Top 10 stories of 2010
1.Haiti Earthquake
It was less than two weeks since New Year’s Eve and shocking news struck the world. On January 12, 2010 a catastrophic earthquake descended on the capital of Haiti Port-au-Prince. Within hours, over a million people became homeless. Buildings across much of the city and its suburbs were reduced to rubble. More than 230,000 people died, and hundreds of thousands of others were injured. The damages were devastating and extreme in what is one of the third world countries.
2. Wiki Leaks
The organization that finds and reveals secret government data crossed the line in July, 2010. They released 77,000 U.S. military files chronicling the war effort in Afghanistan and a larger tranche of 400,000 war logs from Iraq in October. The incident has shaken the technology world and raised the big question about the safety of secrecy in the digitized 21st century.
3. Oil spill in Gulf of Mexico
On April 20, an explosion rocked the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven workers onboard and leaving the operation crippled. The deaths were a tragedy on their own, but when the rig began to sink on April 22, it opened the door to a new danger: an oil spill that could blanket the entire Gulf Coast.
On April 24, the Coast Guard reported that more than 40,000 gal. a day of crude oil was leaking into Gulf waters just 50 miles south of the coast of Louisiana. Within days, the spill produced an oil sheen more than 1,800 sq. mi. large, threatening the sensitive Gulf coastline, home to seabirds and marine mammals along with prime fishing and tourist spots.
4. Chilean Miners
On Aug. 5, 33 miners in the San Jose, Chile copper mine in the Atacama desert found themselves trapped in a collapsed shaft 2,300 ft. (700 m) under the earth. Soon international audience learned about rescue-capsules. The miners' dramatic release, broadcast live, provided mesmerizing, views as each of the brave men emerged from the bowels of the earth to the embraces of teary-eyed family members
5. Pakistan Floods
The monsoon rains in July triggered almost unprecedented flooding that irrigated the Indus River basin — at one point, almost a fifth of the country was underwater. Around 2,000 people died and the damage to the country was estimated to be over $43 billion.
6. South Africa World Cup
Before the World Cup 2010, the largest soccer tournament in the world, international media questioned the ability of an African nation to host such an important event. There were myriad of concerns. Are they going to be able to finish on time? Is it going to be good enough?During the four weeks of the 2010 summer, South Africa provided one of the most successful World Cups in the recent history.
7. Mexico’s Drug War
Mexico's struggle with its powerful drug cartels took a grisly turn in 2010. Troubled border cities were subsumed in violence as the country's drug kingpins warred over turf. There have also been steady drumbeats of horrifying reports of kidnappings, mass graves and nocturnal executions. More than 3,000 people have been killed this year alone.
8. Thailand Red Shirts
For much of April and May, thousands of anti-government protesters occupied a central commercial district in Bangkok, the capital of Thailand. Named the Red Shirts, for the color of their political movement (their rivals are Yellow Shirts), the activists sought to bring down a government they saw as elitist and undemocratic. Commentators saw the protests as emblematic of larger fissures in Thai society — between the big city and the countryside, the rich and the poor, royalists and populists. Red Shirt protesters spilled hundreds of liters of their own blood in a stomach-turning act of agitprop. The accident provides a timely reminder of how dangerous offshore energy exploration can be.
9.Russian spy
Redheaded Russian spies are such a cliché that even James Bond movies eschew them. Anna Chapman was arrested in June, as part of a spy ring in New York City. She was deported to Russia, where, just like in a intense novel, she got a medal and a modeling gig.
10. U.S. and China Tensions
In the past years those two, the tension between the two countries has been constantly rising. But 2010 saw a dramatic hardening of potential battle lines. Beijing has been steadily building up its naval power, particularly its submarine fleet; in a way that some hawkish U.S. analysts believe is a direct challenge to American supremacy in the Pacific.
