January (30th)

January 1, 2012,






January 1, 2012,



January 1, 2012,



January 1, 2012,




January 1, 2012, A 7.0 magnitude earthquake strikes south of Japan; no damage is caused. (Wall Street Journal)
January 1, 2012, The Iran Navy test-fires a surface-to-air missile. (MSNBC)
January 1, 2012, A joint New Year editorial by North Korean media calls for human shields to protect Kim Jong-un. (The Telegraph)
January 1, 2012, Egypt's military rulers bring forward elections for the Shura Council, the upper house of the Parliament to expedite progress in developing a new constitution. (AFP via France 24)
January 2, 2012,




January 2, 2012, Iran successfully test-fires two long-range missiles during military exercises in the Persian Gulf. (Reuters via Yahoo News)
January 2, 2012, Mount Ranier National Park in the US state of Washington remains closed as dozens of police search for a man who shot a ranger on New Years Day. (CBS News)
January 2, 2012, ExxonMobil wins US$908 million from an arbitration panel of the International Chamber of Commerce for the nationalization of its Venezuelan oil project in 2007. (BBC)
January 2, 2012, The Russian Federal Space Agency expects that parts of its failed Fobos-Grunt spacecraft will re-enter the earth's atmosphere and may crash into the earth during the next week. (The Telegraph)

January 3, 2012,



January 3, 2012,



January 3, 2012,Voters in the U.S. state of Iowa go to the polls for electoral caucuses, with Mitt Romney defeating Rick Santorum by 8 votes in the Republican Party contest, and Ron Paul following in third place. (BBC)
January 3, 2012, Voters in Egypt go to the polls for the third round of voting for the lower house of the national parliament. (Reuters via The Irish Times)
January 4, 2012,



January 4, 2012, The President of Argentina Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner temporarily hands over power to her deputy Amado Boudou ahead of surgery for thyroid cancer. (CNN)
January 5, 2012,



January 5, 2012,



January 5, 2012,



January 5, 2012, The President of the United States Barack Obama announces a new defense strategy, cutting spending dramatically. (AFP via Sydney Morning Herald)

January 6, 2012, Release of The Devil Inside



January 6, 2012, A hot air balloon crashes near Carterton, New Zealand, killing all eleven onboard. (BBC)



January 6, 2012,



January 6, 2012, The Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller announces that the country is to become a republic, with plans to remove Queen Elizabeth II as head of state and the Jamaican monarchy in general. (The Guardian)

January 7, 2012,






January 7, 2012,



January 7, 2012,



January 8, 2012, Series Premiere of The Firm



January 8, 2012, Series Premiere of House of Lies



January 8, 2012,



January 9, 2012, Season Premiere of Shameless



January 9, 2012, Alabama defeats LSU 21-0 to win the 2012 BCS National Championship, their second championship in three years, in the first shutout in BCS National Championship history. (ESPN)








January 9, 2012,



January 9, 2012,



January 9, 2012,



January 10, 2012,



January 10, 2012,





January 10, 2012,




January 10, 2012,



January 11, 2012, Series Premiere of Are You There, Chelsea?



January 11, 2012,





January 11, 2012,



January 11, 2012,



January 11, 2012,



January 11, 2012,




January 11, 2012, Joran van der Sloot pleads guilty to killing a Peruvian woman. (msnbc)



January 11, 2012, Republican candidates for United States President are campaigning in South Carolina for the upcoming South Carolina primaries. (ABC News)

January 12, 2012, Series Premiere of Rob
January 12, 2012, Series Premiere of The Finder



January 12, 2012,



January 12, 2012,



January 12, 2012,



January 12, 2012,



January 13, 2012, Release of Beauty and The Beast 3D



January 13, 2012, Release of Contraband



January 13, 2012, Release of Joyful Noise



January 13, 2012,









January 13, 2012, European sovereign debt crisis: The Standard & Poor's credit rating agency lowers its long-term credit ratings on the eurozone countries of Cyprus, Italy, Portugal, and Spain by two notches each and Austria, France, Malta, Slovakia, and Slovenia by one notch each. (Standard & Poor's)






