1.  According to South Korean government statistics, the death toll in South Korea exceeded the number of new students in 2020, showing negative population growth for the first time. In 2017, the natural increase in South Korea fell below the 100000 mark for the first time, and has since declined year by year. In addition, the population over the age of 60 accounts for 1. 4% of the total population, and the aging phenomenon of the population continues to increase. In December 2020, South Korea announced a policy on low-birth aging, promising to provide subsidies to parenting families from 2022, as well as maternity subsidies.
2. The COVID-19 vaccine, developed jointly by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals, will begin vaccination on January 4. This is the second COVID-19 vaccine approved by the UK. Previously, the vaccine developed by Pfizer in cooperation with the German biotech company began vaccinating the British public on December 8, 2020.
3.  Saudi Arabia will resume international flights from 11:00 on January 3 and allow foreigners to enter Saudi Arabia from land and sea ports. For some countries where there have been cases of mutated novel coronavirus infection or the spread of the epidemic, relevant personnel who wish to enter Saudi Arabia must stay in a third country for more than 14 days and have not infected novel coronavirus through PCR testing before they can enter Saudi Arabia.
4. The new US Congress will hold a joint meeting on January 6 to formally count electoral votes and announce the winner of the 2020 US election. In order to prevent Congress from formally confirming the election of Democrat Joe Biden, Trump said recently that he would hold a “large protest rally” in Washington on the 6th local time. So far, there have been tens of thousands of applicants. The move was strongly opposed by Washington police and the CDC.
5. Hindustan Times: doctors who discovered the Ebola virus 40 years ago have warned that humans face the threat of a new virus from the African rainforest that is unknown in number and could be deadly. In a remote town in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a local woman showed symptoms of hemorrhagic fever and tested negative for several viruses, including Ebola. The woman’s symptoms may have been caused by an unknown disease, (Disease X).
6. In 2020, South Korea’s green car exports accounted for more than 10% of the total car exports for the first time in history. In 2020, South Korea’s exports of green vehicles such as electric vehicles and hydrogen-fueled vehicles totaled US $4.6 billion, a year-on-year increase of 39.9%. As a result, the proportion of environmentally friendly vehicles in total car exports has increased to 12.3%.
7. Teenagers who frequently eat carbonated drinks and fast food are more likely to develop sleep disorders, a new study led by the University of Queensland in Australia has found. The study found that teenagers who drank more than three carbonated drinks a day were 55% more likely to develop sleep disorders than their peers who drank only one drink a day. Male teenagers who ate fast food more than four days a week were 55% more likely to develop sleep disorders than those who ate fast food only once a week.
8. Driven by the global COVID-19 epidemic and the widespread economic crisis in 2020, the total market capitalization of the seven US technology giants Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google parent Alphabet, Facebook, Tesla and Nvidia increased by 3.4 trillion US dollars. Among them, Tesla’s market capitalization rose from $76 billion at the beginning of the year to US$669 billion at Thursday’s close.
9. British Imperial College: mutant novel coronavirus is more contagious and can increase the R value, that is, the basic infection rate of the virus by about 0.4-0.7. The study found that the virus spreads rapidly at all ages, rather than being thought to spread more easily among young people. It is understood that the basic infection rate of the virus throughout the UK is between 1.1 and 1.3.

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Post time: Jan-05-2021