1. When We Realized the Sky Was Falling
By Howard Chua-Eoan
Dark clouds had been gathering over the economy for most of the year, but by Saturday September 13, a storm seemed to break. Suddenly, we learned that Lehman Brothers, one of the pillars of American investment banking, was on the verge of bankruptcy. Its survival depended on being bought by Bank of America, but BA bought Merrill Lynch instead, and Lehman went pffft. Simultaneously, insurance giant AIG announced it was in so much trouble (over underwriting the bad decisions of big banks) that it needed to be bailed out. And suddenly years of stupidly easy mortgages came back and broke the banks that issued them. Now, the dole queue was forming and first in line for the bailout were those we assumed knew all about making money. The bad times had begun, and you could feel them in the value of your home, your 401k, your job, the endowment at your kids' schools, your credit cards — and, of course, in the auto industry, in construction, in retail and all over the economy. Saturday September 13 marked the beginning of a deluge of depressing news to put a damper on the Holidays.
2. Yes, He Could!
By Howard Chua-Eoan
By the time the networks announced it, Barack Obama's electoral college-landslide presidential victory was as inevitable as it had once seemed impossible. The election of the first black President of the United States of America had been an epic journey, not only by virtue of the racial barriers it smashed but also by dint of the campaign ingenuity and inventiveness that marked a generational shift in American politics. At the center of the drama was Obama himself, heroic but self-possessed, outdistancing formidable rivals, always the smartest and most charismatic figure in the room. It remains to be seen, of course, whether all the ecstatic political soteriology of his campaign can overcome the economic apocalypse Obama will inherit, along with a vexing list of adjunct crises from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the dysfunction in American education and health care. But for a moment, on November 4, Americans across the board were invited to renew their faith in the true magic of their country's story.
3. Mumbai Held Hostage
By Howard Chua-Eoan
New York, London, Madrid and now, to the great cosmopolitan cities tortured in the name of religion over the past decade, add Mumbai. For three days, India's financial center and movie capital, a metropolis of 12 million, was held hostage by what officials insist was a band of 10 armed men — a figure Mumbaikars found impossible to believe. The poshest hotels and some of the most prominent watering holes for tourists and the rich became charnel houses in massacres that threatened to undermine India's astonishing economic growth. Local politicians and security officials pointed fingers at neighbor and nemesis Pakistan, being inclined to overlook the fact that assaults on Indian cities earlier in the year may have been perpetrated by members of India's own huge, much put-upon Muslim minority. (Nov. 26-29)
4. Devastation in Islamabad
By Howard Chua-Eoan
Pakistan responded to Indian accusations over the Mumbai massacre by pointing out that it, too, is under attack by terrorists. Militants operating in Pakistan's tribal wilds along the border with Afghanistan have wrought havoc on both sides of that frontier, and that mountainous strip has produced two attacks that shook Pakistan to the core: the assassination of Benazir Bhutto on Dec. 26, 2007; and the Sept. 20 blast that destroyed the heavily-defended Marriott Hotel in the capital, killing up to 60 people. The terror strikes punctuated a rolling series of crises in Pakistan. Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari, was elected president in a democratic poll that ended the political career of Pervez Musharraf, the general on whom Washington had relied as a bulwark against the burgeoning al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in his country, as well as home-grown extremists such as Baitullah Mehsud. The Marriott bombing drove home the fact that a terror threat most Pakistanis had assumed was directed against the West was aimed at their own nuclear-armed but economically-hobbled Muslim nation. Still, that didn't help Zardari persuade his parliament to back the war on terror, as Pakistan's legislature continued to demand negotiations with the militants. The Marriott bombings were a reminder that the wild frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan remains a fount of menace not only to Afghanistan and the West, but also to Pakistan itself. (Sept. 20)
5. Pirates Rule the Waves
By Howard Chua-Eoan
The very use of the word "pirate" made the rash of hijackings of commercial ships off the Horn of Africa seem like almost quaint confirmations that the long-suffering people of East Africa were living in a different age. But it became clear during the Fall that there was nothing charming about the rogue seamen of Somalia, and that their exploits could have consequences far beyond the sea lanes of the Gulf of Aden. Having netted more than $30 million in more than 70 such hijackings this year alone, the pirates raised alarms in late September by seizing a Ukrainian freighter carrying tanks and other war material that may have been headed for conflict-ridden Sudan. Then came the biggest prize of all: A Saudi-owned supertanker, the Sirius Star, carrying $100 million worth of crude oil. Despite the menace, governments could muster little by way of an effective response to the increasingly audacious pirates. But such depredation along a critical trade route threatens livelihoods around the world. And it serves as a reminder that the impoverished, failed state of Somalia, which has suffered so much grief over two decades, remains able to spread that grief around. (Nov. 18)
