January 31, 2019 (Thursday)
Arts and culture
- American singer Mariah Carey performs her concert in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, despite Saudi women's rights activists calling for her to cancel it. (ABC News)
- Kurdish-Iranian refugee Behrouz Boochani, incarcerated for nearly 6 years in the Australian-run Manus Regional Processing Centre, is awarded Australia's richest literary prize, the Victorian Prize for Literature and the Victorian Premier's Prize for Nonfiction. (BBC News)
Business and economy
- Italy's economy falls into recession for the third time in a decade after declining GDP growth in late 2018. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte blames the recession on external factors, including trade tensions between the United States and China. (The Guardian)
Disasters and accidents
- January 2019 North American cold wave
- Several cities in the Midwestern United States and Eastern Canada reach record low temperatures for the third consecutive day as a polar vortex continues to affect the region. (The New York Times)
Politics and elections
- 2019 Venezuelan presidential crisis
- The European Parliament votes to recognize Juan Guaidó as interim President of Venezuela. (The Independent)
- Colombian, Spanish and French journalists are arrested and detained by SEBIN agents in Caracas. All four work for Spanish news agency EFE. The arrests follow the deportation of two Chilean journalists yesterday. (Reuters)
- Abdullah of Pahang is elected the 16th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia. (Asia News)
Science and technology
- Astronomers announce, through the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society journal, the accidental discovery of dwarf spheroidal galaxy Bedin I in the Pavo constellation in September 2018. (Space Telescope)