Riots, royals and Delta rising: the biggest stories from a year of extremes

Many people are glad to be putting 2021 behind them. It’s no wonder. The year did not turn out to be that much better than 2020, despite the early optimism.

The pandemic became practically endemic, angry demonstrations in streets around the globe tested the limits of democracy – often with deadly results, and civil wars and coups inflicted further misery.

The fall of Kabul, as people stampeded to the airport to evacuate, marked the end of the 20-year occupation by the US.

Donald Trump did not go away after the Capitol riots and the British royal family was beset by death, lawsuits and infighting as the Queen retreated from public life for her own safety.

Meanwhile, extreme weather tested the endurance of people worldwide who battled soaring heat and record floods while world leaders debated future targets at the Glasgow climate summit.

And yet international diplomacy ramped up in 2021 after long months of sealed borders and national isolation, and while the worldwide vaccination rollout was flawed, the speed of vaccine development and use around the world remains a triumph of modern science.

Here are the world stories that made the biggest headlines in 2021:

Trump, riots and impeachment

The year began with a true bang when American “patriots” overran the US Capitol building on January 6 to challenge the result of the presidential election and support the outgoing president Donald Trump in his illegal bid to claim victory over Joe Biden. Our live blog brought you blow-by-blow accounts of the events of that historic day and was read by more than 1.2 million people. All around the world, people were shocked such an insurrection could take place in the perceived capital of democracy and, in the months since, have continued to read all the developments and instalments, including when Trump finally conceded defeat. He has since walked even that back as he prepares for a return.

The Trump train continued to hoard headlines for the better part of the year, including when historians said he was the worst US president ever, when Twitter cancelled the former president and his hate speech, and when Democrats succeeded in impeaching him in the House, only to fail to confirm the impeachment charge in the Senate.

Donald Trump’s rally was organised for the day that President Joe Biden’s electoral victory was ratified by the Congress. Infuriated by his vice-president Mike Pence’s refusal to overturn the result, Trump told the crowd: “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”Credit: AP

While many were braced for violence in the crowd on the day of the rally, few expected Trump’s supporters to surge past the police and security officers manning the barricades and storm the Capitol. By the end of the month, several high-ranking police officials would lose their jobs over their failure to defend the government. Credit: Getty Images

Jake Angeli, on the right, known as the Q Shaman, quickly became the face of the Capitol riots, striking poses even on the dais of the senate. On September 3, Angeli pleaded guilty to a single count of obstructing a congressional proceeding and was sentenced to 41 to 51 months in prison.Credit: AP

Royal family

The British royal family graced the pages of the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and associated publications all year around. Our most read royal story was the live blog of Prince Harry and his wife Meghan’s Oprah interview where, half-way through, they claimed a senior family member had voiced worries about the colour of their son Archie’s skin.

The death of Harry’s grandfather, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh on April 9, was our next most read of the year. A loyal companion to the Queen for 73 years, Philip’s passing, just weeks before his 100th birthday, left the Queen bereaved. The photograph of her sitting alone at his funeral held during strict COVID conditions will not be forgotten, regardless of readers’ republican or monarchic tendencies.

Our readers’ fascination with the royals also extended to the Queen’s health, with every event cancellation and hospital visit closely watched; to the court cases of Meghan (against the Mail on Sunday publishers – which she won) and of Prince Andrew involving Virginia Giuffre via his friend, the late financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Readers have also been glued to the sex trafficking trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s girlfriend and, according to accusers, “enabler”. Their time spent around royalty was also noticed.

This image of the Queen sitting alone in St George’s Chapel ahead of the funeral for Prince Philip touched hearts around the world, after a year of deaths made lonely by the pandemic’s social isolation. Credit: AP

Prince Harry, left, and Prince William at the unveiling of a statue they commissioned of their mother, Princess Diana, on what would have been her 60th birthday, July 1, 2021. Credit: AP

China, China, China

China and its relationship with Australia and other countries has featured in hundreds of headlines this year, but most telling is that President Xi Jinping has managed to cement himself as leader for life, aspiring to be even greater than Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. The celebrations of the Communist Party’s 100th anniversary provided him with an opportunity to rewrite history, as have his crackdowns on Hong Kong, Xinjiang and the perceived silencing of those who do not fix the controlled narrative, like tennis champion Peng Shuai who accused a top official of sex abuse, then disappeared only to reappear to disavow her earlier claims.

Our most read China story this year was the question on everyone’s lips: If the US went to war with China, who would win?

China’s fight against COVID-19 is a mystery story, however. The country continues to report very few cases and deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, but many distrust the numbers.

Chinese President Xi Jinping leads a pledge to the Chinese Communist Party ahead of the 100th anniversary of its founding.Credit: AP

The Chinese military featured prominently in the centenary in a year when Beijing flew a record number of test flights over the Taiwan Strait and also parked dozens of vessels in a disputed archipelago in the South China Sea. Credit: AP

Delta devastates India

As the Delta variant of coronavirus devastated India, the fallout was felt across the globe. As funeral pyres lit up the country and hospitals ran out of oxygen, the world was asking how did the COVID-19 outbreak in India get so bad? This was the surge that generated the Delta variant that would prove so infectious and deadly throughout the rest of the world, reminding everyone that the pandemic isn’t over until it is over for everyone.