6. War in the Caucasus
By Howard Chua-Eoan
Vladimir Putin, TIME'S 2007 Person of the Year, may no longer be President of Russia but his vision of a resurgent empire was given steel in August when Russian tanks rolled into South Ossetia — a breakaway province of the NATO-aspirant former Soviet republic of Georgia. The confrontation began when Georgian forces launched attacks on South Ossetia, but the Russian forces pushed deep into Georgia, sending a brutal message that Moscow would brook no interference in its backyard from an expansive NATO or tolerate challenges by Georgia's nationalist president Mikheil Saakashvili. Neither the U.S. nor Europe was able to muster an effective response: Neither had the wherewithal or appetite for a military confrontation with Russia, and the Europeans are mindful of the fact that much of their oil and natural gas supply is controlled by Moscow. The Europeans eventually brokered a peace agreement, largely on Moscow's terms. (Aug. 7)
7. Chinese Spreads the Melamine
By Howard Chua-Eoan
Melamine was once used to make plates and kitchenware, but it can be used to mimic proteins in milk and foodstuff — hence this year's big "Made in China" scandal. There had been a preview of Melamine's dangers in 2007, when dogs and cats around the world suffered kidney failure because they weren't able to process the compound, which is not poisonous but cannot be broken down by the body. Melamine had been secreted into pet food manufactured in China to make it appear more nutritious. In 2008, the victims were babies. Six Chinese infants died from kidney failure, while close to 300,000 were hospitalized. One company apologized on Sept. 15, but melamine was an open-secret ingredient in the Chinese food industry, and the panic went global because of the ubiquity of Chinese food exports. Melamine has been found in animal feed and eggs, even sex toys. (Sept. 15)
8. Twilight of Cuba's Patriarch
By Howard Chua-Eoan
Forget the Chinese; they haven't been real communists for years, and North Korea's Kim Jong-Il is a pale shadow of his monstrously Stalinist father. The last of the Communist giants is Fidel Castro, who had retained his revolutionary charisma despite his tight grip on the reins of power in Cuba — even if the authentic glow of his combat fatigues has given way to the sort of gaudy tracksuits more common among the elderly in nearby Miami. After more than half-a-century of ultimate jefe-dom, an ailing Fidel in February suddenly relinquished the presidency to his younger brother Raul, whom many hope will be a moderate reformer, perhaps even opening a detente with the existential foe across the water. Although Fidel himself remains an influence — not least because he is still the leader of the ruling Communist Party — he is increasingly ill. The age of the revolutionary titan is over; the period of transition has begun. (Feb. 20)
9. An Audacious Rescue in Colombia
By Howard Chua-Eoan
Footage of her three years as a captive of the narco-Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) paint Ingrid Betancourt with a Modigliani melancholy, attenuated in appearance as well as loneliness. She had been a candidate for the country's presidency and then had become its most famous hostage, almost always on the brink of rescue. And then it happened in one of the most dramatic and uplifting events of the year, a military exercise that actually worked to perfection as Colombian security forces used an audacious disguise to trick her captors into handing her over. Betancourt has shown no sign of relinquishing the idealistic dreaminess that made her a less-than-viable political candidate, however, and that continues to make her a drawcard in the influential salons of Europe and the Americas. (July 2)
10. Mother Nature's Double Whammy
By Howard Chua-Eoan
The last time so many people had been killed so quickly by the whim of nature was the Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 2004, which claimed about 225,000 lives. The combined death toll was approximately the same in the cyclone that devastated Burma (the country that known, by its isolationist military regime, as "Myanmar") on May 2 and in the earthquakes that flattened schools and villages in Sichuan, China's most populous province. Cyclone Nargis killed perhaps 150,000; China says 87,000 died in the quake. The world then saw two authoritarian nations go about disaster relief in divergent ways: the isolationist Burmese junta trying to shut out help from the rest of the world; the Chinese, who were concerned about the Olympics and already coping with the public-relations disaster of Tibetan demonstrations, allowing foreigners in as well as relatively open media coverage of its catastophe. Cyclone in Burma (May 2); Earthquake in Sichuan (May 12)