Events that marked 2018: Kim's emergence into the world, the assassination of Khashoggi, the Yellow Vests...

We are broadcasting a list of the ten most important events in the world in 2018, chosen by the Beta agency.

1. KIM'S EXIT TO THE WORLD - Less than a year after North Korea's last nuclear test and harsh words and insults between Washington and Pyongyang, Kim Jong Un launched a diplomatic offensive that brought the country out of complete isolation and alleviated fears of a nuclear conflict. In a meeting on April 27 with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, Kim personally promised that there would be no more missile launches.

At the summit in the demilitarized zone on the border, Kim became the first North Korean leader to cross the border into South Korea. He previously met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on March 28, his first out of the country since coming to power in 2011. North Korea's opening culminated in Kim's June 12 meeting with US President Donald Trump in Singapore, which concluded with the signing of a denuclearization declaration. , but no significant progress has been made since then. The change in Pyongyang's policy was announced in Kim Jong Un's New Year's speech when he hinted at sending North Korean athletes to the Olympics in South Korea. The year in which three summits between North and South Korea were held ended with the transfer of soldiers from one side to the other for the first time in 65 years.

2. BREXIT - A hundred days before the planned departure of Great Britain from the European Union, there are still many unknowns and all options are open - an orderly separation based on an agreement or a chaotic one without it, but a new British referendum on Brexit was unthinkable until recently.

One thing is certain - both London and Brussels are preparing for the possibility of a chaotic Brexit on March 29, which could plunge the British economy into recession and create chaos at its borders. After a year and a half of negotiations, the two sides reached an agreement on Brexit on November 13, but British Prime Minister Theresa May is having trouble getting it through parliament.

Aware that she does not have a majority, May postponed the parliamentary vote until mid-January. Many members of the British parliament oppose the deal because it would see Northern Ireland remain in the EU's customs system until an agreement is reached to avoid a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland during a transition period of at least 21 months, and possibly longer.

3. TRADE WAR - US President Donald Trump's decision in early March to introduce tariffs of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on imported aluminum, despite warnings from numerous allies that he should respect international trade rules, shook the world markets.

The target was China, but after June 1, those measures began to be applied to countries that had been exempt until then, including the EU. As a reciprocal measure, the EU introduced tariffs of 25 percent on a range of American products from peanut butter and bourbon to jeans and motorcycles. Those measures threatened transatlantic relations, but the trade war was fiercest between the US and China. Trump has imposed punitive tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods, arguing that Beijing is hurting American companies by stealing or pressuring them to reveal their technology secrets in exchange for market access. Beijing then introduced reciprocal measures, but Washington threatened new punitive measures. In November, at the Group of 20 summit in Argentina, Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping agreed to establish a 90-day "truce" starting on January 1. Negotiations will continue in 2019.

4. ASSASSINATION OF KASHOGI - Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, known as a critic of the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, was killed on October 2 in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where he went to collect marriage documents. For days, Saudi Arabia denied claims by Turkish officials that Khashoggi had been killed and claimed the journalist had left the consulate, citing footage of a man in Khashoggi's clothing on the street as evidence.

It was only 12 days later that Riyadh admitted that Khashoggi was killed in the consulate, but it was said to have occurred in a fight that the participants tried to cover up. Although the US said it was satisfied with the Saudi explanation, Turkey continued its investigation and found that Khashoggi was killed immediately after entering the consulate by a group of 15 people specially sent from Saudi Arabia and that his body was dismembered. The whereabouts of Khashoggi's remains are still unknown. After that, the affair essentially focused on whether the Saudi crown prince ordered Khashoggi's death, and some Western countries announced the suspension of arms deliveries to Riyadh and imposed sanctions on officials involved. The US has not, although the CIA has reported to the Senate that there is very reliable evidence that Mohammed bin Salman ordered Khashoggi's murder.

5. SKIPAL AFFAIR - The poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England deepened the crisis in relations between the West and Russia. Skripal, during the 4s a member of the Russian GRU military service and a British spy, and his daughter Julia were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury on March XNUMX, and an examination found that they had been poisoned with a nerve agent. The British government immediately accused Russia of poisoning them, while Moscow denies guilt.

According to British claims, Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned with the Soviet military nerve agent "novichok". A wave of expulsions of diplomats from Western capitals and Moscow followed, with over 150 expelled diplomatic representatives on both sides, as well as other measures, such as sanctions, closing consulates. An investigation by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, in which Russia is not allowed to participate, confirmed that the Skripals were poisoned with Novichok, but the report did not specify who was responsible for the poisoning. Both Sergei and Yulia Skripal have recovered from the poisoning and have been taken to an unknown location, and representatives of the Russian Embassy in London are not allowed access to Yulia Skripal even though she is a Russian citizen. Alleged GRU members Aleksandar Mishkin and Anatolij Čepiga are suspected of poisoning Skripal.

6. THE YELLOW VESTS - The protests of the "Yellow Vests" confronted French President Emmanuel Macron with the biggest crisis since coming to power. Citizens who initially rioted because of the announced increase in fuel taxes as part of environmental measures, later took to the streets to express their dissatisfaction with the general state policy.

