Wikipedia:ITN archives/2009/December

(Archive begins here and is to be continued from here forward).










 * A court in Argentina blocks Latin America's first same-sex marriage, overturning an earlier ruling, saying the Supreme Court should decide on its constitutionality.
 * José Mujica (pictured) is elected President of Uruguay.
 * Porfirio Lobo is elected president of Honduras in the first election since the 2009 Honduran constitutional crisis.
 * Rwanda becomes the first country to be declared landmine-free under the Ottawa Treaty.
 * In the process to revalue the North Korean won, current banknotes cease to be legal tender, and businesses throughout the country shut down until new notes are released on 7 December.
 * A suicide bombing at a graduation ceremony in a hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia kills 22 people, including three ministers of the Transitional Federal Government.
 * An explosion at a nightclub kills more than 100 people and injures 160 others in Perm, Russia.
 * Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito are found guilty of the murder of Meredith Kercher, in a widely publicised trial in Perugia, Italy.
 * Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo (pictured) is re-elected President of Equatorial Guinea.
 * A suicide attack kills at least 37 people and injures more than 80 others during Friday prayers at a mosque in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
 * A diocese in Los Angeles elects the second openly gay bishop in the history of the Anglican Church.
 * Hifikepunye Pohamba is re-elected President of Namibia and the SWAPO Party wins a majority of seats in the National Assembly.
 * Traian Băsescu (pictured) is re-elected President of Romania.
 * A series of bombings in Baghdad, Iraq, kills at least 127 people and injures 448 others.
 * The United Nations Climate Change Conference opens in Copenhagen, Denmark.
 * The discovery of the Triassic theropod dinosaur genus Tawa is announced.
 * The Constitutional Court of Turkey bans the Democratic Society Party and expel its chairman Ahmet Türk from the Parliament, over the party's alleged links to the Kurdistan Workers' Party.
 * U.S. economist Paul Samuelson, a Nobel laureate and one of the founders of neo-Keynesian economics, dies at the age of 94.
 * Chinese President Hu Jintao, together with the leaders of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, inaugurates the Central Asia – China gas pipeline.
 * NASA launches the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, an infrared-wavelength astronomical space telescope.
 * Researchers report that the Veined Octopus retrieves discarded coconut shells and assemble them to use as shelter, becoming the first invertebrate recorded to use tools.
 * Sergei Bagapsh is re-elected President of Abkhazia.
 * The Boeing 787 Dreamliner, a wide-body passenger airliner developed by Boeing Commercial Airplanes, takes its maiden flight.
 * Former Acting Prime Minister of Russia Yegor Gaidar, one of the architects of post-Soviet reform, dies at the age of 53.
 * The Supreme Court of Pakistan declares the National Reconciliation Ordinance as unconstitutional, paving way for the reopening of the corruption cases involving senior officials.
 * The sinking of MV Danny F II, a livestock transporter, in the Mediterranean Sea kills at least five people, 10,224 sheep and 17,932 cattle.
 * At the United Nations Climate Change Conference, Brazil, India, the People's Republic of China, South Africa and the United States reach a non-binding deal.
 * A Paris court finds Google guilty of copyright infringement, sentencing it to pay €300,000 to a French publisher, and €10,000 a day until it removes extracts of the publisher's books from its database.
 * The discovery of GJ 1214 b (artist's impression pictured), an extrasolar super-Earth in the constellation Ophiuchus, is announced.
 * A blizzard produces record snowfall, causing power outages and at least 5 deaths in North America.
 * Grand Ayatollah Hosein-Ali Montazeri, one of the leaders of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and a senior dissident, dies at the age of 87.
 * A record-breaking cold temperature and heavy snow causes widespread disruption of transport services and power outages across Europe, and a blizzard produces record snowfall in some U.S. states, causing at least five deaths.
 * FC Barcelona wins the 2009 FIFA Club World Cup, becoming the first football team to win six major competitions in a single year.
 * Mexico City's Legislative Assembly legalizes same-sex marriage, the first such recognition in Latin America.
 * Luis Francisco Cuéllar, governor of Caquetá Department (coat of arms pictured) in Colombia, is found dead after being kidnapped at gunpoint.
 * The Supreme Court of Pakistan orders the government to recognize hijras, intersex and transgender individuals, as a distinct gender.
 * The Gävle goat, a 13-metre high yule goat in Gävle, Sweden, is burnt down in the 24th such arson attack since 1966.
 * Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo is sentenced to 11 years in prison for "inciting subversion of state power."
 * Former President of Venezuela Rafael Caldera dies at the age of 93.
 * A passenger aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit, Michigan, is detained after attempting to light an explosive device mid-flight.
 * The Wuhan–Guangzhou High-Speed Railway, the world's fastest at the average speed of 350 km per hour, is opened in the People's Republic of China.
 * Thailand starts repatriating 4,000 Hmong asylum seekers to Laos against their will, despite international protest.
 * The discovery of the tomb of Cao Cao, one of the leaders during the Three Kingdoms period of China, is announced.
 * Akmal Shaikh, a British man convicted of trafficking heroin, becomes the first European Union national executed in the People's Republic of China in 50 years.
 * Former President of Indonesia, Abdurrahman Wahid dies at the age of 69.
 * At least 15 people are killed and more than 1.500 arrested after major anti-government protests in Iran.
 * Six people are killed in a shooting in Espoo, Finland.