December 15, 2010 (Wednesday)
Armed conflicts
- Communist rebels in the Philippines kill 10 soldiers as they returned to base to observe a Christmas truce. (Straits Times)
- Dozens of people are dead following an explosion outside a mosque in the Iranian city of Chabahar. (Alertnet) (Al Jazeera) (Press TV)
Arts and culture
- The mummified remains of the head of King Henri IV of France have been discovered in the garage of a French retiree. (Time)
- Cuba unveils its own version of Wikipedia. (The Guardian)
- Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is TIME's 2010 Person of the Year. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange wins top place in the reader's poll. (Time) (CS Monitor)
Business and economy
- Lehman Brothers bondholders, including hedge fund manager Paulson & Co., file a plan for the reorganization of that defunct broker-dealer, presenting the New York bankruptcy court with an alternative to the plan Lehman itself filed earlier in the year. (Reuters)
- Ghana is to begin pumping its first oil since a discovery in an offshore field three years ago. (Ghana Broadcasting Corporation) (Times LIVE)
Disasters and accidents
- At least twenty-seven asylum seekers, mostly from Iraq and Iran, are feared dead after a boat carrying 70 people crashes into cliffs on the coast of Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. (AAP via NineMSN), (ABC News), (AFP via Melbourne Age), (BBC)
- A bus plunges into a reservoir in the Indian state of Karnataka resulting in the death of 27 people. (BBC)
- An aircraft goes missing in Nepal with 22 people on-board. (BBC) (The Himalayan Times)
- Four children are seriously injured in a mine explosion in Battambang Province, northwestern Cambodia. (Xinhua)
- Two Air Force pilots are killed after their twin-seat trainer aircraft crashed during a training mission in Taiwan. (Straits Times) (Focus Taiwan)
International relations
- Senegal recalls its ambassador to Iran, saying that Iran had not provided an adequate explanation for an arms shipment seized in Nigeria. (BBC) (Africa News)
- Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao begins a trade visit to India. (BBC) (Times of India) (China Daily)
- The United Nations votes to lift sanctions imposed on Iraq during the Saddam Hussein era. (BBC)
- Palestinian firefighters who helped fight the Carmel fire in Israel last week are refused a permit to enter Israel for a ceremony in their honor. Officials said the firemen were denied entry as result of a "technical mishap". (Ynet)
Law and crime
- 700 people are arrested in Moscow, Russia, in attempt to prevent ethnic clashes over the shooting of a football fan. (RIA Novosti) (BBC)
- The Obama administration launches legal action against BP and its partners to recover the cost of cleaning up the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. (Reuters)
Politics
- The Constitutional Court in Sudan agrees to hear a petition by lawyers for the dissolution of the body organising the referendum on Southern Sudan's independence. (Reuters) (Sudan Tribune)
- An alliance of opposition parties that endorse the presidency of Alassane Ouattara in the Ivory Coast call for mass protests, following the presidential election. (Africa Review) (New York Times)
- Cuba refuses to grant a visa to dissident Guillermo Fariñas so that he could receive the Sakharov Prize in France. (Al Jazeera) (BBC)
- Credit card companies such as Visa and MasterCard that prevented card-holders from donating money to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks could have their operating licenses taken away in Iceland. A parliament investigation is ongoing. (Rawstory) (Digital Journal)
- The United States House of Representatives votes to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell. (BBC)
Science
- Scientists discover that the black kokanee (Oncorhynchus nerka kawamurae), a Japanese salmon subspecies which scientists had thought had gone extinct in 1940, has still a living population in 2010. (Associated Press)[permanent dead link]