First the dot.com bust, then the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and other targets. The United States economy started the decade shaken to the core, but it responded with an astounding economic boom.
Ten years on, however, the US economy is in dire straits again, and most people are poorer than they were before. How did it happen?
Find out more at our special report on the global economy.
Entrepreneur Ning Li found having both a French and Chinese perspective meant he saw clearly how the markets could benefit each other
Ning Li, co-founder and CEO of the online furniture store Made.com, already has two start-up companies under his belt. He launched his first business selling furniture over the internet to customers in France after he left a career in investment banking.
He says he went into banking to prove he could do it but soon realised he had a different itch to scratch.
"As an entrepreneur we like… freedom," he says. He found investment banking to be at the "opposite [end] of the scale".
"It's extremely useful in terms of experience but it didn't fit me," he admits. Ning realised he needed to get out quickly. "The longer you go into investment banking, the more you are paid and the more difficult [it is] to leave your job and start something on your own," he explains.
Ning set up his first company in France selling furniture online when he was 25 years old. To him, launching a start-up seemed like a natural progression.
"When you look at what Chinese people do abroad, a lot of them open restaurants and that's a very entrepreneurial approach," he says.
Two perspectives
MADE.COM
Ning left China to continue his studies in France when he was 15 years old and he says the result was an exposure to a "double culture of Chinese and French".
The experience made it easy to spot how one market could benefit from the other.
"I come from… a medium-sized town which happens to be one of the biggest furniture manufacturing bases in China," he says. Yet he found the price difference between goods manufactured in Asia and sold in the West astounding. "How could a $300 sofa sell at 3,000 euros?" he asks. "Just crazy."
It was something he asked himself again when he realised that the costs of manufacturing designer furniture were the same or less than regular brands.
Pitching designer brands at more affordable prices whilst still making a healthy profit was a clear business model for Ning Li.
"It's always an opportunity when you see a big market that hasn't changed so much," he says.
Many furniture manufacturers find it uneconomic to supply products in small quantities. Using the internet to aggregate orders helps matters - once enough orders have come in to fill a shipping container, it's possible for the goods to be manufactured and despatched. Ning Li says this approach helps to keep costs down.
Indeed, he says the success of it was apparent from the start. "We had about 300 orders for day one," he recalls. "Three hundred orders for a furniture business - just amazing."
Know your weaknesses
Ning Li: "Some people are very good at creating a business, some people are better at managing" Ning Li admits that rapid growth posed challenges for him.
Managing a surge of staff numbers and expanding product lines required skills he didn't yet have.
"Some people are very good at creating a business, some people are better at managing," he says. "I didn't feel I was a manager good enough for the size of that business anymore."
In 2009 Ning Li sold his share of his business in France and took a year off to backpack around the world. He says it gave him the breathing space to start afresh.
It was in London that he met entrepreneur Brent Hoberman who encouraged him to start again with the same idea and the same business model, but this time selling to a British market.
Now Ning Li's online company also works directly with designers to custom-make exclusive products. He says it is harder than buying "off the shelf" products from factories to sell but that "you can still feel in the UK market today a huge gap for designer furniture at a good price".
Modernising business
Online furniture retail means the ability to take more risks with new talent and designers For Ning Li, putting the furniture retail market online has helped revolutionise what he calls a "dusty industry."
"Buying furniture is a conventional thing," he says, adding that in the past retailers were reluctant to take risks with new designs or new designers, and talent could become stifled. Now the internet has changed all that.
"If a new designer comes to see us with a new amazing table that looks risky, we say 'Why not?' because the only risk that we have is taking the photo.
"We put it online, if it doesn't sell, we pull it off. And if it sells, then everybody wins," he explains.
But it's not just about risks and exposure. Ning Li believes that speed is also important when it comes to marketing in the modern age.
"The internet allows us to launch products much faster than traditional business," he says. "Speed is king."
"The speed of designing new products and also renewing your catalogue is key… to keep people's interest… keep them coming back to the website."
Buying from ChinaMany British and European manufacturing industries have outsourced various processes abroad in recent decades.
The result, says Ning Li, is that it can be difficult to find good manufacturers based in the West.
Although some 20% of their suppliers are British, they buy from China - not just because of the cost, but because China has developed an "ecosystem of manufacturing" over the last 30 years.
He believes China's reputation for making goods for worldwide consumption allows the country to understand the global market.
"They have all the insight of what people are looking for," he elaborates.
Alone at the top
Although Ning Li believes being an entrepreneur can leave you isolated, sharing is important in a start-up Entrepreneurship can be a solitary occupation, according to Ning Li.
"As an entrepreneur, you always feel kind of lonely," he confesses. "There are lots of things you cannot share necessarily with all your investors and your employees."
He believes there's one thing that can lessen this: co-founders who you get along with.
"It's really about sharing," he laughs. "And sharing is a nice thing to have in a start-up."
Although the entrepreneur has never failed, he says one shouldn't underestimate the trials of setting up a business from scratch, nor the lessons that can be learned.
