RationalWiki:What is going on in the world?/January 2020

January 2020
The United States Senate has voted against calling witnesses in Donald Trump's impeachment trial by 49 - 51. Democrats needed four Republican votes to win the vote, but only senators Mitt Romney and Susan Collins voted in favour. The UK has left the European Union, stepping into transition twilight zone, and dealing a blow to seventy years of integration. The chief executive of NHS England says Gwyneth Paltrow's new Netflix series about alternative medicine spreads misinformation and poses a "considerable health risk". Alt-right motormouth Katie Hopkins's Twitter account (@KTHopkins) has been permanently suspended! The European Parliament has approved the UK Withdrawal Agreement by 621-49, meaning the UK will leave with an agreement in place on the 31st of January, at 11pm GMT. [https://www.bbc.com/sport/tennis/51291806 In protests, John McEnroe and Martina Navratilova call for the name of the Margaret Court Arena in Melbourne to be changed. Former tennis champion Margaret Court is now a Christian pastor who strongly opposes same-sex marriage, has criticized tennis for being "full of lesbians" and thinks transgender children are the work of the devil.] [https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/jan/28/israel-folau-switches-codes-again-to-sign-for-catalans-dragons-rugby-league Israel Folau, who was fired by Rugby Australia in 2019 for saying that hell awaited homosexuals, has been hired by French rugby league club Catalans Dragons. English club Wigan Warriors seek to encourage LGBTQ+ supporters by saying the day they play Catalans Dragons will be Pride Day.] Benjamin Netanyahu has just been indicted! The national automotive club, the has reported that it is "no longer fundamentally" against having a speed limit on Germany's motorways, a traditional third rail of the country's politics. To put this in context, this is akin to the NRA saying its supports some background checks or gun restrictions. Muslims protesting against Modi's Hindu-nationalist government allege that India's police are targeting them with violence for their religion. The EPA to rollback protections for U.S. waterways affecting wetlands and smaller waterways. Massive locust swarm threatens food security in the Horn of Africa. The Trump administration threatens to cut California's funding if California doesn't stop requiring insurers to provide coverage for abortion. Belle Gibson, who ran a fake fundraising campaign claiming to have cured cancer using woo, has her house raided as the Victorian State Government attempts to force her to pay her $500,000 fine from 2017 Utah, you were doing so well: Judge refuses to throw out lewdness charges against woman who was topless in her own home in front of her stepchildren. San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin ends the city's cash bail system Conversion therapy banned in ultra-conservative Utah. Thai political party acquitted of being part of an Illuminati conspiracy to overthrow the government after a trial many suspect was politically motivated. Gainax president Tomohiro Maki arrested for allegedly sexually abusing an underaged voice actress. Because he was associated with the company, Hideaki Anno speaks out about Gainax's poor business practices. Trump defence team continues the "Abuse of power is not impeachable" line - thereby admitting the abuse of power, and raising eyebrows.

A coalition of vets and animal welfare organisations in the Netherlands have teamed up to create a quality mark called FairDog to encourage people to purchase dogs from reputable breeders. The aim is to stop people getting pets from illicit puppy farms, which often sell dogs that have major health problems in later life. Catholics in Utah are very angry about a bill that would require priests to disclose reports of sexual abuse. Because forcing Catholic priests to violate the secrecy of the confessional would force them to commit a mortal sin and face excommunication. Virginia Governor declares state of emergency due threats of armed right-wing militia groups planning to storm state Capitol How a preventable disaster killed six Marines

