In 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy was elected as the 23rd president of France. Previously, he was the leader of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), a French conservative party. In his victory speech, Sarkozy said:

“The French people have chosen change. This change I will put into action […] I will do so in the spirit that all can find a place in our Republic, that all will feel recognized and respected in their dignity as citizens and humans [...] All those who feel that despite all their efforts, they still have nothing, must know that they will not be left aside and will get the same chances as everyone else.”

“The Russian Spring in the dead of winter was a direct consequence of the Putin-Medvedev swap announced on Sept. 24, and the equally shameless fraud in the parliamentary elections. Suddenly it became clear that Russians would no longer tolerate such stuff. They had grown up, and the authoritarian diapers had become too tight,” said the Russian writer Boris Akunin in the New York Times.

United Nations Human Rights Chief Navi Pillay addressed concerns over upisings in Syria in an emergency meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva on Dec 2, warning of the possibility that the uprising could develop into a civil war. “The Syrian authorities’ continual ruthless repression, if not stopped now, can drive the country into a full-fledged civil war,” Pillay said.

Last week saw the landmark visit of U.S. Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, to Burma, the state known officially as the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. Clinton became the first U.S. secretary of state to visit Burma in over half a century since John Foster Dulles’s visit in 1955. During the three-day top-level diplomatic mission, Clinton met with the new military-backed civilian leadership and held discussions with pro-democracy leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to urge reforms.

With over 1.3 billion people, China remains the world’s most populated country. As the world’s population hits seven billion people, China fears a skewed gender ratio where there are more males than females, despite tight control over its population. One of the reasons that population experts are seeing this gender imbalance is largely due to the one-child policy, a family planning policy implemented in China in 1979 as an effort to control China’s rising population by restricting couples to one child.

As the world population is said to hit seven billion this year, find out where you fit in with the BBC World News website’s population calculator. Enter your birth date, nationality and gender and it churns out your numerical position in the world population, your country’s population and the average life expectancy. The BBC site also features an interactive population demographic chart illustrating the world population every year since the year 1500.

On Oct. 23, an earthquake of 7.2 magnitude struck eastern Turkey. It was confirmed by the Prime Ministry’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (DEMP) of Turkey that 534 people died and 2,300 were injured from the incident. This earthquake is believed to be the largest to hit the nation since the one that struck Istanbul in 1999.

The catastrophic meltdown following the earthquake and tsunami at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan, remains an issue in the country. The recent decision to restart one of three inactive reactors at the Genkai nuclear power plant in Saga, which had been shut down a month ago for routine checks, has refueled the public discussion on whether Japan should rely on nuclear energy at all. According to the New York Times, Japanese reactors have to be shut down every 13 months in order to undergo a number of safety checks.

On Thursday, Oct. 28, tens of thousands of people in Bangkok, Thailand’s capital, were evacuated from their homes to escape the major flooding that has hit the country. The flood, caused by monsoon rains inundating rivers throughout the country, has already claimed the lives of roughly 400 people and has affected over 9.5 million in the country. Water levels in Bangkok are predicted to reach as high as 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) throughout different parts of Bangkok.

The recent death of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi sparked several reactions in the U.S. capital last week as the news circulated through Washington. Just minutes before appearing for press interviews in Kabul, Afghanistan, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton learned of the news from an aide’s Blackberry. “Wow. Huh. Unconfirmed. Yeah. Unconfirmed,” the message said.