A year of living dangerously

Sat, December 31, 2016 / 07:59 pm

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Tributes lie beneath a mural of singer David Bowie by artist Jimmy C in Brixton, South London, the United Kingdom, on Jan. 12. Bowie, the other-worldly musician who broke pop and rock boundaries with his nonconformity, striking visuals and a genre-spanning persona, and who created Ziggy Stardust, died at age 69 on Jan. 10.
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Feb. 12, 2016 file photo shows two-week-old Sophia, diagnosed with microcephaly, during a physical therapy session at the Pedro I hospital in Campina Grande, Brazil. The World Health Organization declared the Zika virus and its suspected link to birth defects an international public health emergency.
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In this Friday, June 24, 2016 file photo, Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha walk back into 10 Downing Street, London, after he said he would be resigning in the wake of Britain's vote to leave the European Union after a bitterly divisive referendum campaign. So-called Brexit was one of the biggest business stories in 2016 prompting volatility in financial markets, including a sharp drop in the value of the British pound.
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Free Syrian Army fighters run away after attacking a Syrian Army tank during fighting in the Izaa district in Aleppo, Syria, Friday, Sept. 7, 2012.
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A man cries while holding the body of his son, killed by the Syrian Army, near Dar El Shifa hospital in Aleppo, Syria, Oct. 3, 2012.
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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton during the second presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis, on Oct. 9, 2016.
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A small coffin covered by a Cuban flag with the ashes of the late Fidel Castro are carried on a trailer during a funeral procession that retraces the path of Castro's triumphant march into Havana nearly six decades ago, in La Esperanza, Cuba, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2016. Castro's ashes have begun a four-day journey across Cuba from Havana to their final resting place in the eastern city of Santiago.
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Mevlut Mert Altintas, an off -duty police offi cer, shouts after shooting Andrei Karlov [right], the Russian ambassador to Turkey, at an art gallery in Ankara on Dec. 19. Turkey’s president implicated a United States-based Muslim cleric in the killing of Russia’s envoy to Turkey, saying the policeman who carried out the attack was a member of his “terror organization”.

It is certainly not a good year when the world loses so many of its beloved superstars, David Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, George Michael, Phife Dawg and Carrie Fisher. The loss adds to the sense of doom and gloom in the year when a controversial politician, Donald Trump, known for his erratic behavior as well as sexist and racist remarks, has been elected to be the president of the most powerful country on earth. American voters apparently followed in the footsteps of their peers in Britain when they decided to leave the European Union through Brexit.

As the United States and Britain turn their backs on the world, war continues to rage in Syria, killing thousands of civilians, which only saw a respite after a negotiation brokered by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

For those who could not bear to stay in Syria, they decided to take the perilous journey to Europe and caused the biggest migration crisis the world has ever seen, straining the capacity of European countries to deal with thousands of people coming to their shore. Many have concluded that we have hit rock bottom in 2016 with nowhere to go but up for 2017.