Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on sports Tampa Mayor Jane Castor issues an outdoor mask mandate for the city during Super Bowl LV.
Criticism of Google The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission releases a report accusing Google of misusing its advertisement system to promote Alphabet Inc.'s own financial interests.
Google removes major Australian news sites from some of its search results in an "experiment" in reaction to the Australian government's calls for Google to pay these sites for their content.
Social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic One protester is shot dead and many more are wounded after attempting to storm a government building during an anti-lockdown riot in Tripoli, Lebanon. The municipality building was set on fire before protesters pulled back to the city's main square.
Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on long-term care facilities New York Attorney General Letitia James releases a report accusing the state of undercounting the number of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes.
Decolonisation of Africa The United Nations' International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea rules that the United Kingdom has no legal sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago, and must return control of the islands back to Mauritius. The British Foreign Office rejects the ruling, saying that "Mauritius has never held sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory and the UK does not recognise its claim".
COVID-19 pandemic Vaccine developer Novavax announces that their vaccine candidate is 89% effective in preventing severe COVID-19, based on trial data from the United Kingdom; their vaccine was less effective against new variants of the virus, based on data from South Africa.
Brazil surpasses nine million cases of COVID-19, becoming the third country to do so after India and the United States.
Australia extends the suspension of their travel bubble with New Zealand for another 72 hours due to concerns about new variants of SARS-CoV-2.
Senegal reports their first case of a more contagious variant of SARS-CoV-2 that originated in the United Kingdom.
Vietnam reports their first two locally transmitted COVID-19 cases in 55 days in Hải Dương and Quảng Ninh provinces, with one of them linked to the B.1.1.7 variant.
The Food and Drug Administration approves the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for emergency use in the Philippines.
Indonesia reports a record 476 deaths in the past 24 hours, 200 of which are from West Java, bringing the nationwide death toll to 29,331.
The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I receives the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Spain reports their first case of the 501.V2 variant in a 30-year-old man who travelled from South Africa to Vigo.
Portugal reports new daily records for both cases and deaths, with 16,432 new cases and 303 deaths, bringing the nationwide cumulative totals to 685,383 confirmed cases and 11,608 deaths.
South Carolina reports the United States' first two cases of the 501.V2 variant first detected in South Africa in people with no known travel history.
2021 Georgia poultry plant accident Six people are killed and nine others hospitalized due to a leak of liquid nitrogen at a poultry plant in Gainesville, Georgia, United States.
GameStop short squeeze A class action lawsuit was filed against Robinhood in response to shutting down the buying of stocks at the center of the short squeeze. US Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) has called for an investigation into the ban on stock sales.
Robinhood, TD Ameritrade, and Webull restrict the trade of heavily shorted stocks such as GameStop, AMC, BlackBerry, Nokia, and Koss on their platforms.
GameStop stock briefly tops US$500 before dropping 36% from Wednesday's closing. Trading was halted multiple times due to the climb and the crash.
COVID-19 pandemic The World Tourism Organization reports that the global tourism sector lost $1.3 trillion in revenue in 2020, calling it "the worst year in tourism history". The organization attributes the loss to COVID-19.
The United States's GDP contracts 3.5% in 2020, its first annual contraction since 2009 following the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the country's worst economic performance since 1946.
The Philippines' GDP contracts 9.5% in 2020, its first annual contraction since 1998 following the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the country's worst economic performance since records began in 1947.
Sandro Botticelli Sandro Botticelli's "Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Roundel" is sold at auction for $92.2 million at Sotheby's in New York City, making it the second most expensive painting by an old master ever sold at public auction.