(Clockwise) Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, US President Joe Biden and Angela Mekel. Pic/ AFP
Democratic leader Joe Biden and junior US Senator from California Kamala Harris defeated Republican President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence in the 2020 US elections. This election witnessed the highest voter turnout since 1900. Biden received over 81 million votes, the most ever cast for a US President. The Indian-origin Harris created history by becoming the first female Vice President and the highest-ranking female official in the country’s history, as well as the first Asian American and African American to hold the post
On February 1, the Myanmar military, in a coup, grabbed power and detained the State Counsellor of the country, Aung San Suu Kyi. This came in the wake of Suu Kyi’s landslide victory in the 2020 elections, which the military claimed were rigged. In detention since the coup, her arrest led to widespread protests in the country. The Nobel laureate denies all 11 charges against her, and her four-year jail sentence was recently reduced to two. Apart from Myanmar, military coups also took place in Mali, Guinea and Sudan. The coup in Africa’s Mali began on May 24 when its army, led by Vice President Assimi Goïta, captured President Bah N'daw, Prime Minister Moctar Ouane and Minister of Defence Souleymane Doucouré. On May 5, Guinea’s military claimed to take over the country after a video showed the country’s President Alpha Condé surrounded by soldiers. In Sudan, general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan ousted the government of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, saying that he was preventing a ‘civil war'
Angela Merkel, the first female chancellor of Germany, bid farewell on December 8, 2021, after 16 years of service and gave the reigns of the country to Olaf Scholz. In her term, Merkel was viewed as an able crisis manager. She served alongside four US presidents, five British prime ministers, four French presidents, and eight Italian premiers. Her chancellorship was marked by four major crises: the global recession, Europe’s debt crisis, the arrival of vast number of refugees in Europe in 2015-16 and the Covid-19 pandemic
Within days of the US withdrawing its 2,500 troops from Afghanistan after 20 years of war, the Taliban captured major cities and took over the presidential palace in Kabul on August 15. President Ashraf Ghani also fled the country, paving the way for the Taliban to take over. The US and UK deployed 3,000 and 600 troops respectively for the safe airlifting of nationals from the country. Chaos escalated since the takeover as thousands of Afghans thronged the Kabul airport, in a desperate attempt to flee the country. Some Afghans fell to their death as they clung on to a plane that was leaving the war-torn country. Afghan women too were seen throwing their babies over the razor wire of the airport compound, pleading the soldiers to take them
The B.1.1.529 variant or Omicron was first reported in South Africa on November 24, 2021. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the variant has a large number of mutations and preliminary evidence suggests that it may cause an increased risk of reinfection. Categorized as a Variant of Concern by the WHO, Omicron has spread to 108 countries. UK recently had a rise of over 1 lakh Omicron cases in a day. Italy reported 24,883 coronavirus cases on Sunday, out of which, authorities say, 28 per cent are Omicron cases. India, so far, has seen 578 Omicron cases
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