Wikipedia:ITN archives/2010/December

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

• Russia and Qatar are announced by FIFA as the winning 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cup bids.
• A team led by NASA astrobiologist Felisa Wolfe-Simon discover GFAJ-1, the first microbe capable of using arsenic instead of phosphorus in DNA and other key biomolecules.
• A forest fire outside Haifa, Israel kills 40 people and forces thousands to evacuate.
• The PCRM receives the most votes in a Moldovan parliamentary election, while the Alliance for European Integration wins the majority.
• The Ivorian Constitutional Council declares incumbent Laurent Gbagbo to be the winner of the presidential election, one day after the Independent Electoral Commission announced that Alassane Ouattara had won the vote.
• The Boeing X-37 spaceplane completes its first flight for the US Air Force after orbiting the Earth for more than seven months.
• Both incumbent Laurent Gbagbo and opposition candidate Alassane Ouattara are separately sworn in as the winner of the presidential election in Côte d'Ivoire.
• In tennis, Serbia defeat France to win the Davis Cup for the first time.
• Continental Airlines is ordered to pay Air France €1 million for the crash of Air France Flight 4590, the only fatal incident in Concorde history.
• SpaceX successfully launches and recovers the Dragon spacecraft during its first test flight, the first commercially-developed spacecraft to successfully return from Earth orbit.
• An original copy of the book Birds of America by John James Audubon is sold at auction for £7.3 million, a record price for the sale of any book.
• Liu Xiaobo is awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize in absentia, the first time since 1936 that neither the recipient nor any of his relatives has been able to accept the prize.
• Two bombs explode in Stockholm, Sweden, killing the attacker and injuring two other people.
• American diplomat Richard Holbrooke, chief negotiator of the Dayton Peace Accords, dies at the age of 69.
• Scientists confirm that Voyager 1, launched in 1977, has shown signs of having crossed the heliopause.
• The Supreme Court of the Philippines acquits Hubert Webb and six other defendants of the 1991 Vizconde massacre.
• A boat carrying around 70 asylum seekers sinks off the coast of Christmas Island, killing at least 27 people.
• The discovery of the head of Henry IV of France, lost after a desecration of his grave in 1793, is announced.
• Nigeria withdraws corruption charges against Halliburton, the world's second largest oilfield services corporation, in exchange for a US$250 million settlement.
• The United States Congress votes to repeal "Don't ask, don't tell", paving the way for homosexuals to serve openly in the U.S. military.
• A total lunar eclipse (pictured) takes place, the first to coincide with a solstice since 1638.
• Milo Đukanović' resigns as the prime minister of Montenegro.
• Alexander Lukashenko is re-elected as the president of Belarus.
• Jorge Rafael Videla, the former President of Argentina, is sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of crimes against humanity.
• The Yiwan Railway, featuring 288 kilometers of bridges or tunnels on a total length of 377 kilometers, opens for service between the Hubei province and the city of Chongqing.
• Former President of Venezuela Carlos Andrés Pérez dies in Miami at the age of 88.
• Researchers announce that the Denisova hominin, a Homo species, interbred with Homo sapiens.
• In cricket, England win the fourth test against Australia to retain The Ashes for the first time in 24 years.
• Former President of Israel Moshe Katsav is convicted of rape, obstruction of justice and other charges.