The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad News of 2016

2016 was a year that we won't soon forget, no matter how hard we try. The year saw so many incidents that defied expectation that by the end no one knew what to expect. The year saw everything from terrorist attacks and natural disaster to celebrity deaths and political shake ups. Lets take a look back at the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Year that was 2016.

Headlines

Senseless deaths were the biggest headlines of 2016 with Terrorist attacks by ISIS from the Berlin Christmas Market by a rogue truck driver in a similar attack as that in Nice, France. Brussels suffered a bomb attack as did New York City's Chelsea district. But that wasn't all with war still raging the refugee crisis grew while others struggled in Aleppo. Police shootings and race relations continued to deteriorate in the US with loses on both sides along with mass shootings still the norm. There were also the deaths of supreme court justice Antonin Scalia and former Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Politics was one of the biggest topics of the year across the globe with the US Election shocking everyone when Donald Trump won the electoral college. Turkey faced a political coup that failed within hours but the repercussions have yet to subside. Corruption in politics was everywhere from China to Russia and even South Korea.

Then there was mother nature, natural disaster claimed thousands of lives from earthquakes in Italy, Indonesia and New Zealand to hurricanes in the US and Haiti. While the environment may have claimed lives it too was under threat with climate change taking center stage and under threat from a new administration along with environmentalists fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Business

On the global front Brexit became a reality with a vote that took everyone by surprise. Trumps new path to the presidency impacted the business world with his wild tweets sending markets in all directions, not to mention Trumps comments on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The "Fight of $15" also made news with minimum wage taking center stage in the States and lets not forget the Panama papers scandal that reached every country all the way to the highest echelons.

On the business front we saw Theranos, once the darling on the stock market, suffer horribly with regulators decimating the company. Drug manufacturers also made news with price hikes from Martin Shkreli to EpiPen. While the VW scandal whimpered along as it faced fines along with Wells Fargo and it's $185 million settlement with federal regulators.

Sports

One of the biggest sporting events took place in the form of the Summer Olympics in Rio which managed to host a decent enough event and the Cubs shocked everyone by winning their first World Series. Along with events there were also shocking revelations with stories of sexual abuse in the world of English soccer along with the FIFA corruption scandal continuing it's downward trend.

Athletes made headlines and for all the wrong reasons with Ryan Lochte caught in a lie at the Olympics that spiraled out of control. Then there were the sad losses with the death of Muhammad Ali and the Chapecoense plane crash which claimed the lives of the Brazilian soccer team.

Entertainment

Celebrities made headlines in 2016 with celebrity deaths rocking the world as we lost icons across all fields of entertainment. While the list itself is beyond comprehension the following stole headlines from David Bowie, George Michael, Prince, Alan Rickman, Gene Wilder, Leonard Cohen to Carrie Fisher and more. Along with celebrity deaths were shocking divorces which saw Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie aka Brangelina break up after years together and Johnny Depp going through a nasty public divorce from Amber Heard.

Outside of the depressing entertainer news the usual awards ceremonies took place with controversy surrounding the Oscars and it's lack of diversity. The Golden Globes had their moments while the Grammy's saw the usual celebs taking top honors.

Technology

In the technology world we saw tech giants like Apple in court over EU taxes along with battles against the FBI. Google was in court over anti competitive behaviour but continued to innovate with self driving cars. Facebook had a shaky year with the law as well and struggled with ads and blockers. The online world also made headlines with hacking affecting individual websites and all the way up to the US election and political parties being targeted.

On the scientific front we saw Nobel prizes handed out for cellular cannibalism and more while progress was made in combating ebola with a new vaccine. Out in space no one could hear the screams of 2016. Various probes made their way among the heavens and others crashed on planets. But it was the detection of gravitational waves that set the scientific community on fire.

Style

Fashion Weeks were the only glimmer of hope in 2016 with New York kicking things off each time to much fan fare. London Fashion Week and Milan Fashion Week proved to be strong in the middle half while Paris Fashion Week capped off the seasons in the usual French way.

There was controversy after Donald Trump won the US electoral college with some designers deciding to boycott Trumps wife, Melania by refusing to dress her. The fashion world also experienced loses in the form of Nasty Girl filing for bankruptcy and the death of Sonia Rykiel and Bill Cunningham.

Experts Threaten Trumps White House Dreams

US Election Shocks Everyone

November saw the US political system thrown into chaos when Donald Trump caused a major upset beating Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Presidential Election. All polls had shown Clinton in the lead by massive margins leaving Trump as a distant contender. However, come election day things turned with the so called "hidden majority" coming out to vote, not only that, but voting for Trump.

