World news digest: February 2, 2022

Some news around the world, in short:

• Ahead of the Beijing Winter Olympics, China’s capital recorded its cleanest air in almost 10 years.
• Czech Police found out that a confidential note sent to the president explaining Russia’s responsibility in the Vrbětice explosions had been shredded. The President’s office denies any wrongdoings.
• Latvia introduced a nationwide deposit system for bottles to improve waste management
• Germany forbids Russia Today, a Russian television highly criticized for distorting news in favor of Moscow, to be aired in the country.
• Indonesia changed the uniforms of the security guard, a division of security enforcement so that they no longer look like Police officers.
• A study shows that plants in the United Kingdom flower a month earlier because of recent warming compared to observations made before 1986.
• The World Meteorological Organization has established two new world records related to lighting bolts: The longest single flash with a horizontal distance of 768km that spread over the states of Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas in April 2020. And the greatest duration for a single lightning flash was 17.10 seconds during a thunderstorm over Uruguay and Northern Argentina in June 2020.