U.S. fast-food restaurant chain
Chick-fil-A warns that a security breach may have leaked credit card details of 9,000 customers in five states.
(Daily Mail)
A
Libyan warplane bombs a Greek-operated oil tanker anchored offshore the city of
Derna, killing two sailors, one Greek and one
Romanian. The Greek government condemned what it called an "unprovoked and cowardly" attack and demanded an investigation and punishment for those responsible.
(Reuters)
News emerges that two days prior hundreds of Boko Haram militants had overrun several towns in northeast
Nigeria and captured the military base in
Baga.
(Wall Street Journal)
Two militants, one wearing a suicide vest, kill two
Saudi Arabian border guards and a general near the border with
Iraq.
(Businessweek)
For the second day in a row a multi-story residential building in
Nairobi,
Kenya, collapses, this time an 8-story building, killing one person with eight people still missing.
(AP via ABC)
The
Combined Joint Task Force combating ISIL conducts ten airstrikes in
Syria, eight of them targeting the contested city of
Kobani, with the airstrikes destroying fourteen ISIL fighting positions and a building.
(Reuters)
Various
California state district attorneys fine
Safeway a total of
$10 million for the illegal dumping of electronics and pharmaceuticals into landfills.
(KPIX)
Gunmen attack the Paris office of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing twelve people and injuring ten. Some witnesses report that the gunmen identified themselves as belonging to
al-Qaeda in Yemen. A 2011 issue had
depicted a cartoon of the Islamic prophet
Muhammed.
(BBC)
One of the suspects in the killings, Hamyd Mourad, voluntarily surrenders to police in
Charleville-Mézières while the other two suspects are still at large.
(The New York Times)(CNN)
On the night of January 7 and morning of January 8, assailants throw grenades and fire guns at three
mosques throughout France.
(ForeignPolicy.com)
Boko Haram militants raze the entire town of
Baga in north-east Nigeria. Bodies lay strewn on Baga's streets with as many as 2,000 people having been killed. Boko Haram now controls 70% of
Borno State, which is the worst-affected by the insurgency.
(BBC)
The two suspect brothers take a hostage at a sign printing company, Création Tendance Découverte, in the
French town of
Dammartin-en-Goële.
(AAP via SBS)
The standoff ends with the two brothers dead and the hostage released.
(CNBC)(BBC)(CNN)
The concurrent standoff ends with Coulibaly dead as well as four hostages. Four additional hostages and two police officers require hospitalization. Boumeddiene remains at large.
(MSNBC)
Refugees flee Nigeria's
Borno State following the
Boko Haram massacre in the town of Baga. 7,300 flee to neighbouring
Chad while over 1,000 are trapped on the island of Kangala in
Lake Chad. Nigeria's army vows to recapture the town, while
Niger and
Chad withdraw their forces from a
transnational force tasked with combating militants.
(UNHCR)(NPR via BBC)
A 193-vehicle pileup along a snowy
Interstate 94 highway in
Kalamazoo County,
Michigan leaves one motorist dead and 20 injured. A fire among the vehicles which includes a chemical tanker and a truck loaded with fireworks further compounds the disaster. The debris and fire closes the expressway for over 14 hours. Exploding fireworks hit rescue workers injuring an additional three.
(ABC News)(CNN)
In
Jeddah,
Saudi Arabia, blogger
Raif Badawi receives 50 lashes for "insulting Islam". This first punishment is part of a sentence of ten years' imprisonment and 1,000 lashes. He will receive 50 lashes a week for 19 more weeks.
(Gulf News)(Guardian)
A shooting spree in
Moscow, Idaho, U.S., leaves three dead and one injured. After a high-speed chase on Highway 195 ten miles away in the neighboring state of
Washington,
Pullman police arrest the suspect, John Lee.
(AP)
A
mass poisoning at a funeral in
Mozambique involves beer that was deliberately contaminated with crocodile
bile leaving at least 56 dead and 146 hospitalized.
(FOX8LIVE)
The Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District temporarily closes the
Golden Gate Bridge until Monday to install a
$30 million moveable barrier between opposite traffic flows.
(SF Gate)
More female
suicide bombers, this time two, and again each believed to be around 10 years old, kill themselves and three others at a market in the northeastern city of
Potiskum,
Nigeria.
(Reuters via News24)
Divers recover the
cockpit voice recorder from the crashed jet. The Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee states that by using the now collected recorders a preliminary report on the accident will be produced within a month and a final report after a year.
