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By Sue Nicholson
BBC News
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The BBC News website looks back at some of the stories making the headlines in the South East over the past year.
JANUARY
The new year began with continuing concerns about the drought facing Kent and Sussex, where some areas had seen their driest conditions since 1933.
Bewl Water reservoir reached its lowest ever level in late 2005
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The Environment Agency warned of water restrictions across the South East in the summer and granted a request by Southern Water to take water from the River Medway to boost reservoir supplies.
Research by the BBC News website revealed that health trusts in the South East had debts of more than £110m.
Of the 46 NHS trusts in Kent, Sussex and Surrey, 31 said they had overspent by between £267,000 and £32m, with only seven reporting a budget surplus.
Antiques shop owner Patsy Quick, 39, from Heathfield in East Sussex, became the first female British motorcyclist to complete the 9,000km (5,600 miles) Dakar Rally.
The Grand Hotel in the Sussex city of Brighton was forced to launch an inquiry after hotel registration cards, containing guests' signatures, credit card and contact details, were found in a skip.
Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney appealed against a decision by Rother District Council telling him to pull down a secluded log cabin in the grounds of his estate, in Peasmarsh, East Sussex.
And a performance artist completed a 60-mile crawl from London to Canterbury Cathedral, in Kent, to highlight the plight of loneliness.
FEBRUARY
The Securitas depot raid in Tonbridge, Kent, in February made headlines around the world after armed robbers made off with £53m.
Eleven people were later charged in connection with Britain's biggest cash robbery, and are due to stand trial next year.
Sion Jenkins was formally acquitted of the 1997 murder of his 13-year-old foster daughter Billie-Jo, at their home in Hastings, East Sussex, after a jury in his third trial failed to reach a verdict.
Paul Collings, 39, from Icklesham, East Sussex, was sentenced to life imprisonment for raping two university students at knifepoint in their bedrooms in 1989.
Thousands of school children were hit by a winter flu bug that affected more than 50 schools across the South East. Several schools were also affected by the winter vomiting bug, norovirus.
And plans to build an art gallery off the Kent coast were scrapped after projected costs rose to £50m. The flagship Turner Contemporary in Margate was due to have been sited in the sea next to the old pier.
MARCH
Daniel Gonzalez, 25, of Woking in Surrey, who fantasised about being a serial killer, was given six life sentences in March for knifing four people to death in Sussex and London over three days in September 2004 and trying to kill two others.
Daniel Gonzalez armed himself with different knives for the attacks
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A Kent hotel was forced to apologise after an internal memo suggested themed tours could be offered based on the £53m Securitas depot raid in Tonbridge.
Former prostitute Tatjana Edwards was jailed for life for murdering her elderly husband at their home in Ottershaw, Surrey, after discovering he was not wealthy.
A report by Nicholas Blake QC said at least three of the four recruits who died at Deepcut army barracks in Surrey probably killed themselves and rejected calls for a public inquiry.
The first phase of the new Fastrack bus service, using satellite technology to trip traffic lights in its favour, opened between Dartford and Bluewater, in Kent.
And a 53-year-old Kent woman was so desperate to have a baby that she placed adverts in four newsagents' windows to find an egg donor in a "last roll of the dice".
APRIL
At least 12cm (5in) of snow fell in areas of west Kent and East Sussex in April, bringing chaos to roads and railways, and causing power cuts to more than 8,000 homes.
The body of missing 17-year-old Terry Edmonds was found in a suitcase at the entrance to a supermarket car park in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. A man is due to go on trial charged with her murder in February.
Known paedophile Kevin Hazelwood, 40, from Brighton, Sussex, was jailed indefinitely for repeatedly raping a nine-year-old girl despite being on probation and on a sex offenders' treatment programme.
Black teenager Christopher Alaneme, 18, died in an attack in Sheerness, Kent. Five men have been charged with his murder and face a trial next October.
