Wikipedia:ITN archives/2009/March

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


 * The President of Guinea-Bissau, João Bernardo Vieira (pictured), is assassinated during an armed attack on his residence in Bissau.
 * Insurance firm AIG announces fourth quarter losses for 2008, of $61.7 billion, the largest quarterly loss in corporate history.
 * At least five members of the Sri Lankan cricket team are wounded and five Pakistani policemen are killed in shootings near Lahore's Gaddafi Stadium.
 * The International Criminal Court issues an arrest warrant for President of Sudan Omar al-Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
 * At least 20 people are killed after a riot at a prison in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico.
 * NASA launches the Kepler spacecraft, a mission to search for Earth-like planets.
 * The Bank of England announces plans to create £75 billion through quantitative easing, in an attempt to boost the British economy.
 * Members of the Israeli embassy in Mauritania are expelled from the country.
 * Two members of the 38 Engineer Regiment of the British Army are fatally shot outside the Massereene barracks in County Antrim, Northern Ireland.
 * In North Korea, members of the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland party are elected to all 687 seats in the Supreme People’s Assembly.
 * A suicide attack kills at least 28 people and injures 57 others in Baghdad, Iraq.
 * Morocco severs diplomatic ties with Iran, accusing it of attempting to spread Shia Islam.
 * At least 10 people are killed during a shooting spree in Geneva County, Alabama, USA.
 * A school shooting kills at least 11 people in Winnenden, Germany, and another shooting spree kills at least 10 people in the U.S. state of Alabama.
 * Bernard Madoff pleads guilty to the largest investment fraud in U.S. history.
 * An oil spill in Australia's Coral Sea is reported as the worst oil spill in the country's history.
 * Cougar Helicopters Flight 91 ditches in the Atlantic Ocean near Newfoundland, Canada, killing 17.
 * A fire at the Bashundhara City mall in Dhaka, Bangladesh kills seven people and injures fifty.
 * At the close of the 2009 National People's Congress, Premier Wen Jiabao of China expresses concern about United States Treasury Department securities.
 * Space Shuttle Discovery is successfully launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying solar arrays to the International Space Station.
 * An outbreak of meningitis in several West African nations kills at least 930 people and infects 13,500 more.
 * Mauricio Funes (pictured) is elected President of El Salvador.
 * The European Space Agency satellite Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer is launched from Plesetsk Cosmodrome, Russia.
 * Madagascar's military installs former Antananarivo Mayor Andry Rajoelina (pictured) as President, replacing Marc Ravalomanana.
 * Floods in Namibia and Angola kill 90 people and make at least 25.000 people homeless.
 * A 7.9 Mw earthquake occurs off the coast of Tongatapu, Tonga, shortly after a large scale undersea volcanic eruption begins in the region.
 * Ireland wins its first Six Nations Grand Slam in rugby union since 1948.
 * A suicide attack kills four South Korean tourists and a local guide in Shibam, Yemen.
 * A Pilatus PC-12 crashes in the U.S. state of Montana, killing at least 14 people.
 * A FedEx Express McDonnell Douglas MD-11 cargo jet crash-landed at Japan's Narita International Airport, killing two people.
 * Japan defeats Korea 5–3 in 10 innings to win the 2009 World Baseball Classic at Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles, USA.
 * Mount Redoubt (pictured), a stratovolcano in Alaska, continues to erupt.
 * The Board of Control for Cricket in India decides to relocate the 2009 Indian Premier League from India to South Africa due to security concerns.
 * Self government is suspended in the British Overseas Territory of Turks and Caicos after Premier Michael Misick resigns in the midst of a corruption investigation.
 * Mirek Topolánek resigns as the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic following his government's loss of a parliamentary confidence vote.
 * Situ Gintung, a dam in Tangerang, Indonesia, fails, flooding hundreds of homes and killing at least 58 people.
 * A suicide attack kills approximately fifty people at a mosque in Khyber Agency, Pakistan.
 * The University of Toronto researchers discover GhostNet, a China-based electronic spying operation which has infiltrated 1,295 computers in 103 countries.
 * Flooding in the Red River causes evacuations in northern United States and southern Canada.
 * In a referendum, Mayotte chooses to become an overseas department of France.
 * A stampede kills at least 22 people and injures at least 130 more during a 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifying match in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire.
 * The Pakistan Rangers and Elite Police retake a police academy in Lahore which had been seized by gunmen.
 * Coalition for a European Montenegro wins the absolute majority at the parliamentary election, securing Milo Đukanović the sixth term as the Prime Minister of Montenegro.
 * The 12-year-long construction of the National Ignition Facility, a laser-based inertial confinement fusion research device at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, is announced to have been completed.