Ten years ago: Italian officials released a recording of a furious Coast Guard officer demanding that Capt. Francesco Schettino (frahn-CHEHS’-koh skeh-TEE’-noh), commander of the grounded Costa Concordia, re-board the ship to direct its evacuation after the vessel rammed into a reef on Jan. 13. Johnny Otis, the “godfather of rhythm and blues” who wrote and recorded the R&B classic “Willie and the Hand Jive,” died in Los Angeles at age 90.
Five years ago: President Barack Obama granted clemency to Chelsea Manning, allowing the transgender Army intelligence officer convicted of leaking more than 700,000 U.S. documents to go free nearly three decades early. Donald Trump’s choice to head the Interior Department, Rep. Ryan Zinke, rejected the president-elect’s claim that climate change was a hoax, telling his Senate confirmation hearing it was indisputable that environmental changes were affecting the world’s temperature and that human activity was a major reason.
One year ago: An Associated Press review found that veterans of President Donald Trump’s unsuccessful campaign had key roles in the Washington rally that spawned a deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol. U.S. defense officials said they were worried about an insider attack or other threat from service members involved in securing President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration; the concerns prompted the FBI to vet all 25,000 National Guard troops coming into Washington for the event. Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was arrested at a Moscow airport as he returned from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.