On November 17, the citizen's movement arose spontaneously on social networks by calling for blockades of roads, oil warehouses, various local actions and large protests every Saturday in large cities. At those protests, a large number of people were injured and detained, and some cities, including Paris, turned into a battlefield with a lot of damage on the streets.

After several weeks of silence, Macron addressed the nation on December 10, promising concessions and measures to calm the situation. The government first suspended the announcement of the tax increase, and the president promised to increase the minimum wage by 100 euros and various financial and tax reliefs for employees and pensioners with low incomes. Macron's promises, which come into force on January 1, did not fully convince the French, who continued, but on a smaller scale, protests throughout the country. It is estimated that these measures will cost the country about ten billion euros, which caused the EU to fear that France would not exceed the allowed European limit of three percent of the gross domestic product.

7. ANGELA MERKEL'S RETIREMENT - German Chancellor Angela Merkel surprised but also worried many when she announced her retirement from politics at the end of October. A day after her Christian Democratic Union (CDU)'s poor results in elections in the state of Hesse, Merkel said she would not run again for party president at the December congress, and that she intended to remain chancellor until her term ends in 2021.

Merkel's position was weakened in the parliamentary elections of 2017. After six months of post-election negotiations, Merkel managed to form a government in March, which has been rocked by crises ever since. The fall of the government was narrowly avoided at the beginning of the summer when Merkel clashed with Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU), over her migrant policy. The last straw was the poor result in the elections in Hessen, where the CDU won only 27 percent of the vote, 11,3 percent less than in the previous vote. Her close associate and ally Anegret Kramp-Karenbauer (7), former general secretary of the party, was elected as Angela Merkel's successor on December 56.

She defeated Friedrich Merz, who advocated a more decisive break with the Chancellor's policy. In the post-war history of Germany, conservative Helmut Kohl headed the government for the longest time - 16 years and 26 days. If Merkel (64) remains chancellor until the end of her term, she would have a solid chance of breaking Kohl's record.

8. PALESTINIAN PROTESTS - Mass Palestinian protests against the Israeli and Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip began on March 30 at the border of that territory and Israel and have not stopped since then. Palestinians are also protesting for the right to return to the current territory of Israel.

In protests called the "Great March of Return", which take place once a week, usually on Fridays, 180 Palestinians have been killed and thousands wounded, and one Israeli soldier was killed by a Palestinian sniper. The protests culminated on May 14, the day the US Embassy was moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and the 70th anniversary of Israel's founding.

At least 60 Palestinians were killed then. The protests are supported by the Islamic extremist Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, whose leader Ismail Haniyeh announced recently, after the death of four Palestinians, that they would continue.

Human rights groups accuse Israel of using excessive force against Palestinian protesters who throw stones and fly kites with incendiary material over the border fence. Israel responds that it defends its sovereignty and prevents attacks on its territory. Tens of thousands of people gather at protests along the border, and the number of victims on certain days of protests has not been recorded since the war between the Israeli army and Hamas in 2014.

MARS 9 - On November 26, the robotic probe of the American space agency NASA landed on Mars after a dramatic seven-minute descent to the surface of the red planet, which scientists at the control center in California followed with excitement. Confirmation of the InSight probe's landing came via radio signals that took more than eight minutes to travel to Earth.

The probe was launched on May 5 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in the US. After a journey of 428 million kilometers, the robotic geologist to examine the interior of Mars reduced its speed from 19.800 kilometers per hour to zero within six minutes of breaking through the Martian atmosphere. It was the eighth successful landing of NASA spacecraft on Mars since 1976.

The planned lifetime of Insight is two Earth years. The probe landed on the vast plain of Elysium, a site less than 600 kilometers from the Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012. The 360-kilogram stationary probe will use its 1,8-meter robotic arm to deploy a mechanical mole and a device to measure tectonic activity.

On December 8, NASA released a recording of the sound of the Martian wind, a low-frequency rumble. It is estimated that the wind was at a speed of 16 to 24 kilometers per hour, and scientists state that this is the first sound from Mars that the human ear can hear. On December 12, Insight also forwarded the first photos from Mars taken with the help of a robotic arm. The probe took a series of photos that NASA turned into a mosaic of images. Scientists were thus able to admire the expanse of red sand on Mars for the first time.

10. ROYAL WEDDING - British Prince Harry and American actress Meghan Markle got married at noon on May 19 in St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. The 37-year-old prince and 2016-year-old Markle met through a mutual friend in 1936. Markle, whose mother is African-American, is the second divorced American in the British royal family - after Wallis Simpson, who caused King Edward VIII to abdicate in XNUMX, sparking a state crisis.

Harry is fifth in line to the British throne. The couple were married by the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, head of the Church of England, in front of around 600 guests, including Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip and a host of celebrities.

About 2.600 guests attended the wedding celebration in the castle. The couple are now officially known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Meghan Markle was escorted to the altar by the British heir to the throne, the groom's father, Prince Charles, and 10 pageboys and bridesmaids. The wedding attracted enormous international attention and the broadcast of the ceremony was watched by almost two billion people in the world. On the day of the wedding, 5.958.379 tweets were devoted to this royal event worldwide, according to the organization specialized in social networks, Visibrain. The couple went on their first big trip since their wedding in May in October. At the very beginning of the tour of the countries of the Pacific, the residence of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced on October 15 that Prince Harry and Meghan will have a child in the spring of 2019.