January 20, 2017
(Friday)
Armed conflicts and attacks
- Syrian Civil War
- ISIL militants destroy part of Palmyra's ancient Roman theatre. (BBC)
- An airstrike kills more than 40 Jabhat Fateh al-Sham fighters at a jihadist camp west of Aleppo. It is currently unknown whether American or Russian planes carried out the attack. (Reuters) (FOX News)
Arts and culture
- The Woody Harrelson biopic Lost in London makes history as the first full-length feature film to be filmed and theatrically released simultaneously. (BBC) (The Guardian) (The Telegraph)
Business and economics
- Toilets in Japan
- Japanese toilet industries agreed to standardize the iconography of electric toilet seat controls in order to make them less confusing for users. (The Japan Times) (BBC) (The Guardian) (Japan Sanitary Equipment Industry Association)
Disasters and accidents
- Search continues for missing firefighters in Tehran's Plasco Building site after the building's deadly fire and collapsing last day. (CNN)
- 2017 Rigopiano avalanche
- Italian emergency crews rescue 10 people, including four children, from 16½ feet of snow and wreckage from the luxury Hotel Rigopiano following yesterday's Gran Sasso mountain avalanche. Searchers find four bodies, while families of at least 16 people still missing wait for news. (CBS News)
- 2017 Verona bus crash
- A bus carrying Hungarian students crashes near Verona in northern Italy with at least 18 people dead and 50 injured. (The Telegraph) (BBC)
International relations
- United Kingdom–United States relations
- U.S. President Donald Trump nominates New York Jets owner Woody Johnson to be the next United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom. (Sky News)
Law and crime
- Three people are killed and twenty injured after a man drove a car into the Bourke Street Mall in the CBD of the Australian city Melbourne. A man has been arrested and Victoria Police say the incident is not terror related. In the next few weeks, the death toll would rise to six. (Nine Network) (AAP via Yahoo! Australia)
- Inauguration of Donald Trump protests
Politics and elections
- Presidency of Donald Trump
- Inauguration of Donald Trump
- Donald Trump is officially sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, and Mike Pence is sworn in as 48th Vice President of the United States. (The Telegraph)
- Cabinet of Donald Trump
- The U.S. Senate confirms the first two members of President Donald Trump's Cabinet: retired Marine General James Mattis as Secretary of Defense, and retired Marine general John F. Kelly as Secretary of Homeland Security. (CNN)
- Inauguration of Donald Trump
- 2016–2017 Gambian constitutional crisis
- Lieutenant General Ousman Badjie, chief of the Gambian army, recognizes Adama Barrow as the new commander-and-chief of the armed forces and says that his troops will not fight ECOWAS soldiers. (Reuters)
- President Adama Barrow announces that Yahya Jammeh has agreed step down and leave the country following an intervention by ECOWAS states. (BBC)