15 November – Children Act clarifies most official responsibilities for children, notably bringing all local government functions for children's welfare and education under the authority of local Directors of Children's Services. 16 November The government announces plans to prohibit smoking in most enclosed public places (including workplaces) within the next three years. It is reported that Margaret Hassan is dead after her family receive a video recording supposedly showing her being killed. 18 November – Parliament passes the Hunting Act 2004 prohibiting fox hunting in England and Wales; the Civil Partnership Act, granting civil partnerships for same-sex couples from 2005; and the Civil Contingencies Act, providing for local arrangements for civil protection and national emergency powers. 20 November – Launch of the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission, a joint United States, UK and Italian-developed spacecraft, designed to study gamma-ray bursts. 28 November – Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff is opened. December December – Ford launches the second generation of its best-selling Focus family car that was originally launched in September 1998. 2 December – David Bieber, a 38-year-old former United States marine, is found guilty of murdering PC Ian Broadhurst in Leeds on Boxing Day last year. He is sentenced to life imprisonment, and the trial judge recommends that he should never be released from prison. After his conviction, it is revealed that Bieber was wanted in connection with a 1995 murder in Florida. It is also revealed that he had entered the UK by using the alias Nathan Wayne Coleman – who was discovered to be a child that had died in infancy in 1968. 14 December – Millau Viaduct in France, designed by British architect Norman Foster, is opened. 15 December – David Blunkett resigns as Home Secretary after three-and-a-half years in the role. 20 December – Northern Bank robbery: A gang of thieves steal £26.5 million worth of currency from Northern Bank's Donegall Square West headquarters in Belfast, one of the largest bank robberies in British history; no-one is ever found directly responsible for the crime. 26 December – 150 British people are among thousands of people killed by the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in across the South and Southeast Asia during a Christmas holiday and Boxing Day celebration. Publications Iain M. Banks' novel The Algebraist. Louis de Bernières' novel Birds Without Wings. Susannah Clarke's novel Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell Alan Hollinghurst's novel The Line of