Days before the election FBI director James B. Comey announced another investigation into Clintons emails thanks to Anthony Weiner. The Clinton campaign has since claimed the investigation is one of the reasons for the loss. Another issue that has since sprung up was the rise of fake news on social media with Facebook being raked over the coals for allowing it's spread and Twitter fighting an army of bots and alt-right accounts.

The New Zeitgeist Shaping the World

As we've seen around the world people are pushing back against the establishment. With the Arab Spring in the Middle East to the Brexit vote to leave the European Union and the ANC losing the midterm elections in South Africa. People around the globe are turning their backs on politicians seen as separate from everyone else. Was it only a matter of time before the US was subject to the same wave of change?

A Daring Electoral College Could Change History

While Trump won based on the needed vote for the electoral college it was Clinton who won the popular vote with 1.7million more votes in total. This is only the 4th time in history a candidate who won the popular vote did not win the election. While some experts are telling Clinton to challenge the vote due to technical issues others in the electoral college may shake things up with Democrats preparing for a "faithless vote". As much as Trump ran on the Republican ticket he did not make any friends in the process with many in the Republican party distancing themselves from him. Could super delegates with conservative views also step in and fight Trump? Since the backlash began an unexpected friend has emerged in the form of Jill Stein who has been raising money to force a recount in swing states with Wisconsin already agreeing to a recount.

Trumps Fight or Flight Response

With recounts imminent and the Electoral College in question Trump has taken to his favourite medium and responded on Twitter. Trump has since claimed the recount movement is a "scam" and that he actually won the popular vote but lost it due to "illegal votes". No word on if he will push for his on investigation regarding the illegal votes.

The Big Stories of June 2016

Half way through the year and things just got weird, from a mass shooting in the US to Britain leaving the EU not to mention violence at Euro 2016 and drama over the Olympics. Buckle in as we look back at June 2016.

Headline News

The month saw a mass shooting in Orlando, Florida sending sent shock waves around the world as the deadliest terror attack in US history since 9/11. Following the tragedy law makers in the US finally took a stance agreeing to vote on gun control measures but after 4 bills failed to pass the Democrats resorted to a sit in. Elsewhere in the world West Virginia was hit with massive flooding killing more than 20 people while China saw a tornado kill over 50 people.

The month ended with another shocking twist when Britain stunned the world by voting to leave the EU in the infamous Brexit vote. Following the vote markets tumbled around the globe.

Business News

The Brexit sent markets scurrying in the last half of the month with the British pound hitting a 30 year low and gold prices shooting up. In other news VW said they would pay diesel owners up to $7,000.00 to settle the emissions scandal.

Sports News

The Euro 2016 was marred by violence with fights breaking out between Russian and English fans with France threatening to deport Russian fans. The Rio Olympics also ran into problems with money issues, controversial banning of Russian athletes and the killing of a mascot.

Entertainment News

The Tony Awards made history with the cast of Hamilton taking top honors while the entertainment world lost a young actor, Anton Yelchin, in an unfortunate freak accident when he was crushed by his vehicle.The month ended with the BET Awards which held a tribute to Prince.

Technology News

Apple held it's annual WWDC where it revealed the new iOS10 and move from OS X to macOS while at Facebook Mark Zuckerburg fought to keep control of the company he created.

Style News

In the world of fashion it was the men's turn to shine as Paris featured Men's Fashion Weeks from Dior to Kenzo and more.

Tech Titan Trauma

This week saw technology titans release their quarterly reports with a few shockers, both good and bad, announced.

The Good

Apple was the shinning light of the weeks earnings reports with a 46% increase in iPhone sales with sales so popular they tied with Samsung selling an estimated 74.5 million phones. Apple's reports were so astronomical they even reached some historic figures. For it's closet mobile competitor it was a mixed bag with Samsung managing to beat gloomy forecasts but with income still falling 36% due to sluggish phone sales.

Amazon wasn't to be outdone posting strong Holiday sales showing a surge of 15% year-on-year and it even managed to post a profit after recent very big, and very public, failures. Facebook saw it's share price rise after better than expected fourth-quarter earnings thanks to advertising while Yahoo saw it's shares rise after it decided to spin off it's shares in Alibaba in a tax free transaction.

The Bad

It wasn't all good news with Microsoft dropping 4% after it released some dreadful numbers thanks to a drop in people upgrading to Windows 10 from Windows XP but also due to upgrades from Windows 7 & 8 to 10 being free. Google didn't fare any better when fourth-quarter sales and profit missed Wall Street estimates due to advertising on mobile taking a knock. The darling of Wall Street, Alibaba, saw it's shares tumble 9% after weaker than expected sales growth was revealed.

