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2009 Review: March

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RIAN News Service looks back at the main events of the outgoing year; below the month-by-month review of 2009 continues, with March: 22.12.2009, Sputnik International

2009-12-22T13:00+0000

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2009 Review: March

13:00 GMT 22.12.2009

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RIAN News Service looks back at the main events of the outgoing year; below the month-by-month review of 2009 continues, with March:

March 1

* Russia holds local legislature and mayoral elections across the country on the single day of voting

* China's first lunar probe ends its 16-month mission with a planned crash into the moon's surface

March 2

* Russia's major political party United Russia, led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, wins polls to legislatures in all nine participating regions, its first election test since the country was hit by a financial crisis last year

March 3

* Ukraine's parliament votes overwhelmingly to dismiss Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ohryzko over his handling of a territorial dispute with Romania and policies damaging ties with Russia

March 4

* The International Criminal Court issues an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir over war crimes against civilians in Sudan's Darfur Province

March 6

* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton make a symbolic "reboot" to improve relations between the two countries when they met in Geneva

March 7

* Kyrgyzstan's parliament approves the termination of agreements with 11 countries on the deployment of their military contingents at the Manas airbase in the north of the country

March 9

* North Korea puts its armed forces on full combat readiness and cuts off the only direct hotline with South Korea's military in response to plans for joint military exercises by South Korea and the U.S.

* North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is unanimously reelected to the country's parliament with 100% voter turnout

March 10

* A teenage gunman opens fire at random in a secondary school in southwest Germany, killing 16, and shoots himself after being cornered by police, national media reported, citing police sources

March 16

* The trial of Josef Fritzl, accused of imprisoning his daughter for 24 years and fathering her seven children, begins in the Austrian town of St. Poelten

March 17

* Russia signs agreements with Abkhazia and South Ossetia on giving the republics financial aid in socio-economic development and balancing their budgets

March 30

* Sulim Yamadayev, the former commander of the Chechen Vostok battalion, is in hospital in a serious condition after surviving an assassination attempt in Dubai