• Syrian civil war:
  • Russian authorities announce a plan to evacuate 100 Russian citizens from Syria by sending in two passenger planes to Beirut. (BBC) (AP via Yahoo!)
  • A car bombing in Salamiyeh kills over 30 people. (Al Jazeera)
• History of Eritrea:
  • Dissident soldiers seize the ministry of information in Asmara, Eritrea, forcing state media to call for the release of political prisoners. Other buildings are also surrounded while television and radio later went off air. The apparent coup attempt against President Isaias Afewerki reportedly fails. (BBC) (Al Jazeera) (New York Times)
• Northern Mali conflict:
  • French and Malian troops retake Diabaly and Douentza as Islamist forces retreat. (BBC) (France 24)
• Piracy in the 21st century:
  • Gunmen seize a Nigerian-owned, Panama-flagged tanker with crew off the coast of Abidjan in the Ivory Coast. (Reuters)
• In Aménas hostage crisis:
  • Algeria confirms that 37 foreign hostages were killed in the hostage crisis, and names the nationalities of the militants. (Reuters) (AP via Yahoo!) (Algeria Press Service)

• Film director and newspaper columnist Michael Winner dies aged 77 in Kensington, London, England. (BBC) (The Guardian) (The Telegraph)

• The finance ministers of the European Union are ready to give their needed approval to those countries within the EU that want to establish a Tobin tax, that is, a tax in financial transactions. (Reuters)

• 2013 Vienna train collision: Two trains packed with morning commuters collide in Vienna suburb, Austria, leaving 41 people injured, five of them seriously. (BBC) (Reuters) (AFP via The Telegraph)
• In Brazil, a helicopter crashes in São Paulo's north zone, leaving one pilot dead and four more people injured. (IG News)
• Five people are killed in an explosion at a healer's home in Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe, causing hundreds to flee and nearby building damage. (Reuters via IOL)
• A passenger bus veers off the Yungas Road and plunges from a height of 300 meters into a ravine in the Yungas region of Bolivia, killing 18 people and injuring 24 others. (Bernama) (RIA Novosti) (Voice of Russia)
• A 14-year-old girl is killed and 15 people are injured in a 5.9-magnitude earthquake in Indonesia. (CNN) (AFP via ABC)

• An Irishman, who pleads guilty in court to repeatedly raping his daughter as a child, is released on bail with a suspended sentence. His daughter, who says she was raped "as frequently as having dinner", is said to be devastated. (Irish Independent) (Irish Examiner)
• A war crimes tribunal trying those accused of crimes during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War sentences Abul Kalam Azad (Bachchu Razakar) to death. (The Hindu)

• The public portion of Barack Obama's second inauguration takes place at nation's capital in Washington, D.C., a day after he was officially sworn into office in the White House for his second term as President of the United States. (BBC) (Reuters) (AP)
• Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Minister of Finance of the Netherlands, succeeds Jean-Claude Juncker, the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, as the President of the Euro Group. (Presseurop)
• The inaugural Orwell Day gets underway, to be followed by a month-long Orwell season on BBC Radio 4, while "Politics and the English Language" is to be given away en masse. (The Guardian)

• NASA's Kepler space telescope is placed in a precautionary 10-day safe mode after engineers noticed a problem with the instrument's orientation mechanism. (Space.com) (Discovery News)

• Sampdoria President Riccardo Garrone dies at the age of 76 after a long illness. (ESPN) (Forza) (Football Italia)