The Virginia House of Delegates has ratified the ERA, reaching the 38-state threshold needed to amend the Constitution decades after Phyllis Schlafly killed it the first time around. Sadly, opposition against it is coming back, and the Office of Legal Counsel says that the deadline to ratify the ERA has long expired. Criticism has been made against Momentum by its members and others against the national coordinating group, after they told members simply to vote yes or no to each of the executive's decision to endorse  as leader and  as deputy, rather than having an open vote. The "failing" New York Times has revealed in a recent meeting to its shareholders, that in 2019 that it has got some of the highest digital revenue at $800 million and online subscription figures at 5 million, it has ever received. Also the newsroom at the Times has grown to over 1700 employees, its highest ever. One of India's most famous emigrants, Hyderabad-born Microsoft CEO, has commented on the recent. He stated that he wants a situation where anyone can move to India, including people from majority Muslim countries like Bangladesh, and be successful. This is seen by many as a sharp but underhand criticism of the proposed new law. US Defense Secretary Mark Esper says he didn't see evidence of an imminent attack planned by Soleimani, but "believes" there would have been one. After facing mass protests, Emmanuel Macron has scrapped his proposal to raise retirement age from 62 to 64. An Iranian truck driver whose truck broke down in Poland and wasn’t able to get back home, is now back in Khoy, Iran after local Poles acted as Samaritans by crowdfunding the zł 242 000 (~€57 000) to help him fix his vehicle. Brexiteer John Mappin of Turning Point UK is using his sizeable castle at Tintagel to promote the QAnon conspiracy. Counter-terrorism police placed the non-violent group Extinction Rebellion on a list of extremist ideologies that should be reported to the authorities, featured alongside threats to national security such as neo-Nazi terrorism and a pro-terrorist Islamist group. Police now claim the document was recalled. Iran's Press TV and CNN are reporting that that human error resulted in the shooting down of by Iran. This is also being confirmed by Javad Zarif, foreign minister of Iran, in a tweet. The Trump administration has plans to roll back provisions on the National Environmental Policy Act including deregulation via narrowing its scope and removing climate change as one of cumulative effects businesses need to consider. An investigation shows that Ukraine International Airlines flight 752 may have been shot down by Iran on accident. Ruth Bader Ginsburg announces that she's cancer free! China bans all foreign textbooks and novels from public schools, stating that "all primary and secondary school teaching materials must reflect the will of the party and the country". A Ukrainian Boeing plane crashes in Iran after takeoff, killing 176 on board The UK government has voted to strip child refugees of the right to be reunited with their families after Brexit. Two US airbases in Iraq have been hit by ballistic missiles. Iranian state TV have claimed that this was in response to the death of Qasem Soleimani. The warm and dry weather over the Christmas and the New Year period has meant that local hazel and alder trees have sprouted pollen-producing catkins, leading to meteorologists giving hay fever warnings in January. The deputy prime minister Jarosław Gowin has demanded that the Brazilian comedy film , known locally as Pierwsze kuszenie Chrystusa, be removed from Netflix in Poland, due to it blasphemously depicting a gay Jesus. Ecologists are worried that some of the unique wildlife on Kangaroo Island in South Australia could be permanently destroyed after the current wildfires have already destroyed a third of the land's vegetation. Outrage has been placed after ConservativeHome founder and close Johnson confidant Tim Montgomerie spoke in Budapest at a meeting of the close Fidesz think tank The Danube Institute. He mentioned forging a close “special relationship” between the UK and Hungary, commenting on the limits of liberalism. Dreams of CANZUK have been dashed, after the Australian government ruled out allowing free movement of labour from the UK. A bi-partisan group of campaign finance lawyers petition the President and Senate to restore a quorum to the Federal Election Commission board Non-paywall link to SFGate. Trump claims his tweets are sufficient notification to Congress for attacking Iran, in direct violation of the War Powers Act of 1973. US manufacturing in the deepest slump in more than a decade as the U.S.-China trade war kept a lid on factory output, orders, and employment Trump tells evangelicals "We have god on  our side". Mourners for Soleimani claim the same. We all know that this ends well! United Methodist Church, the second-largest Protestant Christian denomination in the US, set to vote on whether to split the Church over the issue of LGBTQ rights. Iraq's parliament votes to expel US troops from Iraqi soil in emergency session responding to US assassination of Soleimani. Illinois legalizes recreational weed. Derek Acorah, perhaps Britain's most famous spirit medium, has passed to the other side. Former BBC Newsnight journalist John Sweeney has filed a complaint to the broadcasting regulator Ofcom, over BBC News failure, in his words, "to broadcast investigations between Brexit, Russia and the far-right". A Deutsche Bank whistleblower has revealed to the FBI, that much of Trump's Deutsche Bank loans were secretly underwritten by the Russian state-owned bank VTB. A employment tribunal has ruled that ethical veganism is a 'philosophical belief' under the, after a man was sacked from organisation the. It now rules that such belief means that ethical vegans are entitled to protection from discrimination. Newly revealed documents show how helped get  into the United states, resulting in the, and then worked to undercut the Carter administration's efforts to free the hostages, sinking his reelection, and causing the election of Reagan. Qasem Soleimani, Iranian general, leader of the Quds Force, and one of the most influential people in the country has been killed by an American airstrike in Iraq. Expect the war in Iran to truly begin. Israeli PM Netanyahu asks the country's parliament for immunity from prosecution on corruption charges, despite previously claiming he would not need to do so. Polling among party members has put the former director of public prosecutions and current shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer, in pole position to be the next Labour leader.