January 1989

January

• January 1 – The New York Times discloses involvement of West German company Imhausen and Salzgitter AG in building a chemical weapon plant in Rabta, Libya.
• January 2 – Prime MinisterRanasinghe Premadasa takes office as the third President of Sri Lanka.
• January 4 – Gulf of Sidra incident (1989): Two LibyanMiG-23 "Floggers" are engaged and shot down by two US Navy F-14 Tomcats.
• January 7 – Emperor Hirohitodies; his son Akihito ascends as the 125th Emperor of Japan, followed by the change in the era name from Shōwa to Heisei on the following day.
• January 8 – British Midland Flight 092 (a Boeing 737-400) crashes on an M1 motorway near the East Midlands Airport, 47 people were killed and 79 people survived.
• January 10 – In accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 626 and the New York Accords, Cuban troops begin withdrawing from Angola.
• January 11 – The Lexus and Infiniti luxury car brands are launched at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit with the unveiling of the 1990 Lexus LS and Infiniti Q45 sedans.
• January 13 – Former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin is expelled to Senegal from Zaire after using a fake Zairean passport in an attempt to return to Uganda. Amin is eventually expelled from Senegal and subsequently returns to Zaire after the Saudi government refuses to allow him in Saudi Arabia.
• January 15 – Thirty-five European nations, meeting in Vienna, agree to strengthen human rights and improve East–West trade.
• January 18 – Ante Marković succeeds Branko Mikulić as Prime Minister of Yugoslavia.
• January 20 – George H. W. Bush is inaugurated as President of the United States.
• January 23–24 – Armed civilian leftists briefly attack and occupy an Argentinian army base near Buenos Aires.
• January 29 – The two longest-imprisoned German WWII war criminals in Western Europe, Ferdinand aus der Fünten and Franz Fischer (collectively known as The Breda Two), were released from Dutch prison.
• January 30
  • Prime Minister of CanadaBrian Mulroneyshuffleshis cabinet, appointing six new ministers and reassigning the responsibilities of nineteen others.
  • The Embassy of the United States, Kabul, Afghanistan, is closed; it does not reopen until late 2001.