Major Developments Major Developments by Calendar Year

On November 26, 2008, the explosions at two Bangkok airports provoked the closure of its main international gateway, which is a major center in the region for travelers. These explosions in airport are done by thousands of anti-government protesters to object the return of Thai Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat from the APEC summit held in Peru. The PAD (People’s Alliance for Democracy), which is an anti-goverment group, has been conducting protests against the government, for being a reason for expelling former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Protesters surrounded the parliament building on Monday, forcing lawmakers to postpone their session. Incoming flights have been diverted to other airports around Thailand and the region and the helpless passengers are made to fly out by other means. The closing of Suvarnabhumi and Don Mueang airports from November 25 to December 4 stopped 3.4 million tourists from visiting Thailand. There is a huge loss in many sectors. There is loss of 120 billion baht (currency of Thailand) (4.75 billion dollars) in the service industry, 90 billion baht (3.56 billion dollars) in logistics and 60 billion baht (2.38 billion dollars) in industry (ANI). The continous political crisis has frustrated government from decision-making and weakened investor faith in Thailand’s economy.

On November 17, 2008, the U.S. Navy announced that Somali pirates had hijacked the Sirius Star, a Saudi-owned supertanker loaded with crude oil. The attack occurred on November 15, approximately 450 miles off the coast of Kenya. It has 25 crew members boarded in the ship and was sailing under a Liberian flag. It is the largest ship that is ever captured by pirates. It is owned by Saudi oil company Aramco. It is 1,080 feet long – nearly equal to the length of an aircraft carrier – so it is considered as one of the largest ships to sail the seas. The capacity of Sirius Star ship is nearly 2 billions barrels of oil. Somali pirates have captured several ships off the Horn of Africa in the past, but the hijacking of a supertanker created sensational news. The pirates are trained fighters, usually dressed in military attire, using speedboats or racing boats provided with satellite phones and GPS equipment. They are mostly armed with automatic weapons, anti-tank rockets launchers and various types of grenades. They collected nearly 300 million dollars in the year 2008 by hijacking ships. The Ship consists of 25-member crew from various nations like Croatia, Britain, Philippines, Poland, and Saudi Arabia. The ship and crew members were released on January 9, 2009 only after paying of $3 million in bribe.

In February 2008, the parliament of Kosovo, Serbia’s southern province with racial Albanian majority was declared independence. The province has been under the administration of U.N. and protected by NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) troops since a 1999. The independence of Kosovo is supported by United States and superior European nations, including France, Britain, and Germany but was reluctantly opposed by Serbia and Russia as they feared that this can encourage separatist movements by other countries. Serbia considered Kosovo as beginning of their civilization, so did not accept Kosovo’s independence on its neighborhood. But in Kosovo, majority of people are Albanian, they opposed the discrimination of serbs on them and wished to have separate democratic province. The Protesters in Serbia argued with police outside the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade after the release of declaration. In Pristina, capital of Kosovo thousands of people large masses of people gathered in streets earlier to Sunday’s parliamentary declaration and it is followed by singing, dancing after Prime minister of Kosovo Hashim Thaci announced the independence. A 100-foot-long birthday cake was laid on Pristina’s main street. Hundreds of people celebrated this moment by waving Albanian flags in Times Square. Kosovo government has clearly announced its readiness and its desire to support rights of Serbian people in Kosovo.

The sudden increase in food prices in 2008 created global crisis causing political and economical imbalance and social disturbance in both poor and developed nations. The short term causes for the rise of food prices are untimely droughts in grain-producing nations, increase in oil prices which led to increase in costs of fertilizers, food transport, and industrial agriculture or modernized agriculture, increasing use of bio-fuels in several countries that is, diverting of farm lands to produce fuel, increase in demand for different diet products, decrease in world-food stock. The long term reasons for rise in food prices are fundamental changes in trade and agricultural production, risky marketing of goods, and climate change. Major rice exporters, such as China, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia and Egypt, have imposed strict export bans on rice in order to secure food remains for their internal populations. The emergency steps that should be taken to come out of this crisis is to improve productivity in the commercial food crop sector, in terms of production, processing and marketing or else people will suffer from lack of nutrition. Agricultural development should be given top most importance on the global agenda. Governments should allow farmers to access little more fertilizer, phytosanitary products, good roads, processing facilities, credit, advisory services, insurance and information on prices, cut police taxes on roads and the cost of diesel.

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The terrorist attacks occurred at seven places in South Mumbai at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the Oberoi Trident, the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower, Leopold Cafe, Cama Hospital, the Orthodox Jewish-owned Nariman House, the Metro Cinema theatre. The shooting and bombing attacks by more than ten people, began on 26 November 2008 and lasted until 29 November, killing nearly 173 people and wounding nearly 308 people. After the 9/11 (terrorist attack on World Trade Centers in US) incident in 2001, the 26/11 (the Mumbai terror attack on 26 November 2008) is the terror attack to which the world turned its attention with serious concern as the hotels on which attacks were made had British, US, Israeli and some other nation citizens. The world leaders confirmed their support for India and showed unity in blaming the act in positive terms. The degree of terror act intimated the long-term plan of the terrorists that are associated with organizations like Al Qaeda of Pakistan. The three demands put forth by India on Pakistan are that they should handover the criminals involved in the attack to allow legal proceedings in India, it should destroy the terror networks established in Pakistan to prevent attacks on India and it must accept bilateral, multilateral and international agreements against terrorism. Though Pakistan has started the process of investigation superficially under the pressure of US, the results demonstrate the negligent approach of Islamabad in destroying terrorist organizations.