Stories and images
From deadly vehicle attacks to a horrific building fire, we could not look away
It has been the year of the unrelenting news cycle. If it had a soundtrack, it would be the staccato dings of news alerts popping up on cellphones. If it had a colour, it would be that hazy blue-ish white hue you see when your eyes start to unfocus after staring at a screen for too long.
Not all the news in 2017 was bad news, though. Some of it was inspiring, gratifying, touching, amusing or mystifying. That being said, a lot of it was bad.
Here are some news stories and videos that stuck with us this year.
JANUARY
Residents of China’s capital city Beijing started the year buried in smog. The pollution levels were so bad, a monitoring device in the home of the Washington Post’s Beijing bureau chief warned a mask should be kept on indoors. On January 3, the Air Quality Index was more than 700. Anything above 300 is hazardous.
FEBRUARY
Death came for Kim Jong Nam, half brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, on February 13. He was found with lethal nerve agent VX on his face, slumped in a chair in a Malaysian airport clinic, and died in an ambulance en route to hospital. CCTV footage appeared to show two women smearing the VX on his face at Kuala Lumpur Airport. We later learned Kim was carrying atropine, a potential antidote to the chemical that killed him. Experts doubted it would have saved him.
MARCH
A knife-wielding man went on a deadly rampage in London, first driving a car into pedestrians then stabbing a police officer to death before being fatally shot by police within Parliament's grounds. It was one of several attacks with vehicles around the world this year.
News-watchers around the world were captured by a dad being interrupted on live television by his two children. Robert Kelly, nicknamed “BBC dad,” was Skyping into a news programme to give his opinion on the ousting of South Korea’s first female president. Without his noticing, a dancing toddler and an infant in a walker burst into the room behind him, pursued by their panickedlooking mother. The comedic moment skyrocketed to Internet fame. Nine months later, Kelly told the New York Times 4-year-old Marion is still trying to interrupt his interviews.
APRIL
April saw Venezuelan President Nicola´s Maduro’s opposition mounting the most intense protests their country had seen since 2014. The country’s highest court had stripped its parliament of power, only to return it on Maduro’s orders just two days later. The reversal was supposed to quell criticism. Instead, on April 1, opponents called him and his Administration a “circus,” and thousands of demonstrators took to the streets. Videos from Caracas showed police in riot gear using tear gas against young protesters. That day kicked off months of demonstrations, which continued amid worsening food and medicine shortages.
Half a world away, another dictator attacked his people. Syrian President Bashar Assad launched airstrikes on the northwestern town of Khan Sheikhoun. It was one of the deadliest chemical attacks of the country’s six-year war. Images of frantic or lifeless women and children surfaced. In one heart-wrenching video capturing the suffering, a father clutched the corpses of his 9-monthold twins. They were killed, with his wife, two brothers, two nephews and a niece. Days later, the US retaliated with airstrikes. Russia later vetoed a US-devised United Nations Security Council resolution to investigate the Khan Sheikhoun attack.
MAY
On a visit to Washington, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stopped at the ambassador’s home. When about two dozen opponents gathered outside to protest against Erdogan’s harsh treatment of dissent in his country, the President’s bodyguards got involved. As Erdogan looked on, security guards in suits kicked and stomped protesters. Washington police attempted to separate the two groups. Officials brought charges against 15 security guards.
Later in May, US President Donald