Top News Stories of 2020

Top News Stories of 2020
 

Top News Stories
of 2020

Quote of the Year

 

““Humanity is a civilization in the middle of the ocean, and we are right now setting fire to our boat”

Greta Thunberg

"Every one wants answers, but until you hear the one you want to hear you do not hear nothing"

John Smith

Estimated 2020 World Population

7.8 Billion

World CO2 Atmosphere
417 ppm

John Tyner

COVID-19 is 2020's
News Story of the Year

 

 

"tdc's Froggy"
             tdc's Animated Frog   Be patient, I'm coming!

Our thanks to Fred Webster for this great animation  

 

Notable Passings in 2020

 

David Stern - January
John Crosbie - January
Jim Lehrer - January
Kobe Byrant - January
Kirk Douglas - February
Christie Blatchford - February
Tony Fernandez - February
Hosni Mubaruk - February
Clive Cussler - February
Henri Richard - March
Kenny Rogers - March
Ellis Marsalis Jr. - April
Bill Withers - April
Honor Blackman - April

Stirling Moss - April
Don Shula - May
Little Richard - May
Jerry Stillar - May
George Floyd - May
Vera Lynn - June
Carl Reiner - June
John Lewis - July
Regis Philbin - July
Olivia de Havillon - July
Eddie Shack - July
John Hume - August
Chadwick Boseman - August

Tom Seaver - September
Diana Riggs - September
Ruth Bader Ginsberg - September
John Turner - September
Gayle Sayers - September
Helen Reddy - September
Bob Gibson - October
Eddie Van Halen - October
Johnny Nash - October
Whitey Ford - October
Rhonda Fleming - October
Sean Connery - October
Alex Trebeck - November
Bob Newhart - Novermber
Chuck Yeager - December
John le Carré - December
Pierre Cardin - December

Froggy's  Comments 
Right  From The Pond


"
I May Be all Wet but I know
what I'm talkin' about..."



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USA Politics


After the US election, Donald Trump appealed to the Supreme Court to declare that the election results were false. Every appeal to the declaring was not heard because there was not sound evidence to the truth of this matter.

November 2020, Joe Biden becomes President of the United States with Kamala Harris as Vice President. and by mid November although Joe Biden has won the popular vote there are 11 million cases of COVID-19 and President Trump has not declared Joe Biden as the next President.
As November comes to an end in USA, there are a total of about 13.6 million cases of COVID-19 cases and the possibility of a vaccine to be started in mid December. Trump continues to be silent on declaring Biden as the winner of the popular vote by 5 Million votes.

90,000,000 citizens in the USA vote before November 3 in the Presidential race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump - a new record!
Also 9,000,000 people contract COVID-19 in the USA since the start of  February 2020- the largest outbreak of this virus of any country
in the world.

Early in October, the President and his wife become infected with COVID-19 which he got from his assistant Hope Hicks..  The mid- month numbers for the USA for persons who have the virus surpassed 8 million as the election got close and the fires still raged in California.
as far as the pre election polls - Joe Biden is still predicted to win.

Early in September, four issues seem to be dominating the news in the USA... The American Presidential election, Black Lives Matter, COVID 19 with the total deaths in the USA now at close to 200,000  and the West Coast Forest Fires.. The world now awaits the presidential 3 debates featuring President Trump and Vice President Biden to see what can be done.  However, mid September the news that Supreme Court Judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg had passed away has sparked a new fight between the Democrats and Republicans and that is whether or not a new Judge should be appointed before the November 2nd elections. And that was on or around September 22 when it was reported that 200,000 deaths had been reported in the USA caused from people who were infected with COVID - 19.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has said it will not work with an international cooperative effort to develop and distribute a COVID-19 vaccine, because it does not want to be constrained by multilateral groups like the World Health Organization (WHO).

Early in August the US passed 5m Covid-19 cases according to figures from Johns Hopkins University..
Also as the Democratic Convention looms VP Joe Biden picks Kamala Harris as his running mate after which the Democratic convention was held on-line.  It was announced that
White House advisor Kelly Anne Conway would be leaving the White House. Racial injustice  issues as the end of August comes close to being at an end have caused professional sports events to be cancelled due to the players of the NBA, NHL and NFL refusing to play.

