It was a year of global trade wars and daring cave rescues.

It brought us Cuba without a Castro at the helm and Cambridge Analytica out of the shadows. 

In France the prevailing political colour was yellow, while across Yemen starvation remained an added predator in a war in which children were increasingly the victims.

In all, 2018 globally was a bruising year for the optimists and one that began and ends with a shutdown of the US government as Donald Trump the man who dominated the year’s headlines continues to make them.

As one New York Times headline put it earlier this month, for Mr Trump it’s “ a war every day, waged increasingly alone”. 

That much was evident at year’s end as US Defence Secretary James Mattis, the man many regarded as the “last adult in the room” of Mr Trump’s White House resigned over the President’s abrupt decision to withdraw US troops from Syria and Afghanistan.

As the New Year looms the US federal government is expected to remain partially closed in a protracted standoff over Mr Trump’s demand for money to build a border wall with Mexico. 

For many in Washington this parting shot of 2018 and the standoff and political acrimony created is just another ominous portent of things to come in 2019, a year in which the President will come under unprecedented pressure as legal investigations pile up around him. 

Looking back on 2018 the US mid-term elections might just have marked the beginning of the end of Donald Trump’ presidency, but only time will tell. 

Overall Americans must have done a lot of soul searching last year as their country remained a fractured place and the scourge of another shooting took its toll on civilians in Parkland Florida.

Elsewhere in the world it was no less turbulent as Moscow under Russian President Vladimir Putin increasingly made its stamp on the global stage.  

Who can forget that wink from the Russian leader to his US counterpart at the start of the Helsinki summit? Who was not flabbergasted that Mr Trump then went on to side with Russia against the FBI over claims of interference in the 2016 presidential election? 

Both men are not known for being well disposed towards a free and unfettered media and last year was one in which threats to press freedom reached a new high. 

The brutal killing of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi was a chilling reminder of what media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) described in wider terms as hatred whipped up by “unscrupulous politicians.” 

Mr Khashoggi’s murder shocked the world and put the country, and its young Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman under closer international scrutiny.

If there is an upside to this terrible story it’s that perhaps at least it helped bring pressure on Riyadh over its prosecution of the Saudi led coalition war in Yemen. 

This month “milestone” peace talks began in Sweden and the hope is they will help bring about an end to a war that has resulted in 14 million people or half of Yemen’s population now needing aid to survive. 

But Yemen is not the only place in 2018 that saw humanitarian agencies placed under enormous pressure. As I write Indonesia again reels from a deadly tsunami, an eerie reminder of the terrible Boxing Day disaster back in 2004.

In Democratic Republic of Congo too an Ebola epidemic that has taken grip is itself a devastating repeat of a similar outbreak in West Africa in 2014.

In the Middle East so often a crucible of suffering there was some good news as Iraqi voters flocked to the polls in 2018 for the first time since driving out the Islamic State (IS) group in 2017 after the Iraq civil war. 

It was significant election for the country as Iraqis were given the power to decide their future with the potential to shift the balance of power and mend divisions between ethnic groups. 
That said, the jihadists of IS continued to pose a considerable threat in 2018 with many analysts suggesting they were reconstituting their forces and establishing a network of cells to pursue a guerrilla insurgency both in Iraq and neighbouring Syria. 

Elsewhere around the world Islamist-inspired terror cast its shadow. In Europe, France once again bore the brunt, most recently when 29-year-old Cherif Chekatt, armed with a gun and knife near Strasbourg’s famed Christmas market killed two and injured another 13 people.

The terror attack came at what was already a turbulent moment for France as one of the year’s most “visible” political phenomena, the gilets jaunes or yellow vest movement took to the streets in a challenge to French President Emmanuel Macron.

Ugly as the scenes in Paris have been, in terms of international stories this past year, the gilets jaunes protests against what they see as financial exploitation by the France’s privileged metropolitan elite, captured the imagination of many around the world. 

It was a year also in which we witnessed a backlash against big tech. More people in 2018 have access to the internet than safe drinking water. 

But as the world’s digital population continues to grow there are fears not everyone is reaping the so-called “digital dividends” of this transformation.

The story of how researcher Dr Aleksandr Kogan and his company used a personality quiz to harvest the Facebook data of up to 87 million people before sharing some of it with political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, served as a stark reminder of the dangers that lurk in our digital online age. Perhaps refreshing then to recall that heroic story earlier in 2018 in which a team of young football players and their coach survived for 18 days before being extracted by cave rescue divers in 
Thailand. 

Tragic as the death of one courageous rescuer was, how unusual it was to follow a story with a largely happy ending. Rare also to have one that caught the imagination and universal concern of people in a world otherwise riven with division. 

Yes, all in all 2018 was a bruising year for the world’s optimists. But let’s not give up looking on the bright side. 

Perhaps, just perhaps, 2019 might finally be the year when that ultimate hogger of headlines, Donald Trump, finally gets his comeuppance as special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe finally bears down. 

A Happy New Year to everyone when it comes.