Wikipedia:ITN archives/2009/February

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




 * Over 50 people are killed and 82 critically injured following an oil spillage ignition in Molo, Kenya.
 * Kirill of Moscow (pictured) becomes the 16th Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.
 * Rafael Nadal (pictured) and Serena Williams win the men's and women's singles respectively at the 2009 Australian Open.
 * Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir (pictured) becomes Prime Minister of Iceland, the first openly gay head of government of the modern world.
 * A series of reprisal attacks leaving up to 50 dead occurs in Gaza during a ceasefire in the 2008-2009 Israel-Gaza conflict.
 * The Pittsburgh Steelers defeat the Arizona Cardinals 27-13 to win Super Bowl XLIII.
 * Iran launches Omid, its first domestically constructed satellite.
 * French astronomers discover COROT-Exo-7b, the smallest exoplanet to have its diameter measured.
 * Fossils of the largest snake currently known, Titanoboa, are discovered in Colombia.
 * The chairman of a Tokyo bedding supplier is arrested by Japanese police following the exposure of an investment scam reportedly worth US$1.4 billion.
 * The heaviest snowfall for 18 years disrupts air and road traffic and shuts schools across much of Ireland and the United Kingdom (snowfall in London pictured).
 * The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves ATryn, the first medicine created using genetically-engineered animals.
 * In Victoria, Australia, bushfires (satellite image pictured) cause major property damage and kill at least 25 people.
 * Madagascar police open fire on a protest in Antananarivo, killing at least 50 people and injuring hundreds.
 * An airplane crashes near Manaus, the capital of Amazonas, Brazil, killing 24 people.
 * Robert Plant and Alison Krauss win the 2009 Grammy Award for Record and Album of the Year.
 * President of Bolivia Evo Morales enacts a new constitution which grants more power to the country's indigenous majority and allows for land reform.
 * Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change party becomes Prime Minister of Zimbabwe.
 * The discovery of a 16th-century mass grave containing at least 49 human skeletons at the Tlatelolco archaeological site in Mexico City is announced.
 * Iridium 33 (replica pictured) and Kosmos-2251 are destroyed in space, in the first major collision between artificial satellites.
 * A Continental Airlines airplane crashes into a house in Clarence Center, New York, USA, killing 49 people.
 * A passenger train derails in the Indian state of Orissa, killing at least 15 people and injuring 150.
 * The completion of the first draft of the Neanderthal genome (reconstruction of a Neanderthal child pictured) is announced by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.
 * The Andean volcano Galeras (pictured) erupts in Colombia, forcing some 8,000 people to evacuate.
 * The ongoing general strikes in Guadeloupe and Martinique continue over the high cost of living.
 * An amendment to the Constitution of Venezuela, lifting term limits on elected offices from the President of the Republic down, is endorsed by 54% of voters in a referendum.
 * The Royal Navy's nuclear submarine HMS Vanguard collide with the French Navy's Le Triomphant in the Atlantic Ocean.
 * The largest oil spill to affect Great Britain and Ireland in 13 years occurs off County Cork.
 * U.S. President Barack Obama signs the a US$787 billion stimulus package, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, into law.
 * UBS AG, Switzerland's largest bank, agrees to pay US$780 million in fines and restitution and disclose account information to the U.S. Government after admitting to helping American clients avoid taxes.
 * The Danton, a French battleship sunk in 1917 by a German submarine, is discovered with many of its gun turrets still intact on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea.
 * Ivars Godmanis, the Prime Minister of Latvia, resigns along with the rest of his government amid concerns about handling the economic crisis.
 * China confirms HIV/AIDS as its leading cause of death by infectious disease in 2008, a fivefold increase over a three year period.
 * Eleven people are killed and 20 more are injured in a collision between a tourist coach and a train in central Slovakia.
 * A mine blast in Gujiao in the Shanxi province of China kills at least 73 people and injures at least 113 more.
 * An outbreak of Hepatitis B in Gujarat, India, kills 49 people and infects 125.
 * Tamil Tiger launches a kamikaze-style suicide attack on Colombo, Sri Lanka, killing two people and injuring over 50 more.
 * Slumdog Millionaire wins eight Academy Awards including Best Picture.
 * A bomb thrown into the crowded Khan el-Khalili square in Cairo, Egypt, kills one person and injures 22 others.
 * Comet Lulin (pictured) peaks in brightness in the constellation Virgo.
 * A NASA rocket carrying the Orbiting Carbon Observatory falls into the ocean near Antarctica after a failed launch.
 * A machine gun and mortar battle in Mogadishu, Somalia kills 15 people and injures at least ninety more in the Somali Civil War.
 * An international team of scientists announces the completion of its mission to map the Gamburtsev Mountain Range beneath the Antarctic ice.
 * Turkish Airlines Flight 1951 with 135 passengers on board crashes at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport.
 * Mutinies by a paramilitary force spread across Bangladesh, killing at least 21 people.
 * The Special Court for Sierra Leone convicts three commanders of the Revolutionary United Front on charges of war crimes, including enlistment of child soldiers and forced marriage.
 * Milan Milutinović, a former President of Serbia, is acquitted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on charges of war crimes.
 * An outbreak of dengue fever kills at least 18 people and infects 31,000 more in Bolivia.
 * U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer settles a multi-billion dollar damages case with 200 alleged victims of a drugs trial in Kano, Nigeria.
 * Over €7 billion is stolen from the Bank of Ireland in College Green, Dublin, in the largest bank robbery in Irish history.
 * 90,000 food crop seed samples are delivered to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in the Arctic Circle.