The year 2010- A Flashback

The year started with the official opening of the world's tallest man-made structure- The Burj Khalifa in Dubai- on Jan 4th. Before the world could rejoice came the news of the Haiti earthquake on 12th Jan. More than 230,000 people lost their lives in one of the worst quake disasters in the history. April saw the Volcanic ash eruption from the mountains of Iceland disrupting Air traffic in Europe.

More misery was to follow when BP's Deep water Horizon oil platform exploded off the Gulf of Mexico on April 20th. One of the worst oil spill resulted from this which polluted and damaged the waters, marine life and coastline of the U.S.A. After close to three months, on 15h July, the well was finally capped after 4.9 million barrels (about 206 million gallons)of crude oil spillage.

World economy was still in tatters especially the Western countries. Iceland went to bankruptcy. Greece was downgraded to "junk" status in May. The Euro zone and IMF had to work out a Euro 110 billion package to bail out Greece. Later during the year, Republic of Ireland had to be bailed out with a 85 billion euro package. Amidst all this chaos, the silver lining was the successful conduct of the FIFA world cup football in South Africa during June-July which Spain won.

The Wikileaks came out in July which shook the world and put U.S to shame exposing their misdeeds in Iraq and Afghanistan.Further leaks during the year added to their embarrassment.

More bad news in August when 33 Chilean miners were trapped 700 meters below in the mines in Chile. After a 69 days ordeal, they were remarkably rescued on 13th October.

India went through it's share of woes in the form of scams and corruption in the X1X Commonwealth games( Kalmadi and party), 2G telecom auction (minister Raja) and the Adarsh housing allotment. Inflation and food article prices sky rocketed with onion prices reaching 120 Rs/kg. The winter session of the Parliament virtually came to a standstill with the opposition stalling the proceedings in view of corruption charges against ministers and the Government. The ruling UPA government's credibility took a severe beating.

The year 2010 was dominated by more negative news than positive. Let us hope that the year 2011 turns out to be a good one.