PARIS, Dec 22 — Donald Trump’s US presidential election win, the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and the Paris Olympics were among the news events that marked 2024.
AFP looks back at the major stories that made the headlines:
Mideast war spreads
After the unprecedented attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023, Israel continued its offensive against the Palestinian armed group in Gaza, killing several of its chiefs, and extending its campaign into Lebanon.
In September Israel launched a huge air strike against Iran-backed Hamas ally Hezbollah, then a ground offensive in southern Lebanon against its strongholds.
In early October Iran then responded to the killings of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh — in a strike on Tehran in July blamed on Israel — and Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, by launching 200 missiles at Israel. Israel riposted by hitting Iranian military sites.
After two months of open war, a fragile truce came into force on November 27 in Lebanon.
The war has killed at least 4,000 people in Lebanon since October 2023, according to the health ministry.
In Hamas-run Gaza, more than 45,000 people, a majority of them civilians, have been killed in the war unleashed, according to the health ministry there. The United Nations considers the figures reliable.
Gaza, where 62 people listed as alive are still held hostage, has been plunged into a humanitarian disaster.
Fall of Bashar al-Assad
In Syria, president Bashar al-Assad fled the country to Moscow after an 11-day lightning offensive launched on November 27 by Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
One of the emblematic moments of the fall of Damascus was the freeing of inmates from the infamous Sednaya prison.
That jail north of the capital was a symbol of the torture and executions under the 50-year rule of the Assad clan, especially since the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011.
The country’s Islamist-led government has sought to reassure minorities at home and governments abroad that they will protect all Syrians.
Since Assad’s ousting Israel has conducted hundreds of strikes on Syria’s military sites, wanting to prevent the country’s weapons from falling into the hands of the interim government. It has also seized the UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights.
Russia-Ukraine conflict escalates
After a failed counteroffensive in 2023, following Russia’s February 24, 2022 invasion, Ukraine in August launched a surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.
However, it has failed in its goal of diverting Moscow’s forces from fighting in eastern Ukraine.
Russia responded with deadly strikes and Kyiv’s outgunned and outmanned troops have struggled to hold back steady advances from Russian forces, notably in the eastern Donbas region.
The West, Ukraine and South Korea say thousands of North Korean soldiers are reinforcing Russia’s war effort.
In November Ukraine for the first time used Western-supplied long-range missiles against Russian territory, after getting US and British clearance.
Russia responded by hitting Ukraine with a hypersonic Oreshnik missile without a nuclear warhead, vowing to continue such attacks if Kyiv continued its attacks with Western weapons.
President Vladimir Putin has also threatened to attack countries providing the weapons to the Ukrainians.
In late November Russia launched a massive attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
In recent weeks it has intensified strikes on southern Ukraine, reinforcing fears of a new Russian offensive in the area.
Trump is back
Donald Trump once again stunned the world, and wrong-footed pollsters who had projected a very tight race, to win the US presidential election.
He won all seven swing states on November 5, keeping control of the House and winning back the Senate. He also became the first Republican president in 20 years to win the popular vote.
He beat his Democrat rival Kamala Harris, who had been parachuted into the process just 100 days before the election after the 81-year-old outgoing President Joe Biden pulled out.
That was just one twist in a particularly tumultuous campaign that also included two failed assassination attempts on Trump, 78, who faced four indictments and a criminal conviction.
He returns to the White House on January 20, 2025. Among the personalities he has chosen for his team are billionaire Elon Musk, who helped finance his campaign.
Russia tightens grip
Vladimir Putin began his fifth term as Russian president in May after winning an election that the West slammed as a sham.
His nemesis Alexei Navalny died in February in murky circumstances in the Arctic prison where he had been serving a 19-year sentence for leading an “extremist” organisation.
In August Moscow negotiated the biggest East-West prisoner swap since the end of the Cold War, releasing 16 Westerners and Russians including US journalist Evan Gershkovich, in exchange for 10 Russians.
Moscow has since continued a crackdown on opposition voices to the Ukraine war, staging trials and handing out heavy sentences for “sabotage”, “treason”, and “terrorism”.
Paris Olympics joy
The summer Games in the French capital brought a welcome respite, particularly in the host country that had for weeks been gripped by bitter political jockeying caused by snap parliamentary elections.
But for three sunny weeks, Paris and its world-famous monuments and sites, from the Eiffel Tower to Versailles, welcomed a spectacular display of sport, kicking off with an extravagant opening ceremony along the Seine.
