The year that was ......

2015 saw its share of turmoil across the world with terrorist attacks and natural disasters taking a heavy toll. At least 130 people were killed in two terror attacks in November in Paris, which was also rocked earlier in January when the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a supermarket were attacked by gunmen. In March, the co-pilot of a Germanwings jet rammed the plane into the French Alps, killing all 150 people aboard. A mass shooting in California, twin bomb blasts in Ankara, a devastating earthquake in Nepal, a stampede at Haj which claimed over 700 lives including 14 Indians and the influx of refugees and migrants from Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea and other regions into Europe made headlines this year. Coordinated efforts were made to evacuate Indians trapped in the Yemen civil war. In neighbouring Nepal, Bidhya Devi Bhandari was elected its first woman president. Following is the diary of international events: Jan 2: Colombo: Sri Lanka's beleaguered President Mahinda Rajapaksa appealed to the minority Tamils to back him, the "known devil", in the January 8 presidential polls as he campaigned in the former LTTE bastion. Jan 4: Jakarta/Singapore: Four more bodies and a fifth large object belonging to the crashed AirAsia jet were retrieved from the Java Sea as rescuers battled bad weather in their efforts to reach the fuselage believed to contain the remaining victims besides the crucial black box. Jan 4: Islamabad: At least 10 militants, including a top Taliban commander, were killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan's restive North Waziristan tribal region near the Afghan border, the first such attack this year by CIA-operated pilotless aircraft in the country. Jan 5: Washington: US Secretary of State John Kerry has not issued any certificate to the Congress on the progress made by Pakistan in taking action against terrorist groups, his spokesperson says. Jan 5: Peshawar: The government of Pakistan's restive Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province announced a combined bounty of Rs 760 million for 615 high-profile militants, including a Rs 10 million bounty for information leading to the arrest or death of Taliban chief Mullah Fazlullah. Jan 6: Dhaka: Bangladesh authorities threatened to slap murder charges on the country's besieged opposition leader Khaleda Zia and arrested her deputy for inciting a series of deadly street violence by party supporters. Jan 7: Islamabad: Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar, who was at the centre of a controversy involving former union minister Shashi Tharoor, says that she was ready to answer any question on the issue. .