This has not been a mere sabre-rattling skirmish. This has been war of the most terrible kind, fought in trenches and redolent both for that and for its appalling futility of the First World War. The Ethiopian Army has used minority tribespeople in their thousands as minesweepers. A peace initiative by the Organization of African Unity in August led to a ceasefire but few observers are confident that the war will not imminently resume. And it was obviously too much to expect two players in the perpetually conflict-littered Horn of Africa to walk off blithely into a brand new dawn.
Population officially passes one billion.
UN demographers expect India to overtake China as the most populous nation on earth within 40 years. The Government announces it will deploy nuclear weapons on land, in the air and at sea. The economic slump affecting the region is now the worst since the debt crisis of the early 1980s. Argentina, Venezuela and Chile are doing even worse than analysts expected, while Colombia and Ecuador are facing their worst recessions in 50 years. The Kurdish rebels, the PKK, withdraw from southern Turkey to help the relief effort and send out signals that they are ready to become a political movement if the Turkish Government will offer Kurdish people greater rights.