Britain's oldest known World War I veteran, Henry Allingham, 109, was awarded the freedom of the East Sussex town of Eastbourne, where he has lived for 40 years.
More than 200 Yorkshire terriers were found in squalid conditions in a windowless garden shed in Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex, after the death of their 73-year-old owner.
And Kate Charles, a 33-year-old finance officer from Brighton, Sussex, completed the North Pole marathon after previously running on all seven continents, while
former soldier Kevin Alderton, 34, from Dartford, Kent, set a new downhill speed skiing record by a blind person of 100.94mph.
MAY
Passenger flights from Kent International Airport resumed in May - the first since the collapse of budget airline EUjet in July 2005.
A funeral for the servicewoman was held at Canterbury Cathedral in July
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Flt Lt Sarah-Jayne Mulvihill, 32, from Kent, became the first British woman to be killed in action while on duty in Iraq. She was among five British personnel killed when their helicopter crashed in Basra.
Sutton & East Surrey Water was the first firm in England and Wales to impose a drought order since 1995. The order extended an existing hosepipe ban to add restrictions on sports grounds, parks, car washes and window cleaners.
Former Kent head teacher Peter Walker, who pioneered random pupil drug testing at The Abbey School in Faversham, visited Washington to pass on his advice and experience to America's drugs tsar.
In local elections held across Sussex, the Tories won control of Crawley for the first time in more than 30 years, and Hastings for the first time since 1979.
And two gap-year students - one from Petworth, in West Sussex - became the youngest Britons to climb Mount Everest at the age of 19.
JUNE
Michael Hooker, 50, from Eastbourne, East Sussex, was jailed for life in June after he admitted battering nine-year-old Mollie Haynes to death with a claw hammer, and causing grievous bodily harm with intent to her mother.
Part of Hastings Pier, in East Sussex, was closed to members of the public after it was deemed to be unsafe by the borough council.
Michael Chapman, 16, from Bobbing, in Kent, died in front of his brother and their girlfriends after being attacked on playing fields in Sittingbourne. A man and a 16-year-old boy are due to stand trial for his murder next April.
A 100-year-old picture of a cricket match between Kent and Lancashire, owned by Kent County Cricket Club, broke records when it was sold at Sotheby's in London for £680,000.
And Sussex sportsman Mark Threadgold, 38, set a new world record by becoming the first blind diver to reach a depth of 100 metres.
JULY
Three ambulance trusts merged to form the South East Coast Ambulance Service in July, serving a population of more than 4m people in Kent, Surrey and Sussex.
SpongeBob was away from his enclosure for three days
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The 26-year-old Ghanaian-born wife of Hastings pensioner William West, 76, who went missing in Africa, was charged with his murder after his burnt remains were discovered in The Gambia.
Michael Stone, who is serving life for the Kent murders of Lin and Megan Russell, lost a High Court bid to have medical information in a mental health report kept secret.
A new bridge over the Swale, connecting the Isle of Sheppey with mainland Kent, opened, while a new type of taxi service began in the Sussex city of Brighton using environmentally friendly three-wheeled tuk-tuks.
And Spongebob, a Bolivian squirrel monkey, went missing from his enclosure at Chessington World of Adventures in Surrey. He was found two days later playing with children on a London housing estate. A man was charged with his theft.
AUGUST
An investigation was launched in August after a 12-year-old boy managed to board a plane at Gatwick Airport without tickets during a security alert.
A drug addict mother from Eastbourne, in East Sussex, was jailed for nine years for supplying heroin and crack cocaine to her son from the age of nine.
Thirty-four people had to be led to safety after a fire broke out on a lorry being carried on a freight train in the Channel Tunnel.
Fox News cameraman Olaf Wiig, from Horsted Keynes, in West Sussex, was held hostage for 12 days by kidnappers in the Gaza Strip.
And Little Britain star David Walliams swam across the English Channel from Dover to France in a faster-than-expected 10 hours and 34 minutes.
