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)

Nightmare: New York”, staged in a Lower East Side building, depicts the ugliest, scariest vision of 1970s- and '80s-era Gotham. Subways are awash in graffiti, creeps and crime. Here: In this October 2, 2014 photo, an actor performs during “Nightmare: New York”, a haunted house attraction in New York. (Photo by Frank Franklin II/AP Photo)

Members of Tom Maior Special Group samba school perform during the carnival parade at the Anhembi Sambadrome in Sao Paulo, Brazil, 22 Febr​uary 2020. Carnival is the biggest and most popular celebration in Brazil. (Photo by Sebastiao Moreira/EPA/EFE)

Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is the biggest production the Australian Ballet has ever undertaken and it’s also one of the most spectacular. Created for the Royal Ballet and designed by Bob Crowley, it involves puppetry, optical illusions, major setpieces and immersive projections, as well as costumes that some dancers have to actually climb into. Here: Ako Kondo as Alice, on stage September 11, 2017 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Jeff Busby/The Guardian)

It’s enough to make your head spin. The photographer Katherine Young set out to shoot spiral staircases in London, England to great effect, including this shot she calls the Downward Spiral Part III. (Photo by Katherine Young/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A woman dressed up for Halloween travels on a Metro train in São Paulo, Brazil on October 30, 2017. (Photo by Cris Faga/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Kazakh law enforcement officers detain a woman during a protest rally by opposition supporters in Nur-Sultan on September 21, 2019. (Photo by Orken Zhoyamergen/Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)

A little boy shouts “Earthquake!” during a shouting contest, part of the annual evacuation drill on the National Disaster Prevention Day on September 1, 1986. The contest was aimed at teaching youngsters the importance of telling neighbors quickly and loudly of a disaster when it hits. The drill is annually conducted through out the country on the day marking the anniversary of the Great Kanto Earthquake that hit the Japanese capital and its vicinity on September 1, 1923, killing more than 104,000 people. (Photo by Sadayuki Mikami/AP Photo)