The Ugly

Lastly nobody took a bigger knock than IBM who began axing over 100,000 jobs, laying off over 26% of it's global workforce, saying it would begin reorganizing the company with what it termed "Project Chrome".

What Happened? 2014 Technology News

2014 saw advances in space exploration while closer to home security online and safety in the real world came under threat.

World Wide Web

With more personal information out in the world it was the security threats that garnered the most attention with the Heartbleed attack showing major vulnerabilities in one of the internet's most critical systems, SSL. The never ending saga between the NSA and Edward Snowden continued with more releases showing the problems the NSA faced with certain security measures and scrutiny of Silk Road resulted in the cracking of Silk Road 2.0 due to vulnerabilities in the TOR network.

With safety a concern the next hurdle was net neutrality and it's impact on users with the FCC being inundated with complaints crashing their site at one point, even President Obama stepped into the debate giving his support for net neutrality. In Europe the Right to be forgotten act was introduced resulting in over 12,000 requesting information be removed from Google in the first day alone. Facebook managed to annoy it's 1 billion users when it was revealed it had manipulated the news feeds of over half a million users while some websites faced censoring with India blocking access to many and China blocking access to Gmail. Finally both the PlayStation and Xbox networks suffered outages due to attacks.

Scientists

Out in space scientists were set back when tragedy struck a Virgin Galactic test flight claiming the life of one pilot. Pushing forward the crew on-board ISS received the first ever zero-gravity 3D printer and used it later in the year to print a wrench which NASA had emailed. NASA's Orion rocket managed a successful test flight along with a successful recovery from the Pacific Ocean.

Further out in space the European Space Agency's Rosseta spacecraft managed to successfully land a robot craft, Philae, on a moving asteroid. NASA's Mars Opportunity rover suffered memory issues after more than a decade on Mars but it's younger sibling, Curiosity, managed to discover organic matter on the red planet.

The annual Nobel Prizes were handed out for excellence in the field of Physics for blue light emitting diodes, in Chemistry for capturing nano scale images and in Medicine for discovering the brains inner GPS. In other areas we weren't so lucky with the Ebola outbreak recorded as the largest to date with over 7000 people dying and the flu was declared an epidemic by the CDC after 15 deaths.

Banks Behaving Badly

This week saw all eyes on the banking sector with investigations galore. The tech industry also saw some action this week of a less dramatic kind.

Banks

The European Central Bank's health check was a success however the report did say "Banks face a significant challenge as the sector remains chronically unprofitable".

Things only got worse from there with Barclays Bank under investigation for bribing a member of the Saudi Royal Family in order to secure a rare banking license. Deutsche Bank braced itself for a $1bn fine from US and UK regulators for it's part in the Libor and Euribor scandal.

Further afield US prosecutors may reopen investigations into several big banks that were previously probed on suspicion they may have violated agreements under which the institutions settled prior cases against them. US and European banks are also stock piling billions for potential trans-Atlantic settlement of allegations they manipulated foreign-exchange rates.

Technology

The technology sector saw action with Twitter shares taking a tumble over concerns with user growth. Samsung was hammered with profits plummeting 60% due to increased pressure from smartphone competitors.

Facebook on the other hand saw it's earnings almost double on rising ad revenue. but it wasn't all good news with it's latest Acquisition $21.8bn WhatsApp making a loss of $138million. Microsoft ended up cutting 3,000 employees as part of it's larger plan to cut 18,000 staff.

Apple was in the news after one of it's suppliers, GT Advanced Technologies, says a deal with the tech giant went sour forcing it to file for bankruptcy. However it's wasn't all gloom for Apple with it's payment system showing 1 million activations within 72 hours.

Business Battered and Bruised

It's been a relaxed week on the markets with a few big movers announcing results but with most attention on states and their business interests.

State of Business

With the recent downing of Flight MH17 the total liability of the crash could reportedly reach $1 billion, add to that the second major blow to it's brand, can Malaysian Airs survive? In related Ukrainian news Russia are having trouble selling bonds after their Ukraine adventure prompted the cancellation of the bond auction.

More nations are having a hard time with Argentina asking a US judge to put the debt payment order on hold while Puerto Rico's debt crisis could be heading for a US style bankruptcy resolution. South Korea announced a new stimulus plan to help the economy after the Ferry disaster earlier in the year slowed economic growth. In the Eurozone public debt spiked reversing the down trend when the economic crisis eased. The IMF has cut the global growth outlook taking into account weakness in both the US and China.

Saudi Arabia seems to be the only glimmer of hope as it announced it had opened it's $531 billion stock market to foreign investors for the first time.

Business Battered

A widow of a chain smoker has been awarded $23billion in damages against the second largest cigarette maker in the US, RJ Reynolds.

