1. Today is the first day of the presidential primary season; the results of the Iowa caucus, the first event, will be out at approximately 10 p.m. Before the formal results, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were polling at the top of the Republican and Democratic polls in Iowa.
2. The World Health Organization has declared the Zika virus a global emergency. The virus has spread to 21 South American countries and territories; though the virus is relatively harmless to adults, it has been linked to microcephaly, which is an abnormally small head of an infant. Travel advisories have been issued for pregnant women.
3. The terrorist militant group Boko Haram attacked Nigerian town Dalori, where they killed 65 people. The group originally rose to infamy a few years ago when they kidnapped hundreds of schoolgirls in Africa.
4. Hossein Nayeri, Bac Duong and Jonathan Tieu, who all escaped from a high-security California prison earlier this week, have been captured in San Francisco after an eight-day manhunt.
5. The hotly-contested South China Sea, claimed by China, Vietnam and Taiwan, was the subject of international controversy yet again as the US sailed a ship within 12 nautical miles of claimed land. This particular incident follows one in October in which a US ship sailed within the maritime claim of an artificial, China-built island.
6. Thirteen-year-old Nicole Madison Lovell was found murdered on Thursday; the accused are Virginia Tech freshmen David Eisenhauer and Natalie Marie Keepers. An examination of Lovell’s social media revealed that she had been talking to Eisenhauer through the popular app Kik.
7. Consol junior Kelly Krenek won the ETA (Electronics Technicians Association) International Scholarship. Krenek, who will attend a conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, wishes to become a systems engineer.
8. This past Saturday, the Hyperloop Pod Competition was held at Texas A&M University. The overall best design award was given to the MIT team; in addition to the MIT team, the A&M Aerospace Hyperloop team will also be advancing to the test track stage.
9. The Born Free Foundation has announced that a previously undocumented group of African Lions has been discovered in Alatish National Park in Ethiopia. These lions are believed to be part of the 20,000 left on the African continent and could potentially be from a subspecies with fewer than 900 lions left in the population.
10. College Station Independent School District (CSISD)’s annual event “Fifty Men Who Can Cook” is being held Friday, February 5 at the Brazos County Expo. All proceeds from tickets, which cost $50, will benefit the CSISD Education Foundation.
