Wikipedia:ITN archives/2009/May

(Archive begins here and is to be continued from here forward).
 * Sweden becomes the seventh country in the world to recognize same-sex marriages nationwide.
 * At least 12 people are shot to death at the State Oil Academy in Baku, Azerbaijan.
 * Six people are killed after a car interrupts the Koninginnedag celebrations in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, in the first attack on the Dutch Royal Family in modern times.
 * Police clash with protesters across the world as traditional May Day marches turn violent in Germany, Greece and Turkey.
 * Carol Ann Duffy is named Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, the first female, the first Scot and the first openly gay occupant of the post.
 * Souleymane Ndéné Ndiaye replaces Cheikh Hadjibou Soumaré as Prime Minister of Senegal.
 * Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao defeats British Ricky Hatton via a 2nd round technical knockout to win the IBO and The Ring light welterweight championships.
 * The Pacific Islands Forum suspends Fiji's membership indefinitely due to the "recent deterioration of the political, legal and human rights situation" in the country.
 * Floods and mudslides across Brazil kill at least 14 people and displace over 62,000 more from their homes.
 * Prime Minister of Nepal Prachanda (pictured) resigns, after his move to sack the army chief Rookmangud Katawal was opposed by President Ram Baran Yadav.
 * Ricardo Martinelli of Democratic Change is elected as President of Panama.
 * A Venezuelan Army helicopter crashes near the Colombian border, killing 18 people on board.
 * The Republic of China allows financial investment from mainland China for the first time since 1949.
 * John Higgins (pictured) beats Shaun Murphy in the final of the 2009 World Snooker Championship, becoming the oldest winner of the tournament since 1985 and the sixth to win three or more titles in modern times.
 * Austria's deadliest avalanche since 2000 kills six hikers on Schalfkogel in Sölden.
 * Georgian troops mutiny after officials uncover a plot to assassinate President Mikhail Saakashvili (pictured).
 * Egypt commences the extermination of all domestic pigs in the country, as a response to the recent swine flu outbreak.
 * Gunmen kill 44 people at a wedding party using grenades and automatic weapons in Mardin Province, Turkey.
 * The European Parliament endorses a bill banning imports of seal products (seal pictured), drawing complaints from the Canadian government.
 * The 2009 World Table Tennis Championships conclude, with China's Wang Hao (pictured) and Zhang Yining winning the men's singles and women's singles titles respectively.
 * The death toll in the Brazilian floods and mudslides reaches 19, with 186,000 people left homeless as President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (pictured) inspects the disaster area.
 * Guinea withdraws ambassadors from 30 countries worldwide, for no apparent reason.
 * The United States private military company Xe, formerly Blackwater Worldwide, ends its operations in Baghdad, Iraq (company helicopter over the Saddam Hussein bust pictured).
 * The arrest of Mas Selamat bin Kastari, Singapore's most-wanted fugitive, is announced.
 * Typhoon Chan-hom causes at least 26 deaths in northern Luzon, Philippines, with certain areas placed under the state of calamity.
 * Jacob Zuma (pictured) is sworn in as South Africa's fourth president since the end of apartheid.
 * The Democratic Party, led by Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (pictured), wins a majority of seats in Indonesia's People's Consultative Assembly.
 * The 18,000-year-old Chacaltaya glacier in Bolivia disappears, due to global warming.
 * Participating countries of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants agree to add nine more substances, including lindane (structure pictured) and PFOS, to its globally banned list of chemicals.
 * Russia wins the world championship in ice hockey after defeating Canada in the 2009 IIHF World Championship final, and Ilya Kovalchuk (pictured) is named Most Valuable Player of the tournament.
 * NASA launches Space Shuttle Atlantis STS-125, the fifth and final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.
 * Artillery shelling by the Sri Lanka Army kills at least 378 civilians and injures over 1,000 others in the safe zone in Sri Lanka.
 * The VORTEX2 project, or the "Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment 2", begins with more than 50 scientists worldwide in Tornado alley, United States.
 * Scores of members of the British Parliament, including members of the Cabinet and the Shadow Cabinet, are implicated in the ongoing Parliamentary expenses scandal (Westminster Palace pictured).
 * The European Commission levies a record €1.06 billion fine on Intel Corporation, the world's largest semiconductor company, for anti-competitive practices.
 * In EuroMillions, a pan-European lottery, a Spanish woman wins €126 million, the largest amount ever to have been won by a single person in European history.
 * The discovery of the earliest known work of figurative art, a Venus figurine dating to the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, in a cave in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, is announced.
