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- A Ryanair Boeing 737-800 slides off the end of the runway at Prestwick Airport in Scotland though no passengers or crew are injured. (BBC)
- Clashes between police and protesters take place in the Iranian city of Isfahan at a memorial service for Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri. (Al Jazeera) (The Times)
- American Airlines Flight 331, with 154 people onboard overshoots the runway at Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston, Jamaica, injuring 44. (Jamaica Observer) (AFP) (China Daily)
- The trial of Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo on charges of subversion begins. (Al Jazeera) (BBC) (Times of India)
- Sa'dah insurgency in northern Yemen led to death of 73 Saudi soldiers while more than 100 Houthis have been killed in recent days. (The New York Times) (The Christian Science Monitor) (AFP) (Press TV) (The Christian Science Monitor)
- The body of Luis Francisco Cuéllar, the governor of Caquetá department in Colombia kidnapped the previous day, is found. (Colombia Reports) (BBC) (Reuters)
- Authorities in Uzbekistan fell trees, some of which are more than a century old, in the capital Tashkent, in a controversy which has drawn protests. (BBC)
- Soyuz TMA-17, which is carrying an international crew, including one Japanese, docks with the International Space Station. (RIA Novosti) (BBC)
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- The North American blizzard of 2009 produces record snowfall, causing power outages, deaths, and impacting retail sales. (The Weather Channel) (BBC)
- Iraq deploys troops on its border with Iran to monitor a disputed oil well seized by Iranian troops, while an arbitration commission is established to resolve the dispute. (Al Jazeera) (AP) (Press TV)
- NASA releases the first ever photo of liquid outside of Earth, in the form of sunlight reflecting on a lake on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. (CNN)
- Serbians, Macedonians, and Montenegrins are able to travel to continental Europe without a visa from this day on. (The Independent)
- Pope Benedict XVI declares two of his predecessors, John Paul II and Pius XII to be Venerable, the second step toward sainthood. (BBC) (The New York Times) (Deutsche Welle)
- A 6.4 Mw earthquake strikes Taiwan collapsing one building. (Central News Agency) (Reuters)
- Madagascar's President Andry Rajoelina dismisses his Prime Minister, Eugène Mangalaza, whom he appointed in October. (Al Jazeera)
- The Fatah movement in the West Bank rejects local mediation between itself and Hamas. (Xinhua)
- Iran's military prosecutor charges three officials with killing three people at a detention centre used to house post-election protesters. (AFP) (BBC)
- A faction from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta says it carried out an attack on an oil pipeline, breaking a ceasefire agreed upon with the Nigerian government. (Times of Nigeria) (BBC) (Xinhua)
- The Cambodian government expels 22 Chinese Muslim Uyghurs who arrived in the country back to China, despite criticism from the UN. (Press TV) (BBC) (The Straits Times)
- Freezing conditions cause electrical faults in the Channel Tunnel between Great Britain and France, isolating 2,000 passengers in five trains. The situation is coupled with disruptions at London Heathrow Airport and traffic delays due to snowy conditions in the south-east of England. (BBC) (Sky News) (The Financial Times)
- Police recruit sniffer dogs and detectives in their hunt for the Arbeit macht frei sign missing from Auschwitz as appeals for its return are made by Israel, Poland and the European Union. (BBC) (The Times)
- Scientists announced the discovery of GJ 1214 b, an ocean planet orbiting a star in the Ophiuchus constellation. (Nature)
- In association football, FC Barcelona sets a new record by winning all 6 possible competitions (The Sextuple) in one year. (The Guardian)
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- Thirty world leaders present in Copenhagen for the United Nations Conference on Climate Change agree on a draft accord. (The Sydney Morning Herald) (Forbes.com) (AllAfrica.com)
- The Catalan Parliament votes to ban bull fighting in the Spanish region. (The Times)
- Russian television news channels air repeated coverage of a UFO, shaped like a pyramid and similar to an Imperial Cruiser from Star Wars. (The Daily Telegraph) (Sky News)
- The Vatican dismisses Zambia's controversial Roman Catholic Church archbishop Emmanuel Milingo. (African Press Agency) (ZBC) (BBC)
- A Paris court rules that Google is infringing copyright, sentencing it to pay 300,000 euros in damages and interest to French publisher Editions de la Martinière, and 10,000 euros a day until it removes extracts of the books from its database. (BBC) (PC World)
- The BBC apologises for offence caused when it used the headline: "Should homosexuals face execution?" (The Age) (The New Zealand Herald) (The Daily Telegraph)
- Irish priest Father Seán Sheehy withdraws from work in his parish of Castlegregory over a controversy which followed his shaking the hand of a convicted sex offender in court days earlier. Bishop of Kerry William Murphy disassociates himself from Sheehy and his actions. (RTÉ) (BBC) (Irish Examiner)
- General Motors announces that it will begin shutting down operations at the Swedish carmaker Saab automobile. (New York Times) (Wall Street Journal)
- After 27 years, Terry Wogan presents his last edition of Wake Up to Wogan on BBC Radio 2, receiving farewell messages from Gordon Brown and David Cameron. (The Times) (RTÉ) (BBC highlights)
- The Arbeit macht frei sign is stolen from Auschwitz concentration camp. (JTA) (Deutsche Welle) (RTÉ) (The Daily Telegraph)
- Ajmal Kasab, a Pakistani citizen who was involved in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, recants his confession, claiming that police tortured him into admitting his role in the attacks. (AP) (Press Trust Of India)
- Twitter, a popular micro-blogging service, temporarily goes offline after a group calling itself the "Iranian Cyber Army" manages to change its DNS records. (PC World) (CNN)
- A large crater, dubbed the "Fried Egg" because of its shape, is discovered off the coast of The Azores in the Atlantic Ocean, prompting speculation that it may have been caused up to 17 million years ago by meteor impact. (BBC)
- Lava flows and ash explosions continue to emerge from Philippine volcano Mount Mayon while scientists predict a major eruption in the coming weeks and 30,000 people remain in temporary shelter. (BBC)
- In a reversal of a previous decision, Sir John Chilcot insists that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will give the majority of his evidence to The Iraq Inquiry in public. (BBC)
- Snowfall across the east of England disrupts transport and power supplies. (BBC)
- The Iraqi government demands the withdrawal of Iranian soldiers that it claims seized an oil well in Fakkah, in the Maysan Governorate in southern Iraq. (CNN) (Gulf Daily News) (Al Jazeera)(NYT)
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