January 8, 2020 (Wednesday)
Armed conflicts and attacks
- 2020 Iranian attack on U.S. forces in Iraq
- Iran begins Operation Martyr Soleimani, launching ballistic missiles at several United States Armed Forces facilities in Iraq, including Al Asad Airbase. (ABC News)
- Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps issues a statement warning regional countries not to allow the United States military to launch attacks on Iran from their territory or they "will be targeted". (Associated Press)
- In response to Iranian missile attacks on U.S. forces, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) bans all U.S. commercial flights from operating in airspace over Iraq, Iran, the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. (The Jerusalem Post)
- Due to heightened tensions, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe cancels his scheduled trips to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, and convenes a National Security Council meeting, likely to discuss Iran's attack on U.S. forces based in Iraq. (The New York Times)
- U.S. President Donald Trump announces new sanctions against Iran in response to the attack. (USA Today)
- Somali Civil War
- An Al-Shabaab car bombing kills six people and injures 12 others at an army checkpoint near Somalia's parliament in Mogadishu. (Bloomberg News)
- Syrian Civil War
- A car bomb kills four Turkish soldiers when a vehicle explodes at a checkpoint during a road check in northeastern Syria. (Arab News)
Arts and culture
- Prince Harry and his wife Meghan announce their plan to "step back as 'senior' members" of the British royal family. Buckingham Palace says discussions on the intended new role are "at an early stage". (United Press International)
Business and economy
- Tesla, Inc. reports a stock market capitalization of US$88 billion in response to strong performances in the third- and fourth-quarter, surpassing General Motors and Ford Motor Company to become the most valuable automobile company in North America. (Reuters) (Business Insider)
- The heads of state of Turkey, Russia, Serbia and Bulgaria formally inaugurate the TurkStream gas pipelines. (Reuters)
Disasters and accidents
- Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752
- A Boeing 737-800 crashes while taking off from Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport, killing all 176 people on board. The incident, which took place amid the 2019–20 Persian Gulf crisis, is under investigation. (NPR)
International relations
- Norway agrees to take in 600 refugees from Rwanda who were previously evacuated from Libyan detention camps. Rwanda last September signed an agreement with the United Nations to take in asylum seekers from Libya while their status was being processed, to cut down on human trafficking in the Mediterranean. (Reuters)
Law and crime
- Aftermath of the Sagamihara stabbings
- The trial of Satoshi Uematsu, a young Japanese man who admitted to stabbing 19 disabled people to death at a care center in 2016, begins. The rampage ranks among the country's worst mass killings. His lawyer is expected to enter a plea of not guilty on grounds of diminished capacity. Uematsu will be handed a sentence on March 16 and could receive the death penalty. (CNA)
- One person is shot dead and three seriously wounded in a shooting near Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Police believe the shooting was targeted. (Reuters)
Science and technology
- Kuwaitian state news agency KUNA says its official Twitter account was hacked after it spread a fake news report that the United States Army would withdraw from Camp Arifjan within three days. (Haaretz)
- List of fast radio bursts
- Scientists announce through the journal Nature the discovery of a repeating fast radio burst known as FRB 180916 coming from a nearby spiral galaxy around 500 million light years from Earth. It is the second repeating FRB to have been localized. (The Independent)