Prediction tools made significant progress during the decade, UN-sponsored organizations such as the IPCC gained influence, and studies such as the Stern report influenced public support for paying the political and economic costs of countering climate change.

Wars that began included the conflict in the Niger Delta, the Houthi insurgency in Yemen, and the Mexican Drug War.Ĭlimate change and global warming became common concerns in the 2000s.

Further wars that ended included the Algerian Civil War, the Angolan Civil War, the Sierra Leone Civil War, the Second Liberian Civil War, the Nepalese Civil War, and the Sri Lankan Civil War. The Second Congo War, the deadliest conflict since World War II, ended in July 2003. Al-Qaeda and affiliated Islamist militant groups performed terrorist acts throughout the decade. In 2003, a United States-led coalition invaded Iraq, and the Iraq War led to the end of Saddam Hussein's rule as Iraqi President and the Ba'ath Party in Iraq. The International Criminal Court was formed in 2002. The war on terror and War in Afghanistan began after the September 11 attacks in 2001. Yahoo maintained relatively stable popularity, remaining the most popular website for most of the decade. Excite and Lycos fell outside the top 10, and MSN fell from the second to sixth most popular site, though it quadrupled its monthly visits. AOL significantly declined in popularity throughout the decade, falling from being the most popular website to no longer being within the top 10.

Amazon overtook eBay as the most-visited e-commerce site in 2008. Google, YouTube, Ask.com and Wikipedia emerged to become among the top 10 most popular websites. E-mail continued to be popular throughout the decade and began to replace ' snail mail' as the primary way of sending letters and other messages to people in distant locations, though it had existed since 1971. Myspace was the most popular social networking website until June 2009, when Facebook overtook it in number of American users. This contributed to globalization during the decade, which allowed faster communication among people around the world social networking sites arose as a new way for people to stay in touch from distant locations, as long as they had an internet connection. The decade saw the rise of the Internet, which grew from covering 6.7% to 25.7% of the world population. The outbreak of this global financial crisis sparked a global recession, beginning in the United States and affecting most of the industrialized world. The economic developments in the latter third of the decade were dominated by a worldwide economic downturn, which started with the crisis in housing and credit in the United States in late 2007 and led to the bankruptcy of major banks and other financial institutions. The rapid catching-up of emerging economies with developed countries sparked some protectionist tensions during the period and was partly responsible for an increase in energy and food prices at the end of the decade. It is also benefited from an economic boom, which saw the two most populous countries becoming an increasingly dominant economic force. The early part of the decade saw the long predicted breakthrough of economic giants in Asia, like India and China, which had double-digit growth during nearly the whole decade. The 2000s (pronounced 'two-thousands' shortened to the '00s and known as the aughts or noughties) was a decade that began on January 1, 2000, and ended on December 31, 2009. troops heading toward an army helicopter in Afghanistan during the war on terror social media through the Internet spreads across the world a Chinese soldier gazes at the 2008 Summer Olympics commencing in Beijing the largest economic crisis since the Great Depression hits the world in 2008 a tsunami from the Indian Ocean earthquake kills over 230,000 in 2004, and becomes the strongest earthquake since the 1964 Alaska earthquake Millennium From top left, clockwise: The World Trade Center on fire and the Statue of Liberty during the terrorist attacks on Septemthe euro enters into European currency in 2002 a statue of Saddam Hussein being toppled during the Iraq War in 2003, and in 2006, Hussein would be executed for crimes against humanity U.S.

Early 2000s nostalgia food