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 kilometres (220 mi) 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.