Portal:Current events/2009 December 11
< Portal:Current events
December 11, 2009 (Friday)
- Papua New Guinea's chief Ombudsman Chronox Manek is wounded in an apparent assassination attempt.(ABC Radio)
- Judges in the Constitutional Court of Turkey vote unanimously to ban the country's Democratic Society Party because of its alleged links to Kurdish terrorists. (The Guardian)
- Vasily Khristoforov, the head archivist for Russia's Federal Security Service confirms for the first time that the Soviet Union's KGB cremated Adolf Hitler's body in 1970 and scattered his ashes in the Biederitz River. (CNN)
- Oil company Royal Dutch Shell wins the right to develop Iraq's Majnoon oil field in a joint venture with Petronas after the first such auction since the 2003 invasion. The field is expected to generate $900 million a year. (BBC) (Forbes)
- Pope Benedict XVI releases a statement stating that he shares the "outrage, betrayal and shame" felt by the Irish people over the findings of the Murphy Report into sexual abuse by the Catholic clergy in Dublin. (RTÉ) (BBC) (CNN)
- The United States threatens Iran with "significant new sanctions" over the country's nuclear programme according to US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. (BBC)
- The body of the former President of Cyprus Tassos Papadopoulos is stolen from the grave, a day before the first anniversary of his death. (Cyprus News Agency) (BBC) (Daily Telegraph)
- Former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei says that if he decides to run in the presidential election in Egypt in 2011, he will run as an independent candidate instead of running as a candidate of any of the political parties in Egypt. (Reuters)
- The discovery of the Triassic theropod dinosaur genus Tawa is announced. (AP) (Scientific American) (Times Online)
- North Korea acknowledges "the need to resume" the stalled six-party talks on its nuclear program, after talks with U.S. envoy Stephen Bosworth. (Yonhap) (AP) (BBC)
- The Airbus A400M from Airbus Military performs its maiden flight in Seville, Spain. (Reuters)