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- The Taliban threaten to escalate attacks in Afghanistan after a year of record violence. (The Independent)
- Venezuela introduces the new Bolívar Fuerte currency (ISO 4217, code: VEF) to combat inflation. (ABC News)
- Fatah-Hamas conflict: At least eight people have died in factional fighting in the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours, reports say. (BBC News)
- Cyprus and Malta adopt the euro currency, becoming the 14th and 15th countries to do so. Cypriot pound and Maltese lira notes and coins will remain valid in shops until the end of the month, and exchangeable at the respective central banks for some years. (BBC News)
- A fire in a church in Eldoret, Western Kenya kills fifty people who were sheltering from violence after the disputed presidential election. (AP via Google Red News)
- US Diplomat John Granville, working for the United States Agency for International Development in Sudan, is murdered. (AP via Google News)
- Thiyagarajah Maheswaran, a minority Sri Lankan Tamil parliamentarian, is shot dead at a Hindu temple in Colombo, Sri Lanka.(Times of India)
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- A Turkish court bans YouTube for the second time because of clips deemed disrespectful to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. (PhysOrg.com)
- An Israeli TecSAR spy satellite is launched aboard an Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. (PhysOrg.com)
- President of Venezuela Hugo Chávez disallows the exportation of agricultural goods and promises to nationalize any farm that does. (BBC News)
- 2008 stock market downturn:
- Stock markets around the world plunge amid growing fears of a U.S. recession, fueled by the 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis. (BBC News) (thisislondon.co.uk)
- North American Markets: U.S. markets are closed for Martin Luther King Day. Stock futures are down, with March contracts on the Dow Jones Industrial Average trading 482 points lower to 11,624. S&P 500 futures are also down 55 points to 1,270.10 and Nasdaq 100 futures are down 72.25 points to 1,777.25. The Toronto Stock Exchange loses over 500 points during morning trading at 12,233. (MarketWatch) (CBC)
- European Markets: The French CAC 40 index closes down 6.8% at 4,744.45, the German DAX 30 index closes down 7.2% at 6,790.19, and the UK's FTSE 100 index closes down 5.5% at 5,578.20. (MarketWatch)
- Asian Markets: The Indian Sensex is down 1,408.35 points, or 7.4%, to 17,605.35, tumbling a record 11% down at one point in the day. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index ends the day down 5.5% at 23,818.86. Japan's Nikkei falls 3.9% to 13,436.94. (MarketWatch)
- A gas explosion at an illegal mine in Shanxi, China kills at least 20. (BBC News)
- Former Liberian warlord Joshua Milton Blahyi confesses that he is responsible for at least 20,000 deaths during the First Liberian Civil War. (CNN)
- The Na-Dene language of Eyak goes extinct with the death of Marie Smith Jones, its last native speaker. (BBC)
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