 * The European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory and Planck satellite (pictured) are launched from the Guiana Space Centre, using a Ariane 5ECA rocket.
 * An attack by the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda kills more than 90 civilians and government troops in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo.
 * In India's general election, the Bharatiya Janata Party concedes defeat to the United Progressive Alliance, the ruling coalition led by the Indian National Congress.
 * Norway wins the Eurovision Song Contest 2009 with their song Fairytale performed by Alexander Rybak.
 * Ruth Padel is named the first female Oxford Professor of Poetry, after a controversial race.
 * In Kuwait's parliamentary election (parliament building pictured), several women are elected for the first time in the nation's history.
 * President of Sri Lanka Mahinda Rajapaksa declares victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in the Sri Lankan Civil War.
 * Dalia Grybauskaitė is elected Lithuania's first female President.
 * Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of the rebel Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, is reported to have been killed by the Sri Lankan Army as the government declares victory in the Sri Lankan Civil War.
 * Raffaele Amato, a Camorra boss accused of being one of the principal importers of cocaine into Italy, is arrested in Marbella, Spain.
 * United Kingdom politician Michael Martin (pictured) announces to resign in scandal over expenses, becoming the first House of Commons Speaker since 1695 to be forced from office.
 * Manmohan Singh (pictured) is elected by the Indian National Congress to become the first Prime Minister of India since Jawaharlal Nehru to return for a second term after completing a full five-year term.
 * An Indonesian Air Force C-130 Hercules aircraft crashes, killing at least 78 people in Java, Indonesia.
 * Scientists announce that Darwinius masillae (radiographs pictured), a 47-million-year-old skeleton of a primate species, is humanity's missing link.
 * Apa, a Nepalese Sherpa mountain climber who holds the world record for summiting Mount Everest more than any other person, breaks his own record.
 * Bingu wa Mutharika is elected to a second term as President of Malawi.
 * The United Kingdom's House of Lords suspends two of its peers, Lord Truscott and Lord Taylor, for misconduct, the first such action since 1642.
 * Ireland's Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse concludes that the Roman Catholic Church and government inspectors knew sexual abuse was "endemic" in boys' institutions.
 * Former President of South Korea Roh Moo-hyun (pictured) dies after jumping from a mountain cliff, in an apparent suicide.
 * The German Federal Assembly re-elects Horst Köhler as President of Germany.
 * Madhav Kumar Nepal is elected Prime Minister of Nepal by the Interim legislature.
 * In rugby union, Leinster defeat Leicester Tigers in the 2009 Heineken Cup Final to win their first ever Heineken Cup.
 * At the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, Michael Haneke's Austrian film The White Ribbon wins Palme d'Or.
 * In auto racing, Jenson Button (pictured) of England wins the 2009 Monaco Grand Prix and Hélio Castroneves of Brazil wins the 2009 Indianapolis 500.
 * North Korea claims to have successfully detonated a nuclear weapon in an underground facility.
 * Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj is elected President of Mongolia.
 * At Mawazine, at least 11 people are killed and 40 others are injured after a wire fence collapses at a football stadium in Rabat, Morocco.
 * In cricket, the Deccan Chargers defeat the Bangalore Royal Challengers to win the 2009 Indian Premier League.
 * Cyclone Aila kills at least 33 people and leads affects thousands of others in Bangladesh and India.
 * President Barack Obama nominates Sonia Sotomayor to replace David Souter on the United States Supreme Court.
 * Soyuz TMA-15 is launched at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying Expedition 20, the first six-man crew of the International Space Station.
 * In football, FC Barcelona defeats Manchester United to win the 2009 UEFA Champions League Final.
 * President of Niger Tandja Mamadou dissolves the National Assembly after the constitutional court rejects his attempt to remove presidential term limits.
 * At least 16 people die and at least 20 others are injured following a bus accident in Yambol, Bulgaria.
 * The discovery of a 4,000-year-old skeleton showing earliest known evidence of leprosy is reported in Rajasthan, India.
 * In the Second Battle of Swat against the Taliban, the Pakistani military (main battle tank pictured) announces that it has fully regained control of Mingora, the largest town in the Swat Valley.
 * Around 250 people are killed in clashes between the Rizeigat and Messiria nomadic tribes in South Kurdufan, Sudan.
 * A 7.3-Mw earthquake kills six people and destroys dozens of buildings in Honduras, Guatemala and Belize.
 * Soyuz TMA-15, carrying the crew of Expedition 20, docks with the International Space Station.