January 13, 2012,




January 13, 2012,




January 13, 2012,



January 13, 2012, Lions Gate Entertainment, the largest independent studio in the United States, purchases Summit Entertainment for US$412.5 million. (Reuters)

January 14, 2012, The cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground at the Isola del Giglio in the Mediterranean Sea with 3 deaths and 14 other casualties confirmed. (Sky)








January 14, 2012,



January 14, 2012, Rescue teams find two survivors trapped inside the capsized cruise ship Costa Concordia, which ran aground off the coast of Tuscany on January 13, killing at least three people. The ship's captain is detained by police for questioning. (New Zealand Herald)

January 15, 2012, Series Premiere of Napolean Dynamite






January 15, 2012, 2011–2012 Bahraini uprising: Opposition leaders and activists say reforms proposed by King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa are "cosmetic" and will do little to stop the uprising. (Al Jazeera)
January 15, 2012,Three trapped survivors are rescued from the capsized cruise ship Costa Concordia, over 24 hours after it ran aground off the coast of Italy. Two corpses are also found, bringing the known death toll of the incident to five. (BBC)
January 15, 2012, Russia's unmanned Fobos-Grunt space probe re-enters the Earth's atmosphere after a failed mission to the Martian moon Phobos. The 13-ton spacecraft disintegrates over the southern Pacific Ocean at approximately 16:45 UTC. China's first Mars probe, Yinghuo-1, which was launched together with Fobos-Grunt, is also destroyed. (BBC)
January 16, 2012, Series Premiere of Alcatraz







January 16, 2012, Series Premiere of The Revolution



January 16, 2012, The King Center publishes online 200,000 personal papers belonging to Martin Luther King, Jr. to mark his birthday. (BBC News)



January 16, 2012,



January 16, 2012, European sovereign debt crisis:The Standard & Poors credit rating agency lowers its long-term credit rating on the EFSF, the eurozone's bailout fund to help indebted European countries with their finances, from AAA to AA+ following the downgrade of France and Austria, who are two of the fund's backers. (FT)
January 16, 2012, The English Wikipedia will be shut down on Wednesday in protest against anti-piracy legislation proposed by the United States Congress. (Wikimedia Foundation)

January 17, 2012,



January 17, 2012,



January 17, 2012,



January 17, 2012, Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang resigns as chief executive officer. (San Jose Mercury News)
January 17, 2012, Kim Jong-nam, half-brother of new North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, predicts the regime will fall if reforms are not made soon. (UPI)

January 18, 2012,



January 18, 2012, Italian cruise ship captain Francesco Schettino admits having made navigational errors that led to the capsizing of the Costa Concordia in Italian waters on January 13, killing at least 11 people. (BBC)



January 18, 2012,



January 18, 2012, Severed human hands and feet are found near the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles, California, close to where a man's severed head was recently discovered. Los Angeles police continue their search for more body parts connected with the case. (Huffington Post)
January 18, 2012, Protests against Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act: Several major websites, including Reddit and the English Wikipedia, undergo blackouts in protest against controversial internet legislation proposed by the United States Congress. The two pieces of legislation in question are designed to combat online piracy, but are feared to inadvertently threaten online innovation and freedom of speech.(New York Times)

-A number of American lawmakers, including SOPA co-sponsor Marco Rubio, withdraw their support for the SOPA proposal. (BBC)

January 19, 2012, Series Premiere of Unsupervised



January 19, 2012,



January 19, 2012,




January 19, 2012, Kodak files for bankruptcy protection. (Reuters)
January 19, 2012, The FBI shuts down Megaupload. In response, hacker group Anonymous shuts down the United States Department of Justice website and many websites of the government and entertainment industry. (Washington Post)
January 19, 2012,News International pays out compensation to 37 people, including the actor Jude Law and politician John Prescott. over phone hacking by the News of the World. (BBC)
January 19, 2012, Rick Perry drops out of the 2012 Republican Party presidential primaries and endorses rival candidate Newt Gingrich. (CBS News)
January 19, 2012, Canadian freestyle skier Sarah Burke dies from complications of injuries she received in a skiing accident nine days earlier. (BBC)
January 20, 2012, Release of Haywire