The pandemic clearly has not been out of the headlines all year, but our most read COVID-19 world story of the year may surprise: it was the tale of Stephen Harmon, a resident of Corona in California, vaccine sceptic and Hillsong Church member, who died of COVID-19. At the time the Australian founder of the multinational church, Brian Houston, told CNN that COVID-19 vaccines were a “personal decision for each individual to make with the counsel of medical professionals”.

Harmon, when hospitalised, wrote: “Please pray y’all, they really want to intubate me and put me on a ventilator.” He later changed his mind and allowed the intubation to proceed. It was too late.

A funeral pyre for a person thought to have died from COVID-19 burns at a mass crematorium site on the banks of the Ganges river in May.Credit: Getty Images

India’s COVID surge released the Delta variant on the world after the nation’s own Serum Laboratories was caught short supplying enough vaccine doses for 1.3 billion people. More than 42 per cent of the population is now fully vaccinated. Credit: Getty Images

The end of one war

It wasn’t quite the end to the war in Afghanistan the United States wanted to crow about. In fact, as its Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley said, the US lost. The fall of Kabul and the resurrection of the Taliban as government in August was one of the biggest stories of the year and among our most read.

First was Joe Biden’s vow to hunt down the culprits behind the attack that killed dozens who were scrambling to flee the country.

The suicide bombings, which terrorist group ISIS-K claimed responsibility for, came just days before the scheduled withdrawal of all US troops. The fallout of that decision continues to unfold.

A baby is lifted by US soldiers across a wall at Kabul Airport in Afghanistan in the chaos that followed the takeover by the Taliban. Many families passed children over the barbed wire as they waited for days outside the gates. Credit: Omar Haidari

Taliban fighters took control of the Afghan presidential palace after then-president Ashraf Ghani fled on August 15. Security experts have warned that the ease of the Taliban victory could inspire extremists in other nations. Credit: AP

The last American soldier leaving Afghanistan: US Army Major General Chris Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, XVIII Airborne Corps. Credit: Getty Images

The beginning and continuation of others

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict took another dark turn in mid-May, when Israel began amassing troops at the Gaza Strip border following days of violence. The crisis began earlier with Israeli troops entering the al-Aqsa Mosque resulting in clashes that were condemned the world over. They followed the potential eviction of Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah, a neighbourhood in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem. One of our biggest stories at the time was one that helped readers understand what was going on in Jerusalem and Gaza.

Ethiopia returned its Nobel peace prize-winning Prime Minister, Abiy Amed, at the June election, while the country tore itself apart in a cruel civil war in its Tigray region, where soldiers burnt food stocks and massacred entire villages. Brave survivors who made it to safety across borders told stories of sadistic atrocities, while journalists and aid workers who ventured into war zones also became targets.

Closer to home, the military coup in Myanmar in February, surprised and alarmed many. Since then, the crackdown on dissent has worsened, the possibility that deposed elected leader Aung Sang Suu Kyi will not be jailed for a long time all but vanished and villages continues to burn as a result of the army’s operations.

Riad Ishkontana, 42, embraceing his seven-year-old daughter Suzy, the only one of his children to survive the air strike that hit the family’s building in May. At least 256 Palestinians, including 66 children, were killed during the fighting. In Israel, 13 were killed, including two children. Credit: AP

In Tigray, more than 350,000 people already face famine, according to the UN. It is not just that people are starving; it is that many are being starved. Food was turned into a weapon of war.Credit: AP

Mourners weeping at the funeral for a protester in Mandalay in February, 2021. Witnesses said the military shot at mourners at a funeral in Yangon on Sunday. Credit: AP

That submarine decision

In September, the Australian government surprised France by announcing it was cancelling its $90 million submarine contract in favour of a new alliance with the United States and the United Kingdom (AUKUS). It was the biggest story in Australian foreign policy circles for a while, until Bevan Shields, then our Europe correspondent, now editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, asked French President Emmanuel Macron in November if he thought Prime Minister Scott Morrison had lied to him.

“I don’t think. I know,” came the reply caught on video. The exchange and its fallout made headlines the world over and was our second most-read story of the year.

Shortly after French President Emmanuel Macron recalled his ambassador from DC over the AUKUS affair, US President Joe Biden arranged to meet Macron in person at the G20 summit in Rome to apologise. Credit: AP

The extreme weather and its summit

By the time this year’s climate summit, COP26, started in November, the readers didn’t need convincing that the climate crisis was real – even if the Queen needed to accidentally-on-purpose communicate her irritation before some world leaders agreed to attend.

The acceleration of global warming could be felt in the extreme weather endured worldwide: residents of the United States, China, Nigeria, Germany and Brazil drowned in surging floodwaters while hundreds perished in the heatwaves that bore down on north-western America. Fires were everywhere, from the redwoods of California to the Amazon rainforest to the Siberian tundra and the islands of Greece.

But one of our biggest climate stories of the year was a moment of hope: the surprise pact China and the United States unveiled in Glasgow, committing to put their cold-war differences aside to tackle climate change. The summit finally ended with a nail-biter as nations such as India hemmed and hawed about signing the declaration committing to improve their emissions targets.

We will see next November in Cairo if anyone really will come back with new resolve.

Firefighters and residents battled for two weeks in August against a massive fire on Evia, Greece’s second-largest island, as the nation endured what the Prime Minister described as “a natural disaster of unprecedented proportions”.Credit: Bloomberg

Get a note direct from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.