(AFP/Reuters via ABC News Australia)
Egypt's highest court overturns and initiates a retrial on the only remaining conviction against former
PresidentHosni Mubarak (a May 2014 sentencing of three years in prison for embezzlement).
(Reuters)
The
U.S. Supreme Court rules
9–0 in favor of homeowners that the
Truth in Lending Act clearly states that a simple notice by the homeowner to the bank within three years seeking to rescind their mortgage suffices over an actual court-filed lawsuit.
(Reuters)
On the second day of his papal visit to Sri Lanka, Pope Francis canonizes Saint
Joseph Vaz at a beachfront park at the Indian Ocean, and later visits the northern portion of the island for a prayer service at the Sri Lankan
Shrine of Our Lady of Madhu, which was a prominent area landmark damaged in the Sri Lankan Civil War.
(Catholic News Service)[permanent dead link]
The
U.S. Secret Service removes four of its highest-ranking leaders while a fifth one retires. The continuing restructuring and fallout stem from a string of public security lapses beginning with the
misconduct at the
6th Summit of the Americas. The most recent stage of the restructuring began in October 2014 with the resignation of then-Director
Julia Pierson.
(The Washington Post via MSN)
The
Swiss franc to
euro exchange rate jumps by 30% immediately following a
Swiss National Bank announcement. The bank will abandon its three-year-old cap on the swiss franc's value against the euro as well as lower the interest rate on sight deposits (instant access accounts) to -0.75% (the negative number meaning that the depositor has to pay the bank 0.75% per year to hold the depositor's money).
(BBC)(Bloomberg)
Clashes in
Gyumri,
Armenia between police and protesters demanding the handover of a Russian soldier accused of killing six members of a local family leaves at least twelve people wounded.
(BBC)
A hostage crisis at a post office in
Colombes,
Paris, ends with the attacker releasing the hostages and surrendering himself to the police.
(Daily Mail)(CNN)
Chinese officials impose an emergency ban on tourists approaching
pandas subsequent to the death of two pandas from a
canine distemper virus.
(USA Today)
Pittsburgh police arrest Ryan Williams for the October 18, 2014
McKeesport,
Pennsylvania arson attack and charge him with arson, burglary, and six counts of criminal homicide. The victims include four children ages 2 through 7.
(AP)(WTAE)
Gunmen abduct the chief of staff to
Yemen's president in the center of the capital,
Sana'a. It is uncertain if Shiite Houthi rebels or
al-Qaeda militants kidnapped
Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak.
(AP)
Following the January 16
Chad authorities decision to send troops to
Nigeria and
Cameroon to fight
Boko Haram militants, the Russian ambassador to the country pledges to supply Cameroon with more modern weapons to combat the Islamist insurgents.
(AFP via The Economic Times)
The rescue and recovery efforts at the wreckage of the January 15 capsized
tugboat on
China's
Yangtze River near the city of
Jingjiang finds that twenty-one people are dead while three are rescued.
(Straits Times)
An entourage plane accompanying the Pope and carrying government officials experiences high winds and blows off the runway minutes after the pontiff's aircraft takes off safely in the Philippines.
(The Independent)
Pemberton Township, New Jersey police arrest a woman and charge her with the murder of her newborn baby girl which she set on fire. Officers extinguish the fire, but the child later dies.
(AP via MSN)
Chinese police shoot dead two ethnic
Uighurs in
Pingxiang,
Guangxi while they attempt to cross into
Vietnam after members of their group resisted arrest with knives. The public security ministry accuses a separatist group of orchestrating hundreds of cases of human smuggling.
(The New York Times)
Lennar Urban cancels their demolition plans to implode
Candlestick Park due to concerns over public health issues from the
concrete dust and pollution.
(KTVU)
Kurdish fighters battling Islamic State militants in the town of
Kobanî,
Syria on the Syria-
Turkey border capture the strategic Mishtenur hill killing eleven fighters.
(BBC)
London's Southwark Crown Court hears evidence in the first trial on
female genital mutilation in the United Kingdom, where this practice is illegal.
(BBC)(Sky News)
A six-month-old boy dies in hospital of his wounds, becoming the seventh member of an
Armenian family dead after a killing spree by a
Russian soldier.
(Fox News)
Houthi rebels take over the residence of the
President amidst calls by the rebel leader for negotiations to adjust the country's power structure.
(The Washington Post)
A fire in a bowling alley causes a roof collapse in
Taoyuan City,
Taiwan killing six firefighters.