Early July - The game is on!  In the biggest, most dramatic outlay on political advertising in the 2020 presidential election cycle since the free-spending Mike Bloomberg and Tom Steyer primary-season glory days, President Donald Trump’s campaign just dropped $99.7 million on TV advertising across Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona, according to the latest Ad Age Campaign Ad Scorecard analysis
. At the end of July, Trump was threatening to change the date when the presidential vote would happen, unfortunately, it is only the Congress that can change that date and the head of the Congress has said she would not recommend it.

After 8 days of riots and looting of stores around the first of June, the streets of many of the cities in the USA were somewhat quiet.  Protesters were protesting the death of a black man by a policeman in Minnesota who killed him by putting his foot on his neck for 8 minutes and this action
was recorded and seen by most of the people in the world.

At the end of May - U.S. deaths from coronavirus have passed 100,000 — leading the world.

In early April after due consideration that he could not win the Democratic leadership, Bernie Sanders conceded to Joe Biden. giving him the chan
ce to defeat Donald Trump in November of 2020 and become President of the USA.

Early March - Two people left in the fight to being the Democratic representative in the fight for being President of the USA - Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.

The US Senate acquits President Donald Trump of articles of impeachment as written by the House of Representatives.

An embarrassing vote-reporting mess in the Iowa Democratic caucuses means there is so far no winner in the crucial opening contest to find a candidate to take on President Donald Trump in November.

The President is impeached by the Congress and in late January he is heard by the Senate who is capable removing the President. At the end of January the Senate votes to not have witnesses in their trial and to find President Trump not guilty of impeachment.

Iran launches 22 missiles and attacks two American bases located in Iraq. There were no causalities at the bases.  At the same evening an airliner bound out of Tehran to the Ukraine crashed with 176 passengers and crew aboard killing all.

General Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC's) Quds Force, and architect of its regional security apparatus, has been killed following a US air raid at Baghdad's international airport on January 3.

Science


The intrigue of space seem to be the front line news in the science sector.  We now have photographs of the Milky Way, images of two Black Holes crashing into each other and some samples of the matter on an asteroid coming back to earth. The mystery of Black Matter and the composition of the middle of a Black Hole still are unanswered questions of this year. NASA claims thatt the Milky Way holds at least 300 MILLION habitable planets with liquid water on their surfaces - and the closest are just 20 light-years away,

Room-temperature superconductivity has been achieved for the first time.

Scientists find phosphine a microbial produced gas  in the atmosphere of Venus which indicates a strong possibility of the presence of microbes  on its surface.


Economics

 

COVID 19 has slowed the growth of US and Canadian economies.

 

Cirque du Soleil, the producer of a number of Las Vegas acrobatic shows, has filed for bankruptcy protection. 

 

Now in Britain with Boris Johnston as Prime Minister, and his pro Brexit political position, it leaves the British people wondering
what a ProBrexit no deal with the European nations will look like.

 

Walmart is betting it can convince time-strapped customers to let strangers deliver groceries into their refrigerators while they're away from home.

 

Energy

 

Canada unveiled a long-discussed hydrogen strategy in December, calling on investors to spur growth in a clean fuel sector that the government says could be worth C$50 billion ($39.2 billion), create 350,000 jobs and help the country achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

 

Lloyd’s of London is scaling back its exposure to coal and oil sands, the commercial insurance market said in its first sustainability report in December, in a reversal of its traditional hands-off approach to climate change strategy.


Sports
Canada wins the World Jr. Championship in Hockey in early January. Kansas City wins Superbowl over San Francisco.
Then the St Louis Blues won the Stanley Cup and the LA Lakers won the NBA Championships in areas and basketball courts devoid of  people  because of the COVID 19. With some people in the stands, the LA Dodgers win the World Series in Baseball.
Space

Announced was the fact that scientists have seen the collision of two black holes producing a gravitational wave which happened 4 billion
 years ago.

Comet N
EOWISE delights astronomers in late July at its closest to Earth before heading out of sight for 6,000 years and China, USA and the UAE launch rockets heading for Mars.

Finally the first flight into orbit of NASA which launched successfully two US astronauts to the International Space Station. This is the first launch of American astronauts on American rockets from American soil since the end of the space shuttle era in 2011.

