November

This was the month of the long count – no, not in the boxing ring, where David Tua, flailing away at the end of Lennox Lewis' long reach, looked nothing like the boxer who is a first-round knockout specialist.

No, this was Florida's drawn-out counting operation to find the next President of the United States. And by the end of November, Americans still did not know who the next occupant of the White House would be.

Selecting the wrong runway during bad weather in Taipei brought a Singapore Airlines airliner to grief, hitting construction machinery and killing 81 of the 179 people on board.

Bad weather also brought chaos to Britain with heavy flooding decimating a transport system already struggling with maintenance shutdowns in the wake of rail accidents.

A firestorm in a supposedly fireproof tunnel cable train claimed 155 lives at an Austrian winter resort while the ski season began with four dead in Austrian avalanches. Floods cut off villages and destroyed crops in New South Wales and Queensland. And, in Europe, mad cow disease was back, French beef exports the latest to face bans.

Israel and the Palestinians settled into a steady diet of stone-throwing, shooting and missile attacks, culminating in a bomb attack on an Israeli school bus. Fiji's simmering unrest boiled over again, soldiers loyal to the military commander crushing a pro-Speight mutiny from within the ranks of elite colleagues.

President Alberto Fujimori's volatile rule of Peru came to an end when his resignation under a cloud of government corruption charges was rejected by the country's Congress in order to give that body the satisfaction of sacking him.

At home, TVNZ announced its plans to go digital in a joint venture with Telstra Saturn. The Commerce Commission reversed an August decision, allowing the Whakapapa and Turoa skifields to be joined under one management and another one, allowing Shell's bid for Fletcher Energy.

Australia and New Zealand found common cause in an open skies agreement as did New Zealand and Singapore with a free trade accord, while Westfield's efforts to create a monster mall in Newmarket triggered strong local opposition.

A secret witness in the Marlborough Sounds murder trial told the Herald he lied on the stand when he testified that Scott Watson confessed to killing Olivia Hope and Ben Smart in 1998.

The sporting scene started with a high as Brew kept firm the New Zealand grip on the Melbourne Cup, but then it was generally downhill. David Tua made no impression on the world heavyweight champion, over-rugbied All Blacks were reduced to a squared series with France, the injury-battered Black Caps were brought back to earth in South Africa and the Kiwis faltered at the last league World Cup hurdle, their old nemesis, Australia.

But at least the Silver Ferns managed that rarity, a win over our transtasman cousins.

And the Americans rounded off the month by being the villain of the piece in the collapse of the United Nations convention on climate change.