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GIVEN THAT THE number of photos being published every day has surged dramatically in recent years with the advent of the cameraphone and social media, picking the best of the year is always going to be difficult.
We’ve put together the most striking images of 2014, focusing on the ones that really took our breath away when we saw them.
Here’s what we came up with.
Note: some of these photographs contain graphic depictions of violence.
Leaving Certificate student Adam Jenkins celebrates his results with his dad, Alby Jenkins, after he got the best results at his school. Adam attended Trinity Comprehensive in Ballymun, Dublin, where his dad was the caretaker. (Pic: Brian Lawless/PA Wire)
A specialist team abseil down one of the four faces of the clock at the north end of the Palace of Westminster in London, often referred to as Big Ben. (Pic: Yui Mok/PA Wire)
Tourists take a selfie as demonstrators set things on fire during a May Day rally in Barcelona, Spain. (Pic: AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
Flavia Pennetta of Italy bites the net in frustration during her fourth round match at the Australian Open in Melbourne. (Pic: AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
People run away from a flaming fake bull during the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Switzerland’s Ilaria Kaeslin leaps from the uneven bars as she competes at the World Championships in China in October. (Pic: AP Photo/Andy Wong)
Police wearing riot gear walk towards a man with his hands raised in Ferguson, Missouri, amid protests in the wake of the death of Michael Brown. (Pic: AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)
The town of Kobani in Syria is hit by an airstrike from the US-led coalition. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)
Diver Sali Riza Grancina performs the winning jump from a 22-metre high bridge during the annual high diving competition near the town of Gjakova in Kosovo. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)
A displaced Palestinian girl who lost a member of her family in an air attack cries at a hospital in the Gaza Strip during the summer. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)
Kwame Ajamu cries as he is released from prison after spending 27 years in jail for a murder he never committed i nthe US. (Pic: Tony Dejak/PA)
People watch as enormous waves break on Porthcawl harbour in South Wales in January. (Pic: Ben Birchall/PA Wire)
People run to shelter from a hailstorm on a beach at the Ob River in western Siberia, Russia, in July. (Pic: AP Photo/Nikita Dudnik)
9-year-old Nowa Paye is taken to an ambulance after showing signs of Ebola in a village some 40 miles north of Monrovia, Liberia. (Pic: Ap Photo/Jerome Delay)
A medic and a trauma casualty actor have a break from a realistic medical training display exercise at Copehill Down, a village in England, before their brigade prepares for deployment to Afghanistan. (Pic: Ben Birchall/PA Wire)
Bracelets, a watch, and other belongings of some of those who were slaughtered as they sought refuge inside a church are laid out on the altar as a memorial to the thousands who were killed during the genocide in Rwanda, on the 20th anniversary of the 1994 genocide. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)
An man is engulfed in flames during clashes with riot police outside Ukraine’s parliament in Kiev. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
US soldier and recipient of the Medal of Honour Leroy Petry stands with his prosthetic hand over his heart during a ceremony in Washington DC in April. Petry lost his hand in 2008 while serving in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Ted S Warren)
An employee of the Russian Space Training Centre puts the space suits belonging to three astronauts on the washing line to dry. The astronauts were training to simulate a capsule landing on water near Moscow. (Pic: AP Photo/Alexander Xemlianichenko)
Palestinians line up for UN food parcels at the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus in February. (Pic: UNRWA)
A jogger runs on top of the sculpture Wood Line by artist Andy Goldsworthy in San Francisco in January. (Pic: AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
Lava from Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano flows into a garden. (Pic: US Geological Survey)
A woman hides on her roof after a burglar broke into her home in Los Angeles. A neighbour got this photograph of the intruder just feet away from her on the roof. (Pic: AP)
A sloth peaks out from behind a door in Brazil, close to one of the host towns for the 2014 World Cup. (AP Photo)
Newly appointed army officers celebrate graduating at the commissioning ceremony at the Curragh in January. (Pic: Laura Hutton/Photocall Ireland)
Smoke and fire from an Israeli strike rise over Gaza City. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)
The boat carrying actor George Clooney and lawyer Amal Alamuddin is surrounded by media and security on the Grand Canal in Venice (Pic: Luigi Costantini/AP)
For one brief moment, Dublin girl Maggie O’Dwyer led the pack as the Giro d’Italia peloton cycled towards Malahide in May. Good work, kid. (Pic: Tony Kavanagh)
Emergency services at the scene of a suspected gas explosion in Dublin’s north inner city in June. (Pic: Laura Hutton/Photocall Ireland)
Stags practice their rutting at dawn in Richmond Park, London. (Pic: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire)
Real Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti is lifted into the air after his team won the Champions League final. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
A mother and daughter take a selfie as a bowhead whale is brought ashore in Barrow, Alaska. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
Kilkenny’s Henry Shefflin places a hat on his son’s head after the All Ireland Senior Championship Final hurling replay at Croke Park in September. (Pic: James Crombie/INPHO)
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Crazy how many people fall out of windows in Russia.