McDonald's didn't have a great week when it was revealed there was an issue with a supplier of meat to McDonalds in China resulting in certain items being pulled from menu's. McDonald's hasn't had much luck in Europe either with it's German profits taking a knock and the Russian consumer protection agency seeking to ban some of it's burgers and milk shakes.

Barclays employee's have said they were concerned about the "Dark Pools" before the suit was filed by the SEC. Barclays has since filed to have the suit dismissed but the SEC have instead stepped up the inverstigation.

The takeover of Time Warner by Rupert Murdocks News Corp has been bumpy with Time Warner preventing shareholders from calling meetings and as interest grows shares of Time Warner could reach $105 a share.

Technology Titans

Facebook showed critics when it's reported  profit's more than doubled thanks to mobile ads resulting in the stock going on to hit a record high and pocketing founder, Mark Zuckerberg, a cool $1.6 billion.

Apple seems pretty certain of it's future reportedly asking it's supplier to produce 80 million large screen iPhones however things weren't all great as it was revealed 18,000 Apple employee's have opened a class action lawsuit against Apple.

More tech Titans made themselves known on the stock market with Alibaba indicating it would wait till after US Labor Day to launch it's much anticipated IPO. However things weren't great for many others with Microsoft's fourth quarter earnings taking a hit after it's acquisition of Nokia and finally Amazon didn't fare to well either when it posted a $126 million loss.

Tech Keeping Tabs

It was revealed this week that all your private information is there for Facebook's amusement and Government perusal.

Internet

It was revealed this week that Facebook had manipulated the news feeds of over half a million users in an experiment on "emotional contagion" for 1 week in January 2012. Naturally the backlash was swift but Facebook addressed the issue stating that they "care about the emotional impact of Facebook" however this hasn't quelled the masses with the UK data regulator probing the experiment.

In Google news, Google chair Eric Schmidt reportedly visited Cuba. It was announced that Google would shut down it's other social network Orkut, no word on Google+. Google will face claims of spying on WiFi networks after the supreme court refused to hear it's street view appeal.

After one year the UK's porn filter now blocks 1 in 5 sites most of which aren't related to pornography. Speaking of a bit of naughty, a music industry site was hacked and redirected to the file haring site The Pirate Bay.

Bitcoin had a busy week when the entire haul confiscated from Silk Road was auctioned off to one bidder but California was left embarrassed and had to update it's laws after it was revealed that Bitcoin was illegal in the state.

Space

NASA successfully tested a new "flying saucer" vehicle which could be used in future missions to Mars. In closer to earth news 2 Astronauts had their heads shaved on board the ISS after losing a soccer bet and finally pictures have also been released from the ISS of Hurricane Arthur growing along the US Eastern seaboard.

Security

While there are serious threats in the world with the energy sector facing attacks from Russian hackers it was Government overreach that raised the most concern's with the FBI and CIA having joined the NSA in so called "backdoor" searches of Americans while the new NSA chief downplayed fears claiming Edward Snowden's leaks are "manageable". New reports on the NSA spying scandal have revealed that the NSA was allowed to spy on all but 4 countries but never fear because an "independent privacy board" says it's alright for the NSA to do what it does.

Science

And if all that security news doesn't make you paranoid, the World Health Organization called for more drastic measures to stop the recent deadly outbreak of Ebola. But that's not all because the CDC are trying to retrace events to see how several scientists came into contact with Anthrax. Never fear if it all comes to an end we can always rebuild you after it was announced that scientists have figured out how to grow blood vessels in 3D printed organs, as long as we don't run out of ink.

Technology makes the world go round

It's been an interesting week in the tech world with big money taking center stage.

Money

Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion with $3billion in Facebook stock. WhatsApp is set to reach 1 billion users faster than Facebook.

King revealed it has made over $1.5 billion from the addictive Candy Crush Saga.

Bitcoin had another bumpy week with the value of Bitcoin plummeting to under $100 on the Mt. Gox exchange.

Staying with Bitcoin, rhe first Bitcoin ATM's in the USA will appear in Seattle and Austin

Security

The Kickstarter website was hacked exposing user data. An email was sent to users urging them change their details.

The NSA saga continued with new allegations that it spied on WikiLeaks and it's visitors.

 Gadgets

Google set out rules for it's Glasses wearers to crack down on the creepy factor. The rules are a list of "Do's and Dont's" such as Do: ask permission before recording someone and Don't: be creepy and rude.

Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, confirmed he had been in talks with Apple but it was not for an acquisition but instead about battery technology and Tesla's new "Gigafactory".

Samsung is suing vacuum cleaner maker Dyson after it claimed Dyson infringed on one of it's patents. Well that sucks.