Time

In an admirable service to those who slept through the year, Time offers ‘The Top 10 Everything of 2008’. The most important news stories:

1. “When we realized the sky was falling”: The Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy and “the bad decisions of big banks” started the global economic meltdown.

2. “Yes, he could!”: Obama’s victory.

3. “Mumbai held hostage”

4. “Devastation in Islamabad”: The Marriott Hotel bombing in Pakistan.

5. “Pirates rule the waves”: The pirates of Somalia “netted more than $30 million in more than 70 hijackings in 2008… such depredation along a critical trade route threatens livelihoods around the world.”

Foreign Policy

Even if you don’t live in a war-zone mud hut, impress your intellectual friends with the top underreported stories of the year:

1. The surge in Afghanistan starts early: Obama vowed to pacify Afghanistan with more troops, but the Bush administration has already “boosted US forces in Afghanistan by nearly 85 per cent.”

2. Colombian coca production increases: The $6 billion Plan Colombia launched by the US to reduce the cultivation of the crop has been a giant failure.

3. The next Darfur heats up: Sudan’s Southern Kordofan “threatens to become the country’s newest humanitarian catastrophe” with instances of “strategic ethnic cleansing”

4. United States helps India build a missile shield: US Defense Secretary Robert Gates “quietly announced negotiations between the US and India to develop a missile defense program on Indian soil…(it) could have long-term implications for US-China relations and regional stability.”

... contd.