A baby boy had been abandoned in his pram in the front garden of a house in Newport, south Wales.

Obviously well-cared for, the baby was placed in the care of foster parents while police began the difficult search for his mother.

It was to be five months before the woman was finally found.

Hooligan element

January also saw the uglier side of football raise its head in an FA Cup Third Round tie between Cardiff City and Leeds.

Cardiff's landmark victory in the match almost went unnoticed as the clashes between rival fans dominated the headlines.

Bluebirds' owner Sam Hammam, banned from making his trademark pitch-side walks, went on to promise to stamp out the hooligan element which troubled the club.

The Kilshaws released a charity record

Meanwhile, in a postscript to a story which had run-and-run, education chiefs announced that the long-running suspension saga of head teacher Marjorie Evans has cost taxpayers in Monmouthshire nearly �80,000.

Mrs Evans was suspended from her school for 18 months after a 10-year-old pupil alleged she had assaulted him - before being allowed back to classes after being cleared in court and disciplinary hearings.

Councillors in Carmarthenshire were presented with a planning application to house a tiger on a farm in the county.

Animal expert Liz Hamer wanted to move one-year-old Torrick from Longleat to the wilds of west Wales.

But councillors turned down the application after police's safety fears added to a tide of objections to the move.

In March, First Minister Rhodri Morgan paid his respects on behalf of the people of Wales at the scene of the World Trade Center terror attacks the previous September.

The trip was also designed to boost Wales' standing abroad and the first minister announced the first of a series of Welsh "embassies" was to be set up in New York.

He also took the opportunity to host a Dylan Thomas evening at the hotel where the poet gave his final reading before his death 50 years ago.

Back in Wales, Alan and Judith Kilshaw the couple who shot to international notoriety through their ill-fated attempt to adopt twins over the internet, announced they were to release a charity record to help struggling Wrexham Football Club.

Meanwhile, Air Wales unveiled its latest batch of "small recruits" - all of them under 5ft 3in tall.

The company insisted on the height restriction to stop them banging their heads inside the small aircraft it uses.

In April, the first inquiry by the Children's Commissioner for Wales Peter Clarke opened into the handling of child abuse allegations against a former drama teacher and TV writer from south Wales.

The Clywch inquiry, at the University of Glamorgan, is examining allegations involving John Owen, who killed himself in October 2001, the day before he was due to stand trial on abuse charges.

At the end of April Cardiff was awash with showbiz stars as Catherine Zeta Jones and teenage soprano Charlotte Church joined former cricketer Ian Botham on the last leg of a nine-day trek to raise funds for the first children's hospital in Wales.

Botham's marathon 229-mile hike from Machynlleth raised almost �1m towards the Noah's Ark appeal.

In May, a Welsh air stewardess who had twice been cleared of drugs charges in the United Arab Emirates finally returned home to the UK.

Katherine Jenkins, 31, from Neath, spent 17 months in custody before being cleared in March of possessing cocaine at the end of a protracted case in Dubai.

Also in May, Swansea City FC's mascot Cyril the Swan revealed he was looking for a possible career in politics and was considering standing for the Welsh Assembly's next elections.

It followed the election of fellow footballing mascot H'Angus the Monkey as mayor of Hartlepool in England's local elections.

Katherine Jenkins returned after a year and a half in a UAE jail

June saw large crowds turn out for a three-day pilgrimage to Wales by the Queen and Prince Philip, as part of the Golden Jubilee celebrations.

In Swansea Crown Court at the end of a trial which had shocked the nation, a scrap metal dealer David Morris, 40, was sentenced to life for the murders of four members of the same family at a house in Clydach.

In one of the most horrific murder cases in recent history in Wales, Mandy Power, her elderly mother Doris Dawson and two young daughters had been beaten to death with an iron pole exactly three years before the jury returned its verdict.