1. An Indian Army soldier participates in early-morning drill close to the India-Pakistan border in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The year 2002 saw the two traditional foes on the brink of a fourth war, with both nuclear nations amassing a million troops in the disputed border areas.
2. North Korea announces in October that Chinese business mogul Yang Bin, seen here in the hardline communist nation's capital Pyongyang, is to become Chief Executive of the Sinuiju Special Administrative Region being established on the North Korea-China border. Mainland authorities, embarrassed that the announcement was made without any consultation with Beijing, expressed their displeasure by placing Yang under house arrest. In November he was charged with fraud, corruption and other commercial crimes.
3. An East Timorese man is framed by his new country's flags in the capital Dili. East Timor became the millennium's first new nation at midnight on May 19.
4. Former Indonesian president Suharto's son Hutomo 'Tommy' Suharto attends court in a trial seen as a key test of Indonesia's corruption-prone legal system and its fledgling democracy. He is found guilty in July of the murder of a judge who had sentenced him to 18 months' imprisonment on graft charges, and for the illegal possession of weapons. The former playboy was transferred to high-security Nusakam-bangan prison island off the south coast of central Java, where he is due to serve 15 years.
5. Veteran Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohammed weeps as he offers to quit all posts in his ruling coalition in Kuala Lumpur in June. An emotional Mahathir withdrew his offer soon after.
6. An Afghan teenager climbs among the ruins of his capital city, Kabul. After 23 years of conflict and an estimated 1.5 million dead, the beginning of 2002 saw a American-led invasion force cause the disintegration of the fanatical Islamic Taleban regime. Interim leader Hamid Karzai, who was handed the presidency of Afghanistan at an international conference in Bonn, Germany, in December 2001, cemented his place at a grand assembly in June. The World Bank has since hailed Afghanistan's reconstruction plans and believes prospects are good for the war-torn nation, which needs billions of dollars in aid.