SEPTEMBER
Motorists in the Kent town of Chatham had to get used to a new road system in September when the old one-way ring road was changed to a two-way network.
Some motorists found the new road system in Chatham confusing
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Sussex couple Linda and David Orams, from Hove, won a High Court battle to keep their dream holiday villa in northern Cyprus following a dispute over who owned the land.
More than 200 children left without classrooms after Lympne Church of England School in Kent was gutted by fire were given temporary accommodation at Port Lympne wildlife park.
Two women - one from the Sussex city of Brighton - returned to the UK after a 12,000-mile (19,312km) charity drive through 12 countries in a motorised pink three-wheeled tuk-tuk in aid of the mental health charity Mind.
And an 82ft-high (25m) sculpture of a man built out of rubbish was burned to the ground in Kent as part of the Margate Exodus event inspired by the Old Testament story of Moses.
OCTOBER
Graham Coutts, 36, from Hove, East Sussex, had his conviction for the murder of Brighton teacher Jane Longhurst formally quashed by the Court of Appeal. A re-trial will take place next June.
A £50m global fundraising campaign was launched to try to save Canterbury's 900-year-old crumbling cathedral.
Brett Clifton, 22, was jailed for life for murdering elderly couple Terry Martin, 72, and his wife Vera, 78, at their home in Faversham, Kent, in January.
A digger being used by workmen on a building site in the Medway Valley in Kent unearthed 3,600 bronze Roman coins dating from AD330 to AD348.
And the daughters of a naval gunner killed when his ship was torpedoed off the Sussex coast during WWII won their battle for the wreck to be protected.
NOVEMBER
A plan to convert a former barracks in the Kent town of Dover into an open prison was abandoned by the government in November following "powerful arguments" against it.
The shooting happened at a building society in New Romney
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The last few remaining traders on Hastings Pier shut up shop and quit as locks were put on gates at the entrance amid safety concerns for the structure.
Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney agreed to demolish a secluded log cabin in the grounds of his estate, in Peasmarsh, East Sussex, following a long-running dispute with the local council.
Comedy actor Chris Langham, from Cranbrook in Kent, appeared in court charged with a string of indecent assaults and child pornography offences.
Three men were charged with robbery and possessing a firearm following an incident at a building society in New Romney, Kent, in which a man was shot dead by Metropolitan Police officers.
And a dolphin nicknamed Dave, who made the Kent coast his new home in the summer, was honoured with an outstanding achievement to tourism award from Kent Tourism Academy.
DECEMBER
Two firefighters were killed in an explosion at a fireworks depot near Lewes, in East Sussex, in December. Brian Wembridge, 63, and Geoff Wicker, 49, were given full brigade honours at their funerals later that month.
Kent Police asked the Home Office for at least £6m towards the cost of investigating the £53m Securitas depot raid in Tonbridge - the UK's biggest cash robbery.
Seven out of 24 NHS trusts and Primary Care Trusts in the South East with the biggest debts were given financial help by NHS South East Coast.
Bad weather in the English Channel, coupled with strikes in France, led to the implementation of Operation Stack on the coast-bound carriageway of the M20, in Kent, leading to a backlog of more than 900 lorries and traffic chaos for other motorists in the area.
A teenager who stabbed a fellow pupil in the eye with scissors on a school playing field at Collingwood College, Surrey, was sentenced to three-and-a-half years youth custody, while a drunk man who passed out across railway tracks in Epsom was fined £560 and given 180 hours' community service.
The green light was given for two offshore wind farms in the Thames Estuary. The London Array project will cover 90 sq miles (232 sq km) between Margate in Kent and Clacton, Essex, while the Thanet scheme will cover 13.5 sq miles (35 sq km) off the north Kent coast.
Michael Stone, who murdered Lin and Megan Russell in Kent in 1996, was told he must serve at least 25 years in prison before being considered for parole.
And the Environment Agency said there was still a drought in the South East despite rainfall being above average levels in November.
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