15, 2010):

"I do think that he and the newspapers he's run have introduced an uglier side, an abusive side, into journalism and life in general in this country."

He says this Murdochisation of national discourse, which was at its height in the UK with The Sun in the 1980s, has now migrated to the US. "Murdoch encouraged an ugly tone, which he has now imported into the US and which we see every day on Fox News, with all its concomitant effects on American public life – that fierce hostility between right and left that never used to be there, not to anything remotely like the same extent."

• October 2001, Canadian author and social activist known for her political analyses Naomi Klein's book titled Fences and Windows:

"On September 11, watching TV replays of the buildings exploding over and over again in New York and Washington, I couldn’t help thinking about all the times media coverage has protected us from similar horrors elsewhere. During the Gulf War, for instance, we didn’t see real buildings exploding or people fleeing, we saw a sterile Space Invader battlefield, a bomb’s-eye view of concrete targets - there and then none. Who was in those abstract polygons? We never found out."

• May 15, 2003, Fox News Channel's (which grew during the late 1990s and 2000s to become the dominant cable news network in the United States.) political commentator Bill O'Reilly's "The Talking Points Memo", from his The O'Reilly Factor television talk show:

"So, Talking Points urges the Pentagon to stop the P.R. dance and impose strict rules of conduct for the Iraqi people to follow. Law abiding Iraqis want that. It's only the gangsters and the fanatics who don't. Shoot looters to kill, and aim well.

"'And that's The Memo."

• A poll released in 2004, by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, found that 21 percent of people aged 18 to 29 cited The Daily Show (an American late night satirical television program airing each Monday through Thursday) and Saturday Night Live (an American late-night live television sketch comedy and variety show) as a place where they regularly learned presidential campaign news.

By contrast, 23 percent of the young people mentioned ABC, CBS or NBC’s nightly news broadcasts as a source.

When the same question was asked in 2000, Pew found only 9 percent of young people pointing to the comedy shows, and 39 percent to the network news shows.

One newspaper, Newsday, has The Daily Show's host Jon Stewart, listed atop a list of the 20 media players who will most influence the upcoming presidential campaign. Random conversations with nine people, aged 19 to 26, waiting to see a taping of The Daily Show, revealed two who admitted they learned much about the news from the program. None said they regularly watched the network evening news shows.

• The Guardian, is a British national daily newspaper.

In August 2004, for the US presidential election, The Guardian's daily "G2" supplement launched an experimental letter-writing campaign in Clark County, Ohio, an average-sized county in a swing state. G2 editor Ian Katz bought a voter list from the county for $25 and asked readers to write to people listed as undecided in the election, giving them an impression of the international view and the importance of voting against US President George W. Bush. The paper scrapped "Operation Clark County" on 21 October 2004 after first publishing a column of complaints from Bush supporters about the campaign under the headline "Dear Limey assholes". The public backlash against the campaign likely contributed to Bush's victory in Clark County.

• March 2005 - Twenty MPs signed a British House of Commons motion condemning the BBC Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman for saying a "a sort of Scottish Raj" was running the UK. Mr Paxman likened the dominance of Scots at Westminster to past British rule in India.

• August 1, 2007 - News Corp. and Dow Jones entered into a definitive merger agreement. The US$5 billion sale added the largest newspaper in the United States, by circulation The Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch's news empire.

• August 30, 2008 - three years before the 2011 England riots, The Socialist Worker wrote: "Those who have responded to the tragedy of knife crime by calling for police crackdowns ought to take note. The criminalisation of a generation of black youth will undoubtedly lead to explosions of anger in the future, just as it did a generation ago with the riots that swept Britain's inner cities."

• Ann Coulter is an American conservative social and political commentator, eight-time best-selling author, syndicated columnist, and lawyer. She frequently appears on television, radio, and as a speaker at public and private events.

As the 2008 US presidential campaign was getting under way, Coulter was criticised for statements she made at the 2007 Conservative Political Action Conference about presidential candidate John Edwards:

I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out that you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot,' so I'm... so, kind of at an impasse, can't really talk about Edwards, so I think I'll just conclude here and take your questions.

• In December 2008, Time magazine named Barack Obama as its Person of the Year for his historic candidacy and election, which it described as "the steady march of seemingly impossible accomplishments".

• November 5, 2009 - The UK's Daily Star tabloid newspaper ran the headline on its front page: 'ARMY DEATHS: FIND THE BASTARD AND KILL HIM'