The world in 2020 was fascinated with the discovery of the universe as scientists worldwide search for life in the universe and search for how big the universe really is and the fascination of black holes.
Health

 

Mid December and the virus still has been able to kill 300,000+   Americans since it first appeared in January 2020.  The first vaccinations have been done in Russia, Britain, Canada and the USA with hopes it will stop the spread of  COVID - 19  and by the end of December the world's death toll from COVID-19 was 1,744,000+  people and a total of 78,604,532 confirmed worldwide cases.

 

Early in December the light is beginning to shine in the tunnel as U.K. approves Pfizer coronavirus vaccine for emergency use  as Britain becomes the first country to approve a vaccine and inject the vaccine into some British citizens in Wales and Scotland as the US suffers having the highest death and new case rate in the world.

 

Early in November, the United States recorded 102,831 new cases of Covid-19 , according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University..Late November, in the United States, 52,049 people are hospitalized and 10,445 are in the ICU, according to the Covid Tracking Project, a volunteer effort to document the pandemic. America’s daily new cases topped 100,000  and its death toll exceeds 233,000, a staggering figure even accounting for its greater population than Australia, which has recorded 907 deaths..

 

As September starts to roll out there are now 6.1 Million cases of COVID-19 in the USA with 186,000+ dearth's and  at the end of September the worldwide death count is 1 million plus from the COVID 19 virus..

 

Nearing the end of August there are recorded 23.5 million recorded cases of the COVID-19 cases in the world with 812,000 deaths resulting and
no vaccine ready. Over 1,000 students have tested positive for Covid-19 at University of Alabama since classes resumed .More than 25 million people have been infected with Covid-19 since the pandemic began and 842,000 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University's global tally. .

 

July 19th and there are now 14 million cases of COVID-19 worldwide with 597 K deaths and 3.5 million confirmed cases in the USA. At the end of July thed world had accumulated 17.5 million cases with 676 thousand deaths caused by the COVID-19 virus.

 

June 5 and new cases of the novel coronavirus are rising faster than ever worldwide, at a rate of more than 100,000 a day over a seven-day average. And in the middle of June it was reported that there were 8.3 million cases of COVID-19 with 446 K deaths worldwide.  And at the end of June the total world number of cases exceeds 10.4 million with 509 k deaths.

 

Mid May, more than 4.4 million cases of COVID-19 have been recorded worldwide, including at least 302,000 deaths as United States decides to open up their economy again in several states.  The fight between scientific community and the Trump led economic community on how to handle the COVID - 19  virus furiously continues.
Nearing the end of May, the world continued to be murdered by the COPD-19 virus as over 5,200,000 cases have been reported and 328,000 people who have died.
The USA now leads the countries with the most cases and the most death and even though this is a fact they are again opening up their economy.
 

 

At the start of April it was reported that the number of cases of COVID - 19 had exceeded 1 million worldwide which has included Boris Johnston the Prime Minister of Britain. In China on April 8 they have lifted its lockdown on Wuhan, a day after the city reported no coronavirus deaths for the first time since the pandemic began.
Mid April and now the number of persons worldwide who have contracted COVID-19 approaches 2 Million worldwide with the US with 600,000 cases. By the end of April, the total count for those infected worldwide surpassed 3.1 milliion.  However, on May 9th over 4,000,000 cases of COVID 19 had occured and some 270,000 + persons had died from being exposed to the virus.  It was also reported that in April the unemployment rate in the USA reached 14 % - the worst in their history.

 

Mid March and the WHO declares that the Corona Virus has a total of 124,000 cases, 4,585 deaths, 67,000 recoveries and has reached a pandemic type of emergency.  The USA now has declared that no meetings with more than 250 poeple should not be held, declared a state of emergency and now most professional sporting events have been cancelled for the season. At the end of March there was a total of 842,000 cases, 42,000 people had died, and 146,000 had recovered from the Corona Virus pandemic.

Mid February and the number of Coronavirus cases rise to more than 64,000 globally with 2000+ deaths caused by the virus. As the end of February gets nearer, the Corona Virus cases surpass 82,000 and Japan responds to their growing virus invasion by closing all its schools for three weeks. March 3 and the total number of people who have contracted the virus is 90,000 with 39,000 active cases. March 14th, 150,500 people have been contracted with 71,298 presently active cases with the virus.

Two cruise ships are quarantined in Asia amid coronavirus outbreak, stranding more than 5,000 people.  Coronavirus deaths in China rise to 490

 

China just completes work on the emergency 1000 bed hospital it set up to tackle the Wuhan coronavirus, and it took just 9 days to do it

 

In late January, China has expanded its coronavirus lockdown to more cities, restricting movement to an unprecedented 56 million people as it rushes to build a prefabricated, 2,000-bed hospital for victims and the World Health Organizatgion (WHO) declares that the CoronaVirus situation a Global Heath Emergency.

 

Cororna Virus initiated in China spreads quickly around the world.

Environment
and
Climate Crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic is impacting human activities, and in turn energy use and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Here we present daily estimates of country-level CO2 emissions for different sectors based on near-real-time activity data. The key result is an abrupt 8.8% decrease in global CO2 emissions (−1551 Mt CO2) in the first half of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. The magnitude of this decrease is larger than during previous economic downturns or World War II. The timing of emissions decreases corresponds to lockdown measures in each country. By July 1st, the pandemic’s effects on global emissions diminished as lockdown restrictions relaxed and some economic activities restarted, especially in China and several European countries, but substantial differences persist between countries, with continuing emission declines in the U.S. where coronavirus cases are still increasing substantially.

September 2020 was the warmest September ever recorded. Both globally and in Europe.
Record high temperatures are again recorded all over the world in 2020 creating massive forest fires in North and South America.

There are 12-21 million tonnes of tiny plastic fragments floating in the Atlantic Ocean, scientists have found.
.

The last fully intact ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic has collapsed, losing more than 40% of its area in just two days at the end of July.

Official figures from Brazil have shown the number of fires in the Amazon region are up 28% compared with the same month last year.

July 2019-June 2020 was tied as the warmest 12 months on record. That’s +1,39°C above preindustrial levels and rapidly closing in on 1,5°.

After invading East Africa, locusts have added India on their victims' list. This is India's worst locust attack in 27 years.

Earth has experienced its hottest January in recorded history.

The Guardian will no longer accept advertising from oil and gas companies, becoming the first major global news organisation to institute an outright ban on taking money from companies that extract fossil fuels.

The world's oceans are now heating at the same rate as if five Hiroshima atomic bombs were dropped into the water every second, scientists have said.

At the start of 2020, hundreds of Forest fires are threatening and devouring towns and forests in Australia and will not stop until rains return in June. So far 15.2 million acres have been burned.
Peace  
Early in July Vladimir Putin wins Russia vote that could let him rule until 2036
Religion
Religion seems to have benefited under the US Payment Protection Program, which was allocated $669 billion in subsidies to support small businesses during the coronavirus pandemic, the government has extended funding to churches and other houses of worship. This program is unprecedented in terms of the sheer amount of money involved and the religious nature of the activities, including payment of clergy salaries, that the government is subsidizing.
Internet
The advent of the CoVID-19 has stimulated the use of the Internet via such applicaitons as Google Meet, Zoom, and Skype. Learn at home schools seem to be on a slow acceptance as school teacher unions say that learning from screens at home is not a satisfying experience as face to face in a brinks and mortar building.

Communications


With so many people at home due to the COVID - 19 virus, it has caused a sudden growth of social media such  as Facebook, YouTube, Tic Tock, and Instagram. Video conferencing software like Zoom has spouted everywhere driven by the close-down of the educational institutions and the lock down  of businesses sending home employees to do their work from home.

Living


Canada’s immigration minister is opening the doors to people in Hong Kong, with an aim to attract students and recent graduates,

PepsiCo, the parent company of Quaker Oats, which has owned the Aunt Jemima brand since 1926, announced that it will retire the Aunt Jemima name and image, which originated from a racial stereotype.

Britain finally exits the European Union at the end of January
and begins its search for trade agreements with the EU and other countries.

Agriculture


In April, some of the large meat processor workers were found to be inflicted by COVIS-19 which have caused them to be closed.
This was effecting 30 % of the meat processors production in the USA.

Entertainment


At the end of January 2020, there was a shutdown of movie theatres  and live entertainment centers  which include sports areas and stadiums around the world.. Entertainment turned to movies distributed by the likes of Cable TV News and Netflix.  However, by the end of the year people began to get bored with seeing movies on TV and were searching for other types of entertainment that they could use.

Biggest Achievements
of the Year

Corona Virus and the Presidential American Election

 

It seems that there was lots of talk in 2019 about climate change but little action.

Your Comments?

 

Have a Happy 2021 Folks !


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