2023

The year saw the decline in severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the WHO (World Health Organization) ending its global health emergency status in May. Catastrophic natural disasters included the fifth-deadliest earthquake of the 21st century striking Turkey and Syria, leaving nearly 60,000 people dead, Cyclone Freddy – the longest-lasting recorded tropical cyclone in history – leading to over 1,400 deaths in Malawi and Mozambique, Storm Daniel, which became the deadliest cyclone worldwide since Cyclone Nargis after killing at least 11,000 people in Libya, a major 6.8 magnitude earthquake striking western Morocco, killing 2,960 people, and a 6.3 magnitude triplet earthquake striking western Afghanistan, killing over 1,400 people.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and Myanmar civil war continued in 2023, and a series of coups, several armed conflicts, and political crises broke out in numerous African nations, most notably a war in Sudan. An escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict occurred in October when Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, led an attack on Israel, leading the latter to declare war on Hamas. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict ended after over 100,000 Armenians fled the region after an Azeri military invasion.

A banking crisis resulted in the collapse of numerous American regional banks as well as the buyout of Credit Suisse by UBS in Switzerland. The two largest American banks to collapse were Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank, two of the three largest banking collapses in US history. The most notable of numerous acquisitions in various industries included October's energy acquisitions with ExxonMobil and Chevron buying Pioneer Natural Resources and Hess respectively, the luxury fashion holding company Tapestry (Coach New York and Kate Spade New York) announcing its purchase of Capri Holdings (Michael Kors and Versace), and the closure of Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

In the realm of technology, 2023 saw the continued rise of generative AI models, with increasing applications across various industries. These models, leveraging advancements in machine learning and natural language processing, had become capable of creating realistic and coherent text, images, and music. An AI arms race between private companies has continued since the late 2010s, with Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Google owner Alphabet today most dominant among firms.