January 20, 2012, Release of Red Tails



January 20, 2012, Release of Underworld: Awakening



January 20, 2012, An Indonesian man is charged with blasphemy after saying that God does not exist on his Facebook page. (The Jakarta Globe)
January 20, 2012, China warns Iran against developing nuclear weapons. (UPI)
January 20, 2012, SOPA and PIPA are postponed indefinitely as a result of the recent protests. (CNN)

January 21, 2012,



January 21, 2012, A Republican Party primary election takes place in the U.S. state of South Carolina, with Newt Gingrich being declared the winner and Mitt Romney coming second. (BBC)
January 21, 2012, Former Pennsylvania State University football coach Joe Paterno, who is suffering from lung cancer, is reported to be in grave condition. (CBS News)

January 22, 2012,






January 22, 2012, The New York Giants and New England Patriots advance to Super Bowl XLVI. (New York Daily News)




January 22, 2012, Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona announces her resignation from office to focus on her recovery after surviving an attempted assassination in 2011. (Washington Post)








January 22, 2012, Former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno dies from complications associated with lung cancer. (ESPN)




January 23, 2012,




January 23, 2012,






January 23, 2012,



January 23, 2012,



January 24, 2012,





January 24, 2012, United States President Barack Obama presents his 2012 State of the Union Address to the United States Congress. (CNN)








January 24, 2012, Apple Inc. announces that the technology generated over $127 billion in revenue during 2011. Apple sold over 37 million iPhones and over 15 million iPads during the fourth quarter of 2011. (CNN)

January 25, 2012, Series Premiere of Touch























January 25, 2012,



January 25, 2012, Protesters in Egypt commemorate the first anniversary of the revolution. (Al Jazeera)





January 26, 2012,





January 26, 2012,



January 26, 2012,



January 26, 2012,



January 26, 2012, Three people are killed and 16 missing after three office buildings collapse in Cinelândia square in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (IOL)

January 27, 2012, Release of The Grey



January 27, 2012, Release of Man on a Ledge



January 27, 2012, Release of One for the Money



January 27, 2012, Series Premiere of Spartacus: Vengeance



January 27, 2012,




January 27, 2012,



January 27, 2012,



January 27, 2012,



January 27, 2012,



January 27, 2012,



January 27, 2012,




January 27, 2012, 170 international writers, including the Nobel laureates J. M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, Toni Morrison, Orhan Pamuk, Wole Soyinka, Mario Vargas Llosa and Derek Walcott, take out a full page advert in Mexican newspaper El Universal to defend the freedom of journalists from fear and censorship. (BBC)
January 27, 2012, Twitter alters technology to enable country-specific censorship of messages. (Al Jazeera)

January 28, 2012,



January 28, 2012, Approximately 300 people are arrested in the US city of Oakland, California during Occupy Oakland protests. (AP via Yahoo! News)
January 29, 2012,
January 29, 2012,
January 29, 2012,
January 29, 2012,
January 29, 2012,
January 29, 2012,
January 29, 2012,
January 29, 2012,
January 29, 2012,
January 29, 2012,
January 29, 2012,
January 30, 2012, Release of Ringo album Ringo 2012



January 30, 2012, Release of Lana Del Rey album Born to Die



January 30, 2012, Release of Never Dead video game



January 30, 2012, Release of Soul Calibur 5



January 30, 2012, Occupy DC activists are banned from camping in McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza in the US capital Washington DC. (CNN)
January 30, 2012,
January 30, 2012,
January 30, 2012,
January 30, 2012,
January 30, 2012,