2008 Review: October

RIA Novosti looks back at the main events of the outgoing year; below the month-by-month review of 2008 continues, with October: 

October 1

* Russia's Supreme Court rules "to exonerate" the country's last tsar and his family, executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918, as victims of political repression

* Russia's government decides to provide up to 175 billion rubles ($6.8 billion) in extra funds in 2009 to support the domestic financial market against the backdrop of the global slump

October 2

* The Russian Prosecutor's Office submits to court the criminal case concerning the murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya

* U.S. senators approve a reworked $700 billion financial bailout package that was sweetened after the House of Representatives rejected the previous version of the plan

October 3

* The long-awaited iPhone smartphone goes on sale at stores throughout Russia, with the first phones bought in country's Far East

October 9

* Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko dissolves parliament and announced snap elections in the country

* Russia hands control of buffer zones adjacent to Abkhazia and South Ossetia over to an EU monitoring mission in Georgia

October 10

* Finland's former president, Martti Ahtisaari, is awarded on Friday the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize for his 30-year mediation efforts across the world, including his role in the Kosovo settlement

* Russia's government decides to allocate up to $50 billion for companies to refinance their foreign debt

October 14

* Russia transfers the Yinlong (Tarabarov) Island, half of the Heixiazi (Bolshoi Ussuriysky) Island and the Bolshoi Island on the Argun River in the Chita Region, East Siberia to China as part of an addendum to an agreement on the Russian-Chinese border

* Syrian President Bashar Assad issues a decree on the establishment of diplomatic relations with Lebanon and the opening of an embassy in Beirut

* The incumbent Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliyev, is reelected for the second term

October 21

* The inauguration ceremony of the Large Hadron Collider goes ahead in Geneva, even though the multi-billion dollar experimental device is out of action for several months

October 24

* The U.S. imposes sanctions against the Russian state-run arms exporter, Rosoboronexport, in connection with the alleged proliferation of weapons of mass destruction

* Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev appoints ambassadors to South Ossetia and Abkhazia, cementing support for the Georgian separatist regions Moscow recognized as independent states after the August conflict

October 28

* A jury founds former banker Alexei Frenkel guilty of organizing the murder of the first deputy head of Russia's Central Bank

October 29

 * At least 215 people are killed in a 6.4-magnitude earthquake in southwestern Pakistan

October 31

* Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi arrives in Moscow on a three-day official visit at the invitation of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev