Events that made the news in 2020
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The Covid-19 pandemic has been the protagonist of the news throughout most of 2020. The virus put politicians, populations and scientists on the defensive with almost two million deaths worldwide, and has caused an unprecedented economic collapse. Humanity had not experienced anything like it since the so-called "Spanish flu", which shook several continents exactly a century ago. Around 218 countries have been affected by the pandemic since last spring, according to the World Health Organization.
After months of research and testing, the first vaccinations against Covid-19 are beginning in several countries, including the United States, the European Union, Russia, China and quite a few in Latin America.
The US general election was also in the headlines later in the year. The projections indicated from the beginning that the winner had been the Democratic candidate Joe Biden, but President Donald Trump refuses to accept that possibility on the grounds that massive fraud took place.
Other events also made news throughout 2020. These are some of them:
January 26.- Retired basketball star Kobe Bryant dies when the helicopter in which he was traveling with his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven other people crashed. The accident occurred in Calabasas, California. Bryant was 41 years old at the time of his death. The event produced a duel in the world of sports.
February 9.- The South Korean film Parasite became the first foreign production to win the Best Picture Oscar, during the 92nd edition of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Hollywood.
March 11.- The World Health Organization declares the new coronavirus, known as Covid-19, a global pandemic. The dangerous virus was first reported on December 31, 2019 in Wuhan, China, and has since killed more than 1.8 million people worldwide.
April 11.- New York City reaches a record number of 731 deaths per day due to Covid-19 and it is necessary to open special graves to bury them.
May 25.- African-American George Floyd dies after a police officer in Minneapolis, United States, kept his knee on the suspect's neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds. Floyd's death sparked a large number of protests across the country, and resurfaced the Black Lives Matter movement, against police abuse against African-Americans. The protests, which were announced to be peaceful, led to riots and destruction of public and private property. Activists and organizations involved in the protests are calling for police funding to be cut or withdrawn.
May 30.- The aerospace company SpaceX, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, also the owner of Tesla cars, makes the first flight into space with a NASA crew, nine years after the withdrawal of the shuttle system from that American body. In January 2020, with the third launch of Starlink, it had become the operator with the largest constellation of satellites in the world placed in space.
August 4.- Huge explosions in the port of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, leave a balance of 202 dead. The explosions were apparently caused by 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored at the site.
Several months of the year.- Large technology firms such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple faced lawsuits, investigations, and congressional hearings for alleged behaviors that violate antitrust laws.
August 25.- Lionel Messi announces that he wants to leave the Barcelona soccer team, after 15 years in it. On September 9 it is confirmed that the Argentine will remain at Barça.
August 26.- The homicides of women in Mexico have reached alarming levels. In the first seven months of the year, 2,240 women were murdered, according to figures from the National Public Security System. This represents an average of 10.5 femicides per day.
September.- The first case affected by a new variant of Covid-19 is discovered in London, Great Britain, which is presumed to be more contagious, although not necessarily more deadly, than the one circulating worldwide. By November, 25% of those infected in London suffer from the new strain, and by December that figure rises to two-thirds of the London population. On a smaller scale, the variant has also been discovered in Australia, South Africa and the Netherlands.
September 19.- The World Health Organization announces that Covid-19 has caused the death of one million people worldwide, up to that date.
October 20.- The technology company Apple becomes the richest company in the world, with a value of 322,999 million dollars, 38% more than in 2019, according to a report by Best Global Brand 2020. Immediately after are Amazon, with 200,667 million, 60% more than in 2019; Microsoft, with 166,001 million; Google with 165,444 million, and the South Korean Samsung with 62,289 million dollars.
October 22.- The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reports that the parents of 545 children separated from their families at the US border have not yet been found. The separation of immigrant families was part of a policy by President Donald Trump known as "zero tolerance", which was applied in 2018 and ended months after its inception, amid a wave of criticism and protests. A federal judge ordered the suspension of that policy and granted the government a period of 30 days for the children to be reunited with their families.
November 3.- General elections are held in the United States. The media declare the Democratic candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden the winner over President Donald Trump. The president denounces that massive fraud occurred and refuses to recognize Biden as the winner. A barrage of lawsuits reaches the courts to air the alleged fraud.
November 9.- The socialist leader and former president of Bolivia Evo Morales returns to his country, after the electoral triumph of Luis Arce, candidate of his party, the MAS. A year earlier, an intense wave of protests against the results of the Bolivian elections in October 2019, had led to the resignation of Morales, who went first to Mexico and then to Argentina. During his year of self-exile, in which he was welcomed by the new Argentine president Alberto Fernández, Morales received several accusations in his country, where he has charges pending with the justice system.
November 18.- A wave of protests by contesting artists, identified as members of the San Isidro Movement, broke out in Cuba after the arrest of rapper Daniel Solís for having prevented a policeman from entering his home. The participants also oppose Decree 349, which according to their version is intended to censor freedom of expression. The movement received support inside and outside Cuba, from other artists and writers. After accusing the youth of being "agents of imperialism," the regime organized a kind of dialogue led by pro-government artists, which deflated from the start. Several international organizations, including Amnesia International and Human Rights Watch, denounced arbitrary arrests and other repressive acts against the youth.
November 25.- Diego Armando Maradona dies in Buenos Aires, Argentina due to cardiac arrest. He was 60 years old, and was considered one of the best soccer players in history. The world of sport enters another moment of mourning.
December 4.- A US federal judge orders the reestablishment of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protects from deportation and allows young people who arrived in the United States when they were children to work. children with their undocumented parents. The program, approved during the Barack Obama government, had been canceled by the Donald Trump administration in September 2017. More than 700,000 young people would again be covered by DACA. You can also make new requests to enter it.
December 7.- Amid allegations of fraud, the Venezuelan regime of Nicolás Maduro held elections in which it supposedly recovered the National Assembly, dominated by the opposition since 2015. According to official figures, only 31% of the voters participated. electorate, while five years earlier the turnout was over 70%. The United States and other nations in the Americas and Europe have refused to accept the results.
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December 10.- An investigation into the activities of Hunter Biden, son of Joe Biden, in China and his tax returns comes to light. The implicated himself released the news that the office of the Department of Justice in the state of Delaware was investigating him. The Justice Department had been in charge of the investigation for months, but had not disclosed the fact so as not to affect the election results. Joe Biden was reportedly not implicated in the process. Conservative circles accuse the media of silencing the investigation to favor the Democratic candidate.
December 11.- The Supreme Court of the United States rejects a major lawsuit from the state of Texas, backed by President Donald Trump, which called for a review of the vote in the state of Pennsylvania. Trump, who was supported by dozens of Republican prosecutors and congressmen, accused the court of "dropping it, without wisdom, without courage." Of the nine members of the high court, six are conservatives and three are liberals. Of the six conservatives, three were nominated for the position by Trump himself.
December 11.- The Cuban government announces that the recently approved monetary unification will be implemented as of January 1, 2021. Cuba has had two currencies since the 1990s, the normal peso and the convertible peso. known as CUC. The new exchange rate will be 24 Cuban pesos for one dollar, an equivalence that only has value within Cuba. The Cuban national currency, which has been pegged to the dollar, one for one, since the late 1940s, has been worthless since a radical currency change in 1961.
December 14.- The Electoral College of the United States, made up of 538 voters representing the 50 states of the nation, casts its certified vote on the November 3 elections. The result was 306 votes for Democrat Joe Biden and 232 for Republican President Donald Trump. The president and his followers insist that there was a massive fraud in the handling of voting by mail, which many states carried out to prevent the spread of Covid-19. For Trump, it was a trap so that many Democrats would vote multiple times.
December 14.- United States Attorney General William Barr, an ally of Trump, reports that he will resign from his post. In a public appearance he said that he would not appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the election results or Hunter Biden, the son of the Democratic candidate. His statements represented a blow to the US president.
December 15.- During a speech with notable praise for Trump's presidential management, the leader of the Republican majority in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, acknowledges that the Electoral College has given victory to Democrat Joe Biden. Press reports indicate that by that date some 80 judges had intervened in approximately 50 lawsuits over the alleged fraud, all of which had been rejected or dismissed by the courts. Others were withdrawn by the plaintiffs themselves.
December 19.- The former governor of Jalisco, Mexico, Aristóteles Sandoval, is murdered in a restaurant in Puerto Vallarta. The 46-year-old politician would have been executed in a carefully planned operation and the crime scene would have been "cleaned up" immediately afterward, according to the Jalisco Attorney General's Office. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he expected an investigation and punishment for the culprits. The murder occurred in a state dominated by one of the most ferocious criminal organizations in Mexico, the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel, headed by the most wanted man in the Aztec country, Nemesio Oseguera "el Mencho."
Second half of December.- Vaccination campaigns against Covid-19 begin in various countries around the world. In most of them, priority is given to first aid personnel and health workers, as well as the elderly in residences for the elderly. However, in some developing nations the vaccines had not yet arrived.
December 26.- Spain and France confirm the presence of cases of the new strain of coronavirus in their territories.
End of December.-After weeks of intense negotiations, the United States Congress approves an economic relief package for families and businesses affected by Covid-19. In it, 600 dollars are given to certain people individually, once only, and 300 dollars a week to the unemployed. President Trump refuses to sign the new law and asks that the aid of 600 dollars go to two thousand dollars. On the other hand, he vetoes the defense budget of 714 billion dollars, demanding more benefits for veterans and a language closer to his policy that the United States comes first. According to Republican congressmen, the budget includes aid to veterans, a pay increase for soldiers and the modernization of military equipment.
December 27.- President Donald Trump signs the economic relief package on the condition that a separate law is approved with the total delivery of two thousand dollars to those affected. Apparently, the already signed law grants the first $600 that was part of the package from the beginning.
December 27.- The Portuguese goalscorer for Juventus, Cristiano Ronaldo, was chosen as the Best Player of the 21st Century during the Globe Soccer awards gala ceremony, which took place in Dubai, capital of the United Arab Emirates Joined.
December 28.- The Mexican composer, arranger and interpreter Armando Manzanero dies of cardiac arrest, after several days of fighting against Covid-19 in a clinic in Mexico City. He was a world reference in romantic music, for songs like Adoro, Esta tarde vi llover, Somos novios and many others. Throughout his career he composed more than 400 songs, some 50 of which brought him international fame. He received numerous awards for his life's musical work, including a Grammy in that category. At the time of his death he was the president of the Association of Authors and Composers of Mexico. He was 85 years old.
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