@Seán Ó Briain: The window was shook by earthly tremors outside and leapt into the room and consumed Maganov who then dutifully fell through said window!
FSB agents passing the hospital ward were witnesses to the event! They quickly left the building in borrowed hospital gowns…
@Seán Ó Briain: defenestration – russians are pros at it
@Johnny Honest: beat me to it!
Hmmmm, there are a lot of Russians dying mysteriously these days.
How does anyone live in a terrorist state?
@Genera L Consensus: we’re going to find out.
@Genera L Consensus: there’s been people living in places like the UK, US and Russia for centuries. More recently. UAE and Saudi. Some seem to be doing quite well.
@John Mulligan: #sad
Those Russian windows are lethal / people forever falling out of them.
Putin !
@Martin Lynch: Put out!
In Soviet Russia, elite hospital kills you.
Severe illness of ground speed.
Amazing this story only appears now!
@Con Cussed: why are you amazed? Because its amazing perhaps?
@Con Cussed: even more amazing that a high profile businessman who’s company publicly opposed the illegal invasion of a neighbouring country, is found to have ‘fallen’ from a hospital window. Considering he was sick,its a pretty amazing, and suspicious thing to have happened.
@Dawn Harvey: Agreed. This is a message to all those who would speak out against Putin. Why would someone who is attending hospital to heal themselves ever commit suicide?
How many FSB/GRU agents were in the room at the time of the event?
They’re quite accident-prone, what with the number of poisonings, window leaping, dropped cigarettes and now missiles that don’t take off. Life expectancy is very short in Russia.
The state-controlled TASS news agency cited an unnamed law enforcement source as saying Maganov had committed suicide by jumping from a sixth-story window after being admitted to the hospital for a heart attack. The news site RBK also said police were investigating the possibility of suicide.
Clearly didnt get the memo on time over at Taas News Agency
@Dave Hammond: most unfortunate the CCTV was closed down for maintenance at time of the incident….!
As, the lyrics go “Did he jump or was he pushed” ?
“Fell” Russian for pushed!!!
Did you hear the one about the Russian journalist that died falling from their ground floor apartment… very clumsy those Russians.
@Dave: too much vodka
Not suspicious in the slightest…..
What no piano being installed this time
Fell out a window. Onto some bullets.
@Colm de Cleir: Found some stab wounds too
He fell ill
Oppps….
The Russians will be announcing tomorrow that they have ‘solved’ the cause if this mysterious death
Jesus the Ukrainians are back from Estonia with their window clearing van. The FSB spotted them again but they were able to escape back across the border.
Hmmmm… was the window made of novichok? Was Vlad Puta standing nearby?
It beats drinking tea!
Roger Podacter suffered a similar fate
Running out of ways to die/disappear ! That individual should not have (novo-checkedin) to that Hospital
Terrible to see and worse not surprising. Who will get the blame, is there another mini cooper in the mix or are the Ninga Window Cleaners at it again.
Strange how all of the antiwr people are having “accidents” and even the prowar putin critics are getting blown up.
The one thing they have in common, they are anti putin.
Running out of ways to die/disappear ! That individual should not have (novo-checkedin) to that Hospital
I’ll bet you any money, not unlike the kerry woman, he was ironing the curtains.
have your say