Top News Stories –

Hit and miss snow fun –
New York “dodged a bullet” according to Mayor Bill de Blasio after the huge expected snowfall skirted the city. All vehicle movement apart from emergency vehicles had been banned and the subway was shut down. However in Massachusetts the Emergency Management Agency (Mema) shut down the Pilgrim nuclear power plant in Plymouth “due to loss of offsite power”.

Auschwitz remembered –
70 years since the day that the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz in Poland was liberated in 1945 sees ceremonies performed at the camp and around the world.
Birkenau Gate, Auschwitz

Twitter gets video and group DM –
Twitter launch a video function so 30 second mobile video uploads can be played directly in timelines. The platform is also adding a group direct messages function. The video function uses the devices build in camera to produce Vine style clips but longer.

And Snapchat become a “news” outlet –
Snapchat is making content from the news sevices of Vice Media and CNN available to its users and DailyMail.com will offer Snapchat users 10 to 15 of its “highly addictive stories” news, showbiz and lifestyle stories selected by a special editorial team. Each edition will be available for 24 hours.

Video of the Day –

Citizens – “Lighten Up”

Citizens “Lighten Up” Cesare’s remix from Ernest Desumbila on Vimeo.

Top Twitter Trends –

Other News Stories –

Armed conflicts and attacks

• Libyan Civil War (2014–present)
  • Five gunmen at the Libyan Corinthia Hotel in Tripoli attack with at least ten dead. The hotel was previously the location in 2013 where a former prime minister was abducted. (AP)
• Israeli–Lebanese conflict
  • Israeli security forces claim that Hezbollah and forces loyal to the President of Syria Bashar al-Assad are responsible for firing rockets from Syrian territory onto the Golan Heights into the mount Hermon sky resort. (Xinhua)

Arts and culture

• Pope Francis holds a private meeting with a transsexual man and his fiancée at the Vatican. (The Daily Mail)

Disasters and accidents

• The death toll from the January 26 crash of a Hellenic Air Force F-16 fighter jet in southern Spain rises to eleven. (AP)
• January 2015 nor’easter
  • New England sees the worst of the blizzard with Boston, Massachusetts covered in two feet of snow. (AP)

Science and technology

• American 1964 Nobel Prize-winning physicist Charles Hard Townes, who helped invent the now-ubiquitous laser, dies at the age of 99. (AP)

Sports

• 2015 AFC Asian Cup
  • Australia wins 2–0 against United Arab Emirates to advance to the 2015 AFC Asian Cup Final for the second consecutive time. (Daily Mail)

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