From the Israel-Hamas war to Russia’s grinding battles against Ukraine, 2023 has shown the dangers of armed conflicts breaking out into region-wide combat
Published Date – 11:59 PM, Sat – 30 December 23
Extreme weather scaled new heights while wicked ocean storms, wildfires, floods and droughts ravaged the planet. Fakery rose along with AI, Twitter died, and X and Threads arrived. While the Russia-Ukraine war continues, another deadly battle between Israel-Hamas is piling on more suffering. Here’s what marked the year 2023:
GRINDING BATTLES
From the Israel-Hamas war to Russia’s grinding battles against Ukraine, 2023 has shown the dangers of armed conflicts breaking out into region-wide combat. But behind their long shadows, the world faces strife in countries stretching both the globe and the alphabet from Afghanistan all the way to Yemen.
“Conflicts have become more complex, deadly and harder to resolve. … Concerns about the possibility of nuclear war have re-emerged. New potential domains of conflict and weapons of war are creating new ways in which humanity can annihilate itself,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in July. A look at where some of the world’s major wars stand.
Israel-Hamas War
The bloodiest war between Israel and Hamas began on Oct 7, when militants broke through the walls surrounding the seaside enclave of the Gaza Strip. Its fighters killed some 1,200 people in Israel and took more than 200 others hostages. The attack, described as the worst one-day mass killing of Jews since the Holocaust, stunned an Israel that had believed its border wall, technologically advanced military and intelligence services broadly protected them from all but harassing militant rocket fire. Embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched a massive campaign of retaliatory airstrikes.
Russia, Ukraine remain locked
Ukraine received tanks, weapons and Western training before launching a renewed counteroffensive believed to be aimed at reaching the Sea of Azov and splitting the Russian lines in the country’s south. But Ukrainian forces faced dug-in Russian troops, multiple defence lines, minefields and other hazards, making gains either slowly or not at all. Russia faced difficulties as well, including a march on Moscow by the leader of the private military firm Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, that represented the greatest challenge yet to President Vladimir Putin’s years long rule. Prigozhin backed off the march, only to die weeks later in a mysterious plane crash.
African unrest
Sudan, a big East African nation that had been teetering since the overthrow of longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir, collapsed into civil war in April. The war pits the country’s military against a powerful paramilitary force known as the Rapid Support Forces, long linked to atrocities in Darfur. The fighting has killed some 9,000 people so far.
Military coups roiling Africa continued. In Niger, a former French colony that’s a key uranium exporter, soldiers toppled the country’s democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum in July. A month later, troops staged a coup in Gabon overthrowing its long-term ruling President Ali Bongo Ondimba.
February
Devastating quake shakes Turkey
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake devastated 11 southern and southeastern Turkish provinces as well as part of northern Syria. More than 50,000 people were killed in Turkey. The quake, centred in the southeastern province of Kahramanmaras, was felt as far away as Cairo.
March
Oscar comes home
At the 95th Academy Awards, the foot-tapping chartbuster ‘Naatu Naatu’, composed by MM Keeravaani and penned by Chandrabose, made the Telugu feature film the first Indian production to bring home the golden statuette. The Elephant Whisperers, directed by debutante Kartiki Gonsalves and produced by Guneet Monga, also became the maiden Indian production to win in the Documentary Short Film category.
April
India becomes world’s most populous nation, surpassing China
India surpassed China to become the world’s most populous nation. The country recorded 142.86 crore people as compared with China’s 142.57 crore. According to a United Nations Population Fund report, 25% of India’s population is in the age group of 0-14 years, 18% in the 10 to 19 age group, 26% in the age bracket of 10 to 24 years, 68% in 15 to 64 years and 7% above 65 years.
Twitter becomes X Corp, Thread is born
Elon Musk revealed the X logo, quickly replacing Twitter’s name and its whimsical blue bird icon. While X contends with an identity crisis, some users began looking for a replacement. Mastodon was one contender, along with Bluesky, which actually grew out of Twitter — a pet project of former CEO Jack Dorsey. To lure disgruntled Twitter users, Facebook parent Meta launched its own rival, Threads.
Hottest year on record
Earth experienced the hottest 12 months ever recorded, according to a report by Climate Central, a nonprofit science research group. The peer-reviewed report says burning gasoline, coal, natural gas and other fossil fuels caused the unnatural warming from November 2022 to October 2023. Over the course of the year, 7.3 billion people, or 90% of humanity, endured at least 10 days of high temperatures that were made at least three times more likely because of climate change.
The year we played with AI…
Artificial intelligence went mainstream in 2023 — it was a long time coming yet has a long way to go for the technology to match people’s science fiction fantasies of human-like machines. Catalysing a year of AI fanfare was ChatGPT. The chatbot gave the world a glimpse of recent advances in computer science even if not everyone figured out quite how it works or what to do with it.
…and tried to regulate it
In October, President Joe Biden signed an executive order on AI that seeks to balance the needs of cutting-edge technology companies with national security and consumer rights. EU lawmakers reached a deal on the world’s first comprehensive AI rules while Chinese AI regulations focus on generative AI and protections against deepfakes.
Crypto chaos continued
If 2022 was the year that the cryptocurrency industry collapsed, 2023 was the year of the spillover from that fall. Headlines were dominated by convictions and legal cases. Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and former CEO of the crypto exchange FTX, was convicted of wire fraud and six other charges. Founder of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, agreed to plead guilty to money laundering charges as part of a settlement between US authorities and the exchange. Coinbase, Gemini and Genesis too got entangled with legal trouble.
June
Titan Submersible Tragedy
On June 18, the submersible, named Titan, carrying five people to the Titanic imploded near the site of the shipwreck and killed everyone on board. The debris was found roughly 1,600 feet (488 metres) from the Titanic in North Atlantic waters. OceanGate Expeditions owned and operated the submersible.
In India
May
New Decision Point
India got a new Parliament building, right next to the old one. Part of the Central Vista project, the new building was built to address infrastructure challenges. The new Lok Sabha chamber has 888 seats and Rajya Sabha 384.
June
Odisha train collision kills 296
Around 296 people were killed in a train accident in Balasore district when 22 compartments of Coromandel Express derailed after a collision with a stationery goods train. The collision of the Shalimar-Chennai Central Coromandel Express, Bengaluru-Howrah Super Fast Express and a stationary goods train was one of the worst train accidents in recent history in India.
August
Chandrayaan-3 on Moon’s South Pole
The Indian Space Research Organisation’s third lunar mission, Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, successfully landed on the South Pole of the Moon. With this, India became the fourth nation in the world to soft land on the moon and the first to touchdown on the South Pole, an uncharted territory that scientists believe could hold vital reserves of frozen water and precious elements.
November
Rat-hole miners to the rescue
The rescue mission was expected to last only a few days. Instead, it took 17 days to reach 41 construction workers who were trapped when a landslide collapsed a part of the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarakhand. The trapped workers were finally rescued when rat-hole miners, in coordination with the Army, manually dug through 55 metres of debris horizontally, and pulled out all the workers one by one.
So near, yet so far
India won all 10 of its matches before the final and was seeking a third trophy in its fourth appearance in a title match that brought a country of 1.4 billion people to a virtual standstill. But they were outplayed by battle-ready Australia, and restricted to 240 on a slow pitch after losing the toss with only Virat Kohli (54) and KL Rahul (66) making half-centuries. “We were not good enough today,” skipper Rohit Sharma said. “We tried everything, but it didn’t work.”
