So, 2020 was a roller coaster of a year, so much happened in this year and we are glad that it ended. No, God didn’t make an appearance and no aliens were discovered, but jokes apart, if we had a word to define 2020, it would be “Chaos”.
Pandemic is still far from over, and we are still working from home.
But we are here to discuss this year, so let’s begin with January.
This year started with a new strain of the Covid-19 virus being discovered in the UK. This created panic in the world as it was more contagious than the previous, but fortunately, it was not more lethal than the previous. Vaccine makers started community testing, including Pfizer and Covaxx. India also approved two vaccines for community testing, i.e. Covaxin and covisheild.
Farmers are still protesting on the borders of Delhi demanding the repeal of 3 farm laws passed last year. On 26th January, due to some anti-social elements, some of them were distracted from their tracks, which led to a violent clash between police and protestors. Many protestors and police officers were injured and some of the protestors climbed the pole on the Red Fort and hoisted “nishaan sahib”.
On 6th January, a large group of Trump supporters stormed into the US Capitol, destroying the belongings of the building. This led to Donald Trump being impeached for the second time in his tenure on 13th January. Joe Biden was sworn in as the new President of the US. Kamala Harris was also sworn in as the Vice-President. US Senator Bernie Sanders’ picture from the swearing-in ceremony went viral and was memefied all over the internet.
Speaking of memes, the GameStop stock(GME) prices hit an all-time high of $347.51 on 27th January. This was a result of a trend that started on r/WallStreetBets to save GameStop from disappearing from the market due to extreme shorting of its stocks by multi-billion dollar hedge funds such as Melvin Capital, etc. This led to these hedge funds losing billions of dollars that they gained by shorting the stocks.
Speaking of the Internet, Elon Musk, the Richest Man on the Planet, supported the Redditors investing in GME stocks. He also encouraged investing in bitcoins and DogeCoin, which resulted in an increase in the value of DogeCoin by 50% in a single day.
The Bombay High Court on 19th January issues a controversial verdict stating that only direct “skin-to-skin contact” is necessary for any sexual offence. Following all the criticism, the Supreme Court of India stayed the verdict.
A Boeing aircraft lost contact just moments after it took off and crashed near Indonesia. Indian forces had a small faceoff with Chinese infiltrants at the Naku La pass on 20th January.
With the discovery of the new strain, further lockdown has been imposed on most parts of the world. In Maharashtra, India, a new variant of the virus was found and it is believed to be more contagious than the original one. The vaccination drive is also active in the country. More than 22 million people have been vaccinated in India to date.
Farmers protests are still going on and are now widespread in different parts of the country. There are ‘Mahapanchayats’ being held every day in a major part of northern India. Police installed permanent structures at the border places where the farmers have settled at Delhi borders. They were removed after almost a month. Some international celebrities tweeted in support of the farmers, which led to the domestic media criticizing for commenting on our “Internal Matters”. These are the same media houses that criticize other countries on their “internal matters” almost every day. This criticizing led to Delhi Police filing an unnamed FIR for an “alleged” controversial toolkit shared by Greta Thunberg. They arrested a climate activist Disha Ravi for being involved with a Khalistani organization. She was later given bail by the court on the pretext of lack of evidence by the police. These all situations were to distract the citizens from the real issue of the farmers.
Petrol and diesel prices were at an all-time high, and there are no evidences of it getting any lower than that. All this situation was created by the rise in excise duty on the fuels, the rise was Rs 13 per litre on petrol and Rs 16 per litre on diesel in just one year. Now the government is blaming this on the rising price of crude oil in the international market, but the real reason is explained to you in our blog, “Why petrol prices are rising?”
On 1st February 2021, the Myanmar army’s TV station announced that a change of power has taken place in the country. All the democratically elected leaders including Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint were detained. The location of their detainment is not yet released.
24 ministers were removed from their posts and 11 were replaced. Internet and banks were shutdown throughout the country.
The citizens are trying to revolt against the military, but they are being suppressed by the army.