People

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World leaders

• President Laurent-Désiré Kabila - Joseph Kabila (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
• Elizabeth II (Commonwealth realms)
• President Nicanor Duarte (Paraguay)
• President Néstor Kirchner – Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (Argentina)
• Prime Minister John Howard-Kevin Rudd (Australia)
• President and Premier Fidel Castro – Raúl Castro (Cuba)
• President Fernando Henrique Cardoso – Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Brazil)
• Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Canada)
• President Jiang Zemin – Hu Jintao (China)
• Premier Zhu Rongji – Wen Jiabao (China)
• President Yasser Arafat – Mahmoud Abbas (Palestinian National Authority)
• President Bill Clinton - George W. Bush – Barack Obama (United States)
• President Jorge Sampaio – Aníbal Cavaco Silva (Portugal)
• Prime Minister António Guterres – José Manuel Barroso – Pedro Santana Lopes – José Sócrates (Portugal)
• Prime Minister Tony Blair – Gordon Brown (United Kingdom)
• Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Turkey)
• Chancellor Gerhard Schröder – Angela Merkel (Germany)
• President Jacques Chirac – Nicolas Sarkozy (France)
• President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi – Giorgio Napolitano (Italy)
• Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi – Romano Prodi (Italy)
• King Juan Carlos (Spain)
• Prime Minister José María Aznar – José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (Spain)
• President Bashar al-Assad (Syria)
• President Muammar Gaddafi (Libya)
• President Jalal Talabani – Saddam Hussein (Iraq)
• Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei
  • President Mohammad Khatami – Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Iran)
• Pope John Paul II – Pope Benedict XVI (Vatican City)
• President Hosni Mubarak (Egypt)
• President Vladimir Putin – Dmitry Medvedev (Russia)
• President Hugo Chávez (Venezuela)
• President Václav Havel – Václav Klaus (Czech Republic)
• President Aleksander Kwaśniewski – Lech Kaczyński (Poland)
• President Rudolf Schuster – Ivan Gašparovič (Slovakia)
• President Ion Iliescu – Traian Băsescu (Romania)

Politics

• Abdulaziz Othman Altwaijri, Islamic Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization
• Catherine Ashton, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, European Union
• Mohamed al-Madani al-Azhari, Secretary-general Community of Sahel-Saharan States
• Nikolay Nikolayevich Bordyuzha, Secretary-general Collective Security Treaty Organization
• Klaus Bühler, President of the Interim European Security and Defense Assembly
• Edwin W. Carrington, Secretary-general Caribbean Community
• Mohamed Ibn Chambas, President of the Commission, Economic Community of West African States
• Jacques Diouf, Director-general Food and Agriculture Organization
• Karl von Habsburg, Executive Director Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization
• Enrique V. Iglesias, Secretary-general Ibero-American Cooperation Secretariat
• Anders B. Johnsson, Secretary-general Inter-Parliamentary Union
• Jakob Kellenberger, President International Committee of the Red Cross
• Ahmad Mohamed Ali Al-Madani, President Islamic Development Bank
• Philippe Maystadt, President of the European Investment Bank
• Ledum Mitee, President of the General Assembly Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization
• Hélène Pelosse, Director-general International Renewable Energy Agency
• Marco Perduca, Treasurer Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization
• Sergio Piazzi, Secretary-general Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean
• Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council
• Vassilios Skouris, President of the Court of Justice, European Union
• Javier Solana Madariaga, High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy, European Union
• Juan Somavia Santa Cruz, Director-general International Labour Organization
• Louis Sylvain-Goma, Secretary-general Economic Community of Central African States
• Hélder Jorge Vaz Gomes Lopes, Director-general Community of Portuguese Language Countries
• Robert Walter, President of the European Security and Defense Assembly

See also

• 2000s in books
• Generation Y - The last people of this generation were born in the early 2000s.
• Generation Z - The first people of this generation would have been born in the mid-2000s.

Timeline

The following articles contain brief timelines which list the most prominent events of the decade:

2000 • 2001 • 2002 • 2003 • 2004 • 2005 • 2006 • 2007 • 2008 • 2009

Footnotes

1. As of October 30, 2009:
   Total EUR currency (coins and banknotes) in circulation 771.5 (banknotes) + 21.032 (coins) =792.53 billion EUR * 1.48 (exchange rate) = 1,080 billion USD
   Total USD currency (coins and banknotes) in circulation 859 billion USD
   • "Table 2: Euro banknotes, values (EUR billions, unless otherwise indicated, not seasonally adjusted)" (PDF). ECB. Retrieved December 13, 2009. 2009, October: Total banknotes: 771.5 (billion EUR)
   • "Table 4: Euro coins, values (EUR millions, unless otherwise indicated, not seasonally adjusted)" (PDF). ECB. Retrieved December 13, 2009. 2009, October: Total coins: 21,032 (million EUR)
   • "Money Stock Measures". Federal Reserve Statistical Release. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Archived from the original on December 9, 2009. Retrieved December 13, 2009. Table 5: Not Seasonally Adjusted Components of M1 (Billions of dollars), not seasonally adjusted, October 2009: Currency: 859.3 (billion USD)
   • "Euro foreign exchange reference rates". ECB. Retrieved December 13, 2009. Exchange rate October 30, 2009: 1 EUR = 1.48 USD

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Further reading

• London, Herbert I. The Transformational Decade: Snapshots of a Decade from 9/11 to the Obama Presidency (Lanham: University Press of America, 2012) 177 pp.

External links

• The fashions, trends and people that defined the decade, VOGUE.COM UK
• 100 Top Pictures of the Decade – slideshow by Reuters
• "A portrait of the decade", BBC, December 14, 2009
• 2000-2009 Video Timeline

• Articles that may be too long from March 2013
• 2000s
• 20th century
• 21st century