It seems 2004 was the year the planet went more than slightly berserk with natural disasters. The year began with the recovery efforts in Bam, Iran after the city suffered a magnitude 7.8 earthquake. Then came spring floods in Bangladesh and China. Then the Atlantic hurricane season dispatched a series of storms that lay waste to Grenada, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, and parts of the US coast. As if Mother Nature did not vent all her aggression by then, on 26 December she sent a series of tsunamis to destroy vast stretches of the Thai, Indian, Sri Lankan, Indonesian, and Bangladeshi coasts before delivering harsh consequences to the Somali coast. The end result of these tsunamis are a projected 130,000 people dead, 10,000 missing, and 20,000,000 people are homeless.
The "war on terror" continued throughout 2004. Afghanistan held peaceful and democratic elections. It remains to be seen whether Iraq can accomplish the same goal on 30 January. Government forces and rebels continued and intensified their battles in the Darfor region of Sudan, but in 2004 the conflict finally received international attention. Aid organizations tried to provide services in Darfor, but many groups withdrew after only a few months. Now the rebels and the government have a cease fire deal, but there is no assurance it will survive to permanence.
It also was a year of important business transactions. Microsoft continued its tussle with the EU Commission. On 22 December the EU Court of First Instance ruled Microsoft must offer a version of its Explorer browser that does not include the Windows media player package to end claims of tied selling practices. Microsoft argued the appeals process must be complete before its programmers unveil such a product, but that argument did not persuade the court. Days after the Court of First Instance opinion, Microsoft announced it would delay release of its next Windows upgrade until 2006 because of some security flaws in the programs.
In the airline industry the Boeing/Airbus rivalry intensified. Boeing announced more plant closures and job losses as US and foreign states bid against each other and cajoled Boeing executives to win contracts to produce the new 7E7 planes. Airbus underwent similar (but more efficiently managed) tension with development and production of its new A380 planes. In the automotive sector, Toyota made headlines when it surpassed Daimler-Chrystler in the list of the tip five automakers in the US in terms of sales.
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