Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks via video call during a news conference in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, December 17, 2020. This year, Putin attended his annual news conference online due to the coronavirus pandemic. (Photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Photo)

A girl watches as a man jumps to cool off at a swimming pool in the village of Zllakuqan near the town of Klina on July 9, 2024. (Photo by Armend Nimani/AFP Photo)

From house breaking in Johannesburg to hippos on the loose in Tbilisi to rioters attacking a policewoman in Burundi, Reuters photographers tell the story behind some of the most iconic pictures of the year. Here: Protesters drag a female police officer accused of shooting a protester in the Buterere neighbourhood of Bujumbura, Burundi, May 12, 2015. Goran Tomasevic: Protesters started throwing stones at a group of police, who then started to run away. The policewoman in the photo, Medikintos Inabeza, 33, got left behind and then some protesters started to push her, saying that she had shot a female protestor in the stomach with an AK47 rifle. I didn't see anything of that. There were 5 or 10 protesters pushing the policewoman at first, then others came and joined in. Up to 20 or 30 protesters were surrounding her at one point. The protesters kicked and beat her very badly; I also saw a couple of knives. I thought they were going to kill her... (Photo by Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)

A koala soaked by floodwaters sits atop a fence post to escape the deluge in the town of Stirling in the Adelaide Hills of South Australia in this picture taken September 14, 2016. (Photo by Russell Latter/Reuters)

In this January 4, 2016 photo, the weapon of a rebel fighter for the 36th Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, hangs from a branch serving as a makeshift clothesline, near a rebel camp, in Antioquia state, in the northwest Andes of Colombia. “We’ll lay aside our weapons, like the accord says, but never hand them over”, says Juan Pablo, a commander of the 36th Front. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)

A Hindu devotee takes a holy bath on the banks of the Bagmati River on the occasion of Rishi Panchami at the end of the three-day long Teej Festival, in which Hindu women fast during the day and pray for the long lives for their husbands, in Kathmandu on September 1, 2022. (Photo by Prakash Mathema/AFP Photo)

Canoeists are framed by the tail of a breaching whale in Antarctica in April 2023. The photographer, from California, writes: “It was probably a once-in-a-lifetime moment”. (Photo by Jiahong Zeng/Solent News)

A person stands next to the skyline of lower Manhattan on the opening day the Edge NYC, an outdoor observation deck on the 100th floor of 30 Hudson Yards on March 11, 2020 in New York City. (Photo by Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)