"There are so many failures of start-ups," he says. "But you will see the people that actually survive and succeed… are actually the strongest believers."
Indeed, Ning Li believes that the initial struggles and despair of launching a start-up mean many successful entrepreneurs never do it for the money alone.
"What I really enjoy in my daily life is having the liberty of deciding what I want to do when I wake up," he says. "That's a huge thing that I didn't get from my investment banking background anyway."
The onset of wrinkles, muscle wasting and cataracts has been delayed and even eliminated in mice, say researchers in the US.
It was done by "flushing out" retired cells that had stopped dividing. They accumulate naturally with age.
The scientists believe their findings could eventually "really have an impact" in the care of the elderly.
Experts said the results were "fascinating", but should be taken with a bit of caution.
The study, published in Nature, focused on what are known as "senescent cells". They stop dividing into new cells and have an important role in preventing tumours from progressing.
These cells are cleared out by the immune system, but their numbers build up with time. The researchers estimated that around 10% of cells are senescent in very old people.
Dr James KirklandI've never seen anything quite like it”
Scientists at the Mayo Clinic, in the US, devised a way to kill all senescent cells in genetically engineered mice.
The animals would age far more quickly than normal, and when they were given a drug, the senescent cells would die.
The researchers looked at three symptoms of old age: formation of cataracts in the eye; the wasting away of muscle tissue; and the loss of fat deposits under the skin, which keep it smooth.
Researchers said the onset of these symptoms was "dramatically delayed" when the animals were treated with the drug.
When it was given after the mice had been allowed to age, there was an improvement in muscle function.
One of the researchers, Dr James Kirkland, said: "I've never seen anything quite like it."
His colleague Dr Jan van Deursen told the BBC: "We were very surprised by the very profound effect. I really think this is very significant."
The treatment had no effect on lifespan, but that may be due to the type of genetically engineered mouse used.
Eternal youth?The study raises the tantalising prospect of slowing the signs of ageing in humans. However, senescent cells cannot be just flushed out of human beings.
Dr Deursen said: "I'm very optimistic that this could really have an impact. Nobody wants to live longer if the quality of life is poor."
He argued that young people were already clearing out their senescent cells.
"If you can prime the immune system, boost it a little bit, to make sure senescent cells are removed, that might be all it needs.
"Or develop a drug that targets senescent cells because of the unique proteins the cells make."
Dr Jesus Gil, from the Medical Research Council's Clinical Sciences Centre, said the findings needed to be "taken with a bit of caution. It is a preliminary study".
However, he said it was a fascinating study which "suggests if you get rid of senescent cells you can improve phenotypes [physical traits] associated with ageing and improve quality of life in aged humans".
The US has joined criticism of Israel's decision to accelerate settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem after Palestinians joined UN cultural agency, Unesco.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said the US was "deeply disappointed".
Earlier, the EU said it was "deeply concerned" by the announcement. The UK, France and Germany said it would hinder efforts for peace.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said it was a "basic right of our people".
'Unjustifiable'Mr Carney told a White House briefing that Israel's decision did not help bring peace talks any nearer.
"Unilateral actions work against efforts to resume direct negotiations, and they do not advance the goal of a reasonable and necessary agreement between the two parties," Mr Carney said.
"That is the only way to achieve the two-state solution that both sides have as their goal."
EU policy chief Catherine Ashton urged Israel to reverse the decision and called on both sides to return to the negotiating table.
"Israeli settlement activity is illegal under international law including in East Jerusalem and an obstacle to peace. We have stated this many times before," she said.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague called the Israeli move "provocative and unhelpful".
"This settlement building programme is illegal under international law and is the latest in a series of provocative and unhelpful settlement announcements," Mr Hague said in a statement.
He also criticised Israel's temporary withholding of Palestinian tax revenues, which was announced at the same time, and called for a reversal of both decisions.
French foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said the proposed settlement building "is illegal in international law and is a threat to the two-state solution".
Benjamin Netanyahu Israeli Prime MinisterWe are building in Jerusalem because it is our right and our duty to this generation and future generations”
Steffen Seibert, German Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman, said building settlements in occupied areas "hinders the goal we all must have of a two-state solution and is unjustifiable".
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also said he was "deeply concerned" by the development.
"The secretary general calls on the government of Israel to freeze all settlement activity and to continue to transfer VAT and customs revenues that belong to the Palestinian Authority and are essential to enable it to function, in line with Israel's obligations," his spokesman Martin Nesirky said.
'Not punishment'Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said on Tuesday that a plan to build 2,000 new apartments in the West Bank and East Jerusalem would be accelerated.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has said the move would speed up the destruction of the peace process.
The step has been seen by Palestinians as a response to their Unesco membership bid.
On Monday, Unesco member states overwhelmingly backed the Palestinians' membership bid, despite opposition from the US and Israel. The US says it will no longer make payments to Unesco.
Israel also said it would temporarily freeze transfers to the Palestinian Authority, which amount to around half of the PA's domestic revenue base.
