By AJ Virtuz |

Can you believe it? January is just about to end (which feels like a year) yet a lot of dreadful and unexpected things have occurred already.

And to sum it up, here are the highlights of 2020 that have happened.. so far.

     1.Australian massive bushfires

          Bushfires in Australia are already common and the locals there are used to it. But since 2019 up to this year, bushfires had been the worst and massive one that Australia had experienced. As to date, 18 million hectares had been swallowed by the bushfires, and an estimated 1 billion animals had been killed.

2. USA vs Iran

          The tension between the two countries escalated when the USA assassinated Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian major general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in a US air strike in Iraq. Iran fired more than a dozen missiles at two Iraqi military bases with US troops in it, a move it said was in revenge to Soleimani's assassination. On January 9, US President Trump ordered that the US will not respond militarily to Iran’s attacks. This was to de-escalate the tension in the Middle East which was ignited after his order to kill Iran’s major general.

3. Coronavirus

Coronavirus had been spread to several countries such as Australia, France, Japan, Malaysia, Nepal, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, US, Vietnam, etc. The death toll from the Wuhan coronavirus now reaches at 80, with almost 2,800 cases confirmed across China. Officials in Hong Kong said they are closing schools for weeks now, CBS news reports. And across China, Chinese New Year activities were even cancelled. Some schools in the Philippines cancelled their classes yesterday due to the said virus.

4. Taal Volcano eruption

On January 12, 2020, the volcano started spewing ash, causing the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology to raise its alert status to level two.

As reported by ABS-CBN news, by 7:30pm, PHIVOCS raised the status to Alert Level 4 as the ash and rock fragments reached up to 10-15 kilometers due to the volcano’s continuous eruption and prompted the locals from Batangas to evacuate. There was also a recurrent volcanic lightning. By Sunday night, ashfall from Taal Volcano had extended Calabarzon and Metro Manila,

5. JaDine are no more.

          Netizens are in shocked when James and Nadine confirmed their break up in a statement that was aired on Tonight With Boy Abunda. It abruptly went viral for a couple of days because come on, everybody was rooting for this couple so it literally broke everyone’s heart.

Below is their statement:

“It’s true that we have split up, but not for all the reasons that are being spread on the tabloids and social media, but because after quiet and mature conversations, we decided to focus on ourselves not only for our careers but more for our personal growth as we are still young and we want to achieve as much as we can,”

“We agreed that going separate ways was best for both of us. We are in good terms and are still really good friends and will continue to work with each other especially when it comes to music,”

“Thank you for all the JaDine fans for their undying support and we hope you continue to support us now and in the future. We shall forever be grateful to them for their love and understanding. Thank you,”

The former couple celebrated their 4^th anniversary on February 2011.

Yes, 2020 has just started, and we are hoping that the next coming months will be better than January.

And as it cliché as it sounds, February, please be good to us.