September

Further evidence of the dangers in Indonesia. Militia thugs in West Timor murdered three foreign United Nations workers in an attack that demolished their post. New Zealand Air Force helicopters evacuated 43 United Nations staff from the area near the East Timor border. A subsequent militia attack in a refugee camp claimed 20 lives.

Philippine rebels released the last of the tourist group they had been holding since April – and then took three more hostages from a Malaysian resort. Basque separatists suffered a reversal with the arrest of the leader of their terrorist organisation. In Sierra Leone, British paratroopers and SAS troops raided a rebel stronghold in a successful operation to free British soldiers held hostage for more than two weeks.

Back in Britain, fingers were pointed at Irish dissident groups after a small missile was fired at the headquarters of the country's foreign intelligence service in London.

Protests were the order of the month. Economic conferences came under siege as demonstrations against globalisation (Melbourne) and in favour of Third World debt relief (Prague) disrupted city centres.

Those experts at anti-government demonstrations, French farmers, were joined by truckers, taxi drivers and bus drivers in blockades and street protests in France over the rising cost of oil with demands for a reduction in fuel taxes. While the French Government reached an agreement, other European transport workers continued oil depot blockades, Britain in particular feeling the effects of fuel deprivation. Oil-supply nations' decision to increase production had no effect on the rising prices. A United States decision to tap into its strategic petroleum reserve did.

And, in Yugoslavia, scores of thousands demonstrated against Slobodan Milosevic as the Yugoslav president tried to hold his position in the face of a ballot-box beating.

A Greek ferry carrying more than 500 passengers ran aground on a reef in the Aegean Sea, killing more than 70 people. Two days later, another ferry, with 1081 passengers, extricated itself after running aground while docking at the Aegean island of Naxos. In eastern India, monsoon season flooding claimed more than 500 lives.

At home the dollar and petrol prices continued in their respective directions, the currency dropping below US42c early in the month and petrol prices crossing the $1.25 a litre mark for premium and $1.20 for 91 grade.

Police found Dover Samuels had no case to answer over the sexual misconduct allegations levelled against him - but he did not get his job back.

Quiet man Brian Pickering became a hero when he saved the lives of father and son John and Matt Painting after an unspringlike blizzard caught the pair in the Kaimanawa Ranges.

Tiger Woods did it again, adding the Canadian Open to his previous four wins of the season, this time pushed all the way by New Zealander Grant Waite.

Maybe it was the fact that Australia had such a successful games – in medal haul and in organisational achievement – but the local four-yearly whinge (two-yearly if Commonwealth Games post mortems are counted) over New Zealand athletes' failure to meet often excessive expectations sounded more bitter than usual. It was a brilliant event through which the wide spread of medals and the frequent upsetting of the form book demonstrated that athletes' ability to be at their best at a given moment balances on a very fine line. Waddell, Kendall, McIntosh and Todd won medals; Sarah Ulmer won hearts.