An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman said on Tuesday the move was "a response to unilateral measures aimed at confronting Israel at the UN and elsewhere on the international scene".
But Mr Netanyahu denied that his government's decision was "punishment".
"We are building in Jerusalem because it is our right and our duty to this generation and future generations, not as punishment but as the basic right of our people to build in its eternal city," he said on Wednesday.
"Jerusalem will never return to the state it was in on the eve of the (1967) Six-Day War, that I promise you."
Peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel broke down more than a year ago. The Palestinians are demanding an end to settlement building.
Almost 500,000 Jews live in settlements on occupied territory. The settlements are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
Genetically modified mosquitoes could prove effective in tackling dengue fever and other insect-borne diseases, a UK-based scientific team has shown.
The male mosquitoes are modified so their offspring die before reproducing.
In a dengue-affected part of the Cayman Islands, researchers found the GM males mated successfully with wild females.
In Nature Biotechnology journal, they say such mating has not before been proven in the wild, and could cut the number of disease-carrying mosquitoes.
Dengue is caused by a virus transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito as it bites.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that there may be 50 million cases each year, and the incidence is rising, with some countries reporting what the WHO terms "explosive" outbreaks.
As yet, there is no vaccine.
Radiation damageAs far back as the 1940s, it was realised that releasing sterile males into the wild could control insects that carried disease or were agricultural pests.
When females breed with the sterile males rather than wild fertile ones, there will be no viable offspring, meaning there are fewer mosquitoes around to transmit the disease.
In the 1950s, the screwworm fly was eradicated from the Caribbean island of Curacao using males sterilised by radiation.
But the technology has not worked so well with disease-carrying insects.
Generally, the sterilising process weakens the males so much that they struggle to mate; the wild males are dominant.
Oxitec, a company spun off from Oxford University, uses a genetic engineering approach.
Dr Raman Velayudhan WHOThis study is the first to show that the mosquito population could be suppressed this way”
Offspring of their GM males live through the larval stage but die as pupae, before reaching adulthood.
In the latest study, the research group - which includes scientists from Imperial College London and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine - released batches of GM mosquitoes in 2009 in an area of the Cayman Islands where Aedes aegypti are common, and dengue sometimes present.
A proportion of the eggs collected from the study area in subsequent weeks carried the introduced gene, meaning the biotech mosquitoes had mated successfully.
The GM males made up 16% of males in the study area, and fathered 10% of the larvae; so they were not quite as successful as the wild males, but not significantly worse.
"We were really surprised how well they did," said Luke Alphey, Oxitec's chief scientific officer and a visiting professor at Oxford University.
"For this method, you just need to get a reasonable proportion of the females to mate with GM males - you'll never get the males as competitive as the wild ones, but they don't have to be, they just have to be reasonably good."
"This study is the first to show that the mosquito population could be suppressed this way," said Dr Raman Velayudhan, a WHO dengue expert.
"The fitness level is much better [compared with previous attempts] - it is almost the same as in wild mosquitoes," he told BBC News.
Cognizant that genetic engineering is a technology that carries the potential for risks as well as benefits, the WHO is finalising guidance on how GM insects should be deployed in developing countries, which it expects to release by the end of the year.
The "death gene" is turned off during rearing in Oxford - and turned on in the field The field seems to be hotting up, with other research groups recently creating Anopheles mosquitoes that are immune to the malaria parasite they normally carry, and making male Anopheles that lack sperm.
Malaria is a prime target for these approaches simply because it is such an important disease; but arguably it is more needed in diseases such as dengue where there are few alternatives.
"For malaria, there are effective alternatives like bednets, but they won't work for dengue because the mosquitoes bite during daytime," said Dr Alphey.
"We don't advocate [GM mosquitoes] as a 'magic bullet' that will solve all dengue in one go, so the question is how it fits in as part of an integrated programme - and for dengue, it would be a huge component of an integrated programme."
Funding for the Oxitec approach has come from a number of sources including private investors, charities, Oxford University and governments, and the Cayman Islands authorities were willing to take part in the field trial.
Death by feedbackThe genetic approach used to create the mosquitoes is a system known as tetracycline-controlled transcriptional activation (tTA).
The tTA gene is spliced into the insect's genome in such a way that the protein it makes increases the gene's activity - a positive feedback loop.
The cells make more and more tTA protein - and in doing so, have little capacity for making any other proteins. Eventually, this kills the insects.
When the male larvae are reared at Oxitec, this process is turned off by keeping them in water containing the antibiotic tetracycline, which inhibits the feedback process.
When the males breed in the wild, however, tTA genes in their offspring are fully active.
In principle, a process that allows larvae to hatch and stay alive for many days should be more advantageous than the traditional approach of producing infertile eggs, as the larvae will consume food that could otherwise be used by viable larvae from the union of wild males and females.
The next step in the work is to demonstrate that deploying GM males does suppress the insect population enough that it is likely to have an impact on dengue incidence.
Dr Alphey said results from a project last year in the Cayman Islands suggested this had been achieved.
