Portal:Current events/2009 December 25
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December 25, 2009 (Friday)
- A Viva Palestina supply convoy is stranded in Aqaba due to actions of the Egyptian government. (Al Jazeera)
- The number of suicides in Japan exceeded 30,000 in 2009 according to officials, for the twelfth consecutive year. (Times of India) (Japan Today) (Straits Times)
- China sentences activist Liu Xiaobo to 11 years in prison for "subversion of state power". (UN News Centre) (Al Jazeera) (Press Trust of India)
- China's National Bureau of Statistics revised the growth rate of its gross domestic product (GDP) for 2008 to 9.6 percent from 9 percent. (Xinhua)
- The 19th century St Mel's Cathedral of Longford in Ireland is destroyed by an ongoing fire in the town. (RTÉ) (Longford Leader)
- Two more bishops — Eamonn Oliver Walsh and Raymond Field — resign due to child sex abuse allegations contained within the Murphy Report. They were Dublin's only remaining two serving auxiliary bishops. (RTÉ) (BBC)
- The death by gunshot wound of Expresiones de Tulum journalist Alberto Velázquez, the 12th journalist to be killed in Mexico in 2009, is announced. (The Washington Post)
- Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom remembers the dead soldiers of Afghanistan in the Royal Christmas Message. (BBC) (Boston Globe) (Full text from The Daily Telegraph)
- Six Filipino sailors and three Greek officers are missing after fire engulfs a ship in an incident off the coast of Venezuela. (Athens News Agency) (Press TV) (Xinhua)
- American officials investigate a possible attempted terrorist attack after an incident on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit. MSNBC BBC