On 7th February 2021, a glacier burst in Nanda Devi National Park, outer Garhwal Himalayas led to a disastrous flood in the Chamoli district of Uttarakhand, notably in the Rishiganga and Dhauliganga rivers. More than 70 people are confirmed to be killed in the disaster. Had it been summers, this disaster would have done disasters comparable to the 2013 Disaster at Kedarnath.
The low level of water in the river streams reduced the impact of the flood exponentially.
NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on the surface of Mars on 18th February 2021. Images and audio captured by the rover were released by NASA.
UAE and China also sent their individual probes in the Mars’ orbit.
Turkey also announced their ambitious 10-year Space Program including a planned hard landing on the Moon in 2023.
India released its annual budget for the financial year 2021-22, with high preferences given to the healthcare sector and privatization of PSBs and PSUs.
The GDP growth rate for the fourth quarter showed a growth of 0.4% following a successive negative rate for the previous two quarters.
EIU released Democracy Index for 2020, it included 167 countries. India declined two positions to the 53rd position.
The pandemic is now repeating its curve from last year. With over 132 million cases recorded so far, it is still far from over. In India, it is bouncing back, with over 100,000 daily cases being reported at present. The vaccination is going on at a rapid pace, more than 665 people have been vaccinated so far in the drive.
India is currently witnessing elections in 5 states, West Bengal, Kerala, Assam, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. All the parties are busy in campaigning and rallies but West Bengal has been more active in violent clashes. The current Chief Minister of the state, Mamta Banerjee was allegedly attacked by a group of people. The opposition claims the allegations by the CM are fake. The election result is to be announced on 2nd May 2021.
When George Stephanopoulos asked Joe Biden if he thinks Vladimir Putin is a “Killer”, he gave an affirmative response to the question. This sparked so much controversy in the media, they claimed that it could affect the undiplomatic relations between the two countries. However, no major effects have been witnessed lately.
Another controversy sparked in India after Uttarakhand’s CM Tirath Singh Rawat said many controversial statements. He said that girls should not wear ripped jeans, it showcases their bad “sanskar”. He also said we should “worship” PM Modi.
A giant 220,000-ton container ship of Evergreen Marine Corp. was stuck in the Suez Canal for almost a week, stopping all the shipments from that route. Its sturn got stuck in the mud shores due to heavy wind and it was refloated by the Egyptian tug boats after extreme efforts. It refloated on 29th March 2021 at the local time of 15:05. This duration was enough for the ship to get viral and become a meme.
After being set on fire for almost half a year in 2020, Australia now suffers from flood in the New South Wales region. Some parts witnessed upto 1m rainfall. Around 18000 people are being forced to relocate due to the floods. Fortunately, no deaths have been reported, but with no signs of the rain stopping soon, it is almost impossible to stop the area from flooding.
Freedom House’s report claims that India is not a free country anymore, but a “partly” free country. Sweden-based V-Dem Institute stated India as an “electoral autocracy”. India finally showed positive GDP growth in the first quarter of 2021 with a growth rate of 0.4%.
While the whole world is now seeing a downfall in the number of cases of coronavirus, India witnessed a sudden rise in the number of cases. With over 400,000+ cases per day and around 3900+ deaths being reported daily, India is facing the worst effects of the pandemic.
The shortage of oxygen cylinders and medication throughout the country has led the situation to a much worse result.
To know more about the reason for the second wave of the pandemic in India, check out our blog ‘Why India failed against COVID-19?’
Kumbh Mela was organised at Haridwar. It was a month-long gathering of different representatives of the Sanatan-Hindu Dharam. During that gathering, they bathe in the water of the holy river Ganga during different ‘muhurats’. The local authorities were asked to maintain the social distancing among the crowd. It is estimated that more than 70,00,000 people participated amidst the rise in Covid.
Assembly elections were organized in 5 states of India. There were rallies being held on a regular basis by all the participating parties.
Every rally consisted of at least 100000 people without any mask or social distancing. Neither of the parties followed the COVID prevention protocols. Even the prime minister himself addresses 20+ rallies without any mask. The surge of the pandemic throughout the country was ignored by them. It was only after the elections when they were seen available for all-house meetings with different state representatives for the control of COVID.
