December 27, 2006 (Wednesday)
- More than 105 people have died following days of heavy rains in Indonesia, and hundreds more are still missing. (BBC)
- Six people die and one person goes missing after a helicopter carrying gas workers ditches into Morecambe Bay east of the Irish Sea, off the coast of Morecambe, England. (Times Online)
- The Kazakh KNB has broken up and arrested members of the Stepnogorsk zhamaat terrorist organization, confiscating weapons and religious literature. (RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty)
- An earthquake near Taiwan damages undersea cables, disrupts phone and Internet service in Asia and the U.S. (MSNBC) (Reuters) (Guardian) (International Herald Tribune)
- The French Space Agency (CNES) spacecraft COROT was successfully launched in Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 14:28 UTC (GMT+4) to search for extrasolar planets.
- War in Somalia:
- Ethiopian/Transitional Federal Government forces regain Jowhar after heavy fighting. The Islamist militia go into a retreat towards Mogadishu. (The Associated Press)
- Mogadishu is besieged after Islamists retreated to it. (Reuters)[permanent dead link]
- Former U.S. Senator and 2004 Democratic Vice-Presidential Candidate John Edwards will run for the 2008 Democratic Presidential Nomination. (MSNBC)