(AP)
An overpass of
I-75 in
Cincinnati,
Ohio collapses while undergoing demolition, killing one worker and injuring a trucker whose vehicle was struck by debris.
(Cincinnati.com)
A
Palestinian man from the
West Bank, Hamza Muhammad Hassan Matrouk, illegally crosses into Israel for the express purpose to stab people attacking over a dozen
Israelis on a bus in central
Tel Aviv. Security forces capture the assailant as he continued to indiscriminately stab people in the street.
(The New York Times)
The government-installed pollution gauges that were set up along roadside stations to monitor
Hong Kong reach the maximum level of their ranges.
(Bloomberg)
Italian police seize 5,361
ancient artifacts worth
$64 million from a
Swiss-Italian trafficking ring. The discoveries come after various raids on warehouses against Italian art dealer Gianfranco Becchina, who owns an art gallery in Switzerland.
(AFP via ABC.Net.AU)
An explosion near a civilian trolleybus in the city of
Donetsk kills at least thirteen people. Separatists and pro-government forces blame each other for the incident.
(BBC)
Edgewater Police Chief William Skidmore says that workers doing plumbing work accidentally started the January 21 fire in The Avalon at Edgewater apartments in
Edgewater, New Jersey that caused the destruction of 240 units and displaced 1,000 residents.
(AP)
Thailand's military-appointed legislature votes to impeach former Prime Minister
Yingluck Shinawatra for her role in overseeing a government rice subsidy program that lost billions of dollars.
(AP)
The Islamic State kills eight
Lebanese soldiers in the northeastern Lebanese village of
Ras Baalbek.
(AP)
Japan states that it is seeking to verify a video that claims the killing of Japanese hostage
Haruna Yukawa by Islamic State militants.
(BBC)
Business and economy
Subsequent to the January 15 announcement that
Target Canada would close all 133 stores, they announce the layoff of 17,000 employees.
(CBC)
Health
The
measles outbreak at
Disneyland (Anaheim), which originated on December 28, 2014 (
patient zero being an unvaccinated California woman who apparently transmitted the virus through airports and the theme park), but was unreported until January 7, spreads from
California to six other states, including
Nebraska, and
Mexico. It now involves at least eighty-five cases.
(AJC)(CBS)
A massive blackout strikes
Pakistan, leaving as much as 80 percent of the country without electricity at its height as officials rush to restore power.
(AP)
Five gunmen at the
LibyanCorinthia Hotel in
Tripoli attack with at least ten dead. The hotel was previously the location in 2013 where a former prime minister was abducted.
(AP)
A
coronial inquest into the siege at the Lindt Cafe in the center of
Sydney begins. The inquest hears that one hostage was killed by gunman Man Haron Monis while another was killed by fragments of a bullet or bullets fired by
New South Wales Police Force officers.
(The Australian)(BBC)
ShiiteHouthi rebels seize a
Yemeni military base south of the capital,
Sana'a, where
U.S. military advisers once trained Yemeni counterterrorism forces to fight
Al-Qaeda in the south of the country. Forces loyal to former President
Ali Abdullah Saleh had manned the captured base.
(Wall Street Journal)
A Nieto Express
propane gas tanker truck explodes near the loading dock of a maternity and children's hospital (Hospital Materno Infantil Cuajimalpa) in
Mexico City, collapsing much of the hospital with at least three deaths and 70 people injured, 22 of whom are children.
(AP)(AFP/Reuters via ABC News Australia)(New York Daily News)
Without recovering any physical evidence, including the data recorders,
Malaysia officially declares the loss of Flight 370 over the
Indian Ocean an accident meaning that victims families can seek compensation.
(USA Today)
The new Greek government, represented by finance minister
Yanis Varoufakis, meets with
Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the head of the
Eurogroup, and declares that Greece now rejects any further cooperation with its main international lenders known as the troika (the Eurogroup, the
IMF, and the
ECB); instead, it wants to negotiate directly with other European countries.
(Deutsche Welle)
Health
The US
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that this season's influenza hospitalizations of 65-year-old and older Americans hit a record high since the 2005-2006 season.
(AP)
Two balloonists, Troy Bradley of the United States and Leonid Tiukhtyaev of Russia, are crossing the
Pacific Ocean in the
Two Eaglesgas balloon and have surpassed the distance and duration records for straight gas balloons. They are set to land in
Mexico on Saturday.
(BBC)
France orders an official investigation into the crash of AirAsia Flight 8501 which had a French copilot flying the aircraft at the time of its crash.
(AFP via France 24)