Records tumbled and stars were crowned, from home crowd darling and swim sensation Leon Marchand to US gym genius Simone Biles who made a joyful return to glory.
Social media scrutiny
In 2024 social media titans faced growing scrutiny.
In France in August, the Russian-born founder of the controversial Telegram app, Pavel Durov, was arrested and charged with failing to curb extremist and illegal content on his network, which has 900 million users.
In August, US billionaire Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, was banned for 40 days in Brazil — its largest Latin American market — in a legal tussle over disinformation.
Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes branded X a danger to democracy.
The platform became available again in October after it agreed to pay some US$5.2 million in fines for flouting court decisions.
Another heavyweight platform, TikTok, was ordered by the United States to divest from Bytedance, its Chinese owner, by January 19 or be banned.
The Supreme Court will first examine the constitutionality of the law, which was backed by Joe Biden.
The EU is investigating TikTok following allegations it was used by Russia to sway the result of Romania’s later annulled presidential election first round, won by the far-right’s candidate Calin Georgescu.
Chinese decline
Beijing launched a salvo of measures aimed at boosting its economy including reductions in key rates and an increase in the debt limit for local authorities.
The world’s second-biggest economy has been hit by a property crisis and sluggish household consumption.
It has also been locked in bitter trade disputes with the United States and European Union.
Washington has imposed steep increases in customs duties on electric cars, batteries for electric vehicles and solar panels, while the EU has also imposed extra tariffs on Chinese-made electric cars.
In response Beijing has slapped “temporary anti-dumping measures” on imports from the EU of products including brandy.
US President-elect Trump has already warned he plans stiff tariffs on China.
Deadly flooding
Temperature records continued to tumble in 2024 across huge swathes of the world during what will almost certainly be the hottest year on record.
Relentless global warming provoked heatwaves, droughts and deadly flooding, with the wet weather proving particularly dramatic.
An unusually intense rainy season in West and Central Africa killed more than 1,500 people, according to the International Organization of Migration (IOM).
In a September of wild weather, Hurricane Helene pounded the southeast United States, Typhoon Krathon slammed into Taiwan and Storm Boris brought floods and devastation to central Europe.
Typhoons Yagi and Bebinca left a trail of destruction in Asia.
And in October a devastating Mediterranean storm lashed eastern Spain, triggering its worst floods in decades that killed more than 230 people.
In December Cyclone Chido devastated the French overseas territory of Mayotte.
Africa’s youth rise up
In Senegal, Bassirou Diomaye Faye became the youngest president since independence in 1960, elected in March at the age of 44 on the promise of radical change in a country where three-quarters of the population is under 35.
In Kenya in June, a protest movement by demonstrators in their 20s forced President William Ruto to withdraw an unpopular budget proposal and reshuffle his government.
Young people were also the drivers of change in Botswana, playing a key role in the historic electoral victory in October of the opposition against a party that had ruled since independence nearly six decades ago.
Far-right gains in Europe
European elections in June confirmed nationalist and far-right parties rising in France, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Italy and the Netherlands.
This also translated at the national level.
Austria’s far-right Freedom Party won a historic victory in legislative elections.
In France, a republican bloc prevented the far-right National Rally from coming to power in snap parliamentary elections, but the absence of a clear majority has unleashed a political crisis.
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) won a regional election for the first time and achieved historically high scores in two others.
And meanwhile in England and Northern Ireland dozens of towns were rocked by anti-immigration riots fuelled by far-right agitators.
Venezuela’s strongman
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro won a third six-year term in July, but the results of the vote were contested by the opposition and internationally.
After the announcement of his victory, protests erupted that were brutally repressed by government forces, leaving 28 people dead and some 200 injured. More than 2,400 people were arrested.
The opposition candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, took refuge in Spain and the opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, is also living in hiding.
Maduro will be sworn in on January 10.
Taylor Swift mania
US megastar Taylor Swift wrapped up her giant world tour in December in Canada. The tour, which kicked off in March 2023 in the United States, topped US$2 billion in revenue, a record, according to the US magazine Pollstar.
Swift kicked off the European leg of her “Eras Tour” in May in Paris and rounded it off in August in London, attracting hundreds of thousands of fans or “Swifties”.
But the three concerts scheduled in Vienna were cancelled after authorities arrested a man in connection with an Islamist attack plot. — AFP