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and the husband of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom passed away on 9 April 2021. His funeral took place on 17 April 2021 in St. George Chapel at Windsor Castle.
On April 26 2021, the Pink Supermoon was witnessed in many parts of the world. It was the first of the two supermoon occurrences of this years. During a supermoon, the full moon appears to be around 7% to 15% larger than the normal full moon.
India has become the global hotspot for Coronavirus as the number of COVID-19 cases crosses 20 million. As per a major study in Brazil 1 in every 3 deaths is due to COVID-19. Canada approves the Pfizer vaccine for kids between 12-15. The situation in Asia is getting worse, not only in India but also in countries like Sri Lanka, Nepal, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia. Sinopharm, the Chinese vaccine becomes the first non-western vaccine to be backed by WHO.
Andrea Meza is crowned as the Miss Universe 2020. Whereas Miss Brazil Julia Gama became the first runner up followed by Miss Peru and Miss India as second and third runner-ups.
Naomi Osaka, the world number 2 tennis player from Japan won the “sportswoman of the year” award. Pakistani cricketer Babar Azam won the ICC player of the month award. Conor McGregor becomes the Forbes highest-paid athlete with a total annual earning of US$180 million followed by Lionel Messi(US$ 130 million) and Cristiano Ronaldo(US$ 120 million) respectively at second and third place.
Jeff Bezos is still the richest man in the world with a net worth of US$ 189 billion followed by Elon Musk with a net worth of US$ 163 billion. Mukesh Ambani becomes the richest man in Asia with a net worth of US$76.3 billion followed by Gautam Adani with a net worth of US$67.6 billion.
Brazilian police did a drug raid in Rio de Janeiro in which 25 people died including one officer. Police did this raid despite the pause by the Supreme court of brazil on these raids during the coronavirus pandemic.
10th May 2021, there was a car bomb in a girl's school in Kabul, Afganistan. 85 people died and 147 people were injured in that bomb blast. As per a report by authorities, no terrorist group has taken responsibility for this bomb blast.
11th May 2021, A gunman entered a school in Kazan and start shooting killing 7 students and injuring 17 others before he was arrested by the police. No motive has been found till now behind the shooting.
17th May 2021, the conflict between Israel and Palestine took the turn for worse killing 43 people and more than 50 wounded in the airstrike. More than 100 rockets were launched from Gaza towards Israel, which result in more airstrikes from Israel and bring the death toll to 197 in Palestine.
June started with the rise in coronavirus cases in the UK. more than 5700 cases were reported on 5th June. India started to reopen stated as the number of cases started to decrease in the country. Mastercard Foundation and the African center for disease control announce US$1.3 billion in aid for the continent to buy COVID-19 vaccines for the people. In Indonesia, hundreds of health care workers who were earlier given the Sinovac vaccine get infected with coronavirus and had to be hospitalised. WHO recommends that not all vaccines are capable to fight the new covid variants. This particular variant was the Delta variant. Palestine refuses the shipment of covid vaccines from Isreal as they had their expiration date in the month of June only. Brazil crosses the death toll of 500000 due to coronavirus and things are still not looking good for the country.
African Union suspended Mali due to the military coup. Union also warns of the sanctions if the military doesn’t restore the government elected by the people of Mali.
On 2nd June a new second-in-command was appointed but it is still not clear on the name of that person and what will be their responsibilities.
Benjamin Netanyahu ended his 12-year governance and stepped down as a prime minister of Isreal. The new prime minister of Isreal is Naftali Bennett
On 5th June when Twitter deleted President Buhari’s tweet Nigerian government ban Twitter. It is illegal to use Twitter in Nigeria, anyone who is caught using the app will be arrested and prosecuted.
On 7th June two trains collide in south Pakistan resulted in 65 deaths and more than 150 injured. The government of Pakistan has started an inquiry into the matter.
A huge gas explosion near Shiyan City on 13th June resulted in 13 deaths and hundreds injured. The government is still looking into the cause of the explosion.
After the withdrawal of US troops earlier this year by President Joe Biden from Afganistan, the Taliban has started talking over the major areas of Afganistan. Now the Taliban has control over the major areas of northern Afganistan and they said that worst is yet to come.
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