Its leader, Hassan Abdullah Hersi Al Turki, was only listed on 6 July 2004.

While Uzbekistan did not make out of old Karimov a leadership cult on the scale seen in neighbouring Turkmenistan or even in Kazakhstan, there is no question that the regime's identity is tied up in his persona, raising fears of a power vacuum and instability once he leaves power.

The people flooding the streets were also united in their leader's defense and this turned into an opportunity to overcome the alienation.

Hamas was taken by surprise when Israel attacked, killing its military leader, Ahmed al Jabari, and destroying most of its Fajr 5 arsenal.

Since November 2011, Italy has been led not by a politician, but by an academic economist and a former European Union commissioner, Mario Monti.

Many of us pass the decaying hull of a small yacht, the legendary Hummingbird II on South Quay without appreciating the awe inspiring voyage of circumnavigation it took at the hands of its builder and captain.

And when I met her, she had just taken a walk over the Himalayas from Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, into Nepal, across to India 30 days to meet her leader, the Dalai Lama.

And then they had those ads, right? With the guy in the Rolls Royce, and he's eating the Grey Poupon. The other Rolls Royce pulls up, and he says, do you have any Grey Poupon?

Although Egyptian reconnaissance aircraft had flown near Dimona in 1965 and 1967 without incident, during the 1967 war, Israel shot down one of its own Mirage jet fighters when it strayed over the facility.

China has increasingly sought to project the success of its markets and mandarins development model. But, as China s economy slows this year, its imperial leader is likely to discover that there really is a link between a society s openness and the sustainability of its economic success.

When he was 22 he left England for South Africa aboard the Olivia (captained by a family friend William Roome) and worked for a while in Cape Town as a scenic and portrait artist, and as official war artist during the so called Eighth Frontier War for the British Army.