February

January's big question was answered. A High Court judge ruled that details of the arbitrator's decision against TVNZ for the sacking of John Hawkesby be made public. The payout: $5.25 million plus interest. But it led to a couple more questions: are newsreaders worth the monster salaries that the Hawkesby affair uncovered and whose head would be the first to roll? The answer to the second was not long in coming, board chairwoman Rosanne Meo finding her position untenable.

Harold Shipman, a seemingly gentle GP in the Manchester town of Hyde, became the latest member of the medical fraternity to be labelled Dr Death. The 54-year-old was convicted of killing 15 of his elderly patients with lethal injections of medicinal heroin. Police believe he was responsible for 95 deaths.

Pavie Bulatovic, Yugoslav Defence Minister since 1993 and Montenegrin cohort of Slobodan Milosevic, was assassinated in a Belgrade restaurant, his death following closely the fatal shooting of a Serb warlord, Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic, in a Belgrade hotel lobby.

Austria - not a country to rock the international boat - brought widespread opprobrium on its collective head when the conservative People's Party included the far right Freedom Party in a governing coalition.

It was captain and crew first as four crew members escaped from a hijacked Afghan airliner at Stanstead airport outside London. The five-day hijacking ended 24 hours later with many of the passengers immediately seeking asylum, although most eventually returned to Kabul.

Electronic vandals overloaded websites with junk traffic, temporarily crippling such high-profile companies as CNN, Amazon and Yahoo! In other business activity, iHug and entertainment's Force Corporation got together and the Muppets took on a German flavour as the programme distributor EM TV & Merchandising took over the Jim Henson company.

Europe suffered another fatal train crash, seven people dying when a German passenger train travelling along one of Europe's busiest rail routes derailed and ploughed into a house near Cologne. In southern Africa, Cyclone Eline triggered flooding on the Limpopo, claiming 125 lives in Mozambique.

The Prime Minister went to the Onuku Marae at Akaroa to celebrate Waitangi Day the way it should be, in harmony. At Waitangi, it was disruptive business as usual. Same in Parliament. New Green MP Nandor Tanczos dropped himself in it by claiming, in support of his cannabis stand, that he had seen MPs "drunk in charge of the country."

In 100 years of sporting endeavour, the most predictable result came to pass in a marquee in the Auckland Domain. Athletics great Peter Snell was feted as New Zealand's sports champion of the century.

Europe's Five Nations rugby championship became Six and newcomers Italy made an immediate impression, downing the 1999 champions, Scotland, 34-20, in the first match of the reconstituted competition.

Manila and Dubai did battle at the Karaka yearling sales. When the dust settled, Sir Patrick Hogan's Zabeel-Diamond Lover colt had been knocked down to Philippines industrialist Eduardo Conjuangco for $3.6 million. That sum beat the previous New Zealand yearling sales record by a mere $2 million.

Prada won the Louis Vuitton Cup and with it the right to challenge Team New Zealand for the big one. But the Italians did it the hard way. They dropped three consecutive races to AmericaOne before turning a 3-4 deficit into a 5-4 victory in some of the most intense racing in cup history. In contrast, the first race of the final left only two questions to be answered. Was there anything Prada could do to stop New Zealand retaining the cup 5-0 and would Auckland's weather allow the contest to be finished before winter arrived? By the end of the month, neither question had been answered, the defender leading the best-of-nine contest 3-0 but the weather holding a 4-3 lead in days lost over days sailed.