December 11, 2014. Copyright 2014, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Review of the Year 2014
By Julie Mullins

LONDON, December 11, Graphic News:  Captions accompany graphic GN32488

January:

6: Temperatures plunge as low as -38C in parts of Canada and the U.S. as an extreme cold front sweeps south from the Arctic

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February:

7: The Winter Olympics get underway in Sochi, Russia. At $50bn, they are the costliest ever Olympic Games

21: Following violent protests, Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovich flees to Russia

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March:

8: Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, disappears from the radar soon after leaving Malaysian air space. The search for the plane, believed to have ditched far off course in the southern Indian Ocean, is still ongoing

18: Russia formally annexes Crimea following a referendum in which nearly 97% of Crimean voters choose to secede from Ukraine

23: An outbreak of the Ebola virus is confirmed in the West African nation of Guinea

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April:

14: More than 270 girls are abducted from a school in northeastern Nigeria by the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram

16: Over 300 people, mostly teenage students, die when the Sewol ferry sinks off the southern coast of South Korea

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May:

2: Ukraine launches an offensive on pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country

12: Narendra Modi becomes prime minister of India after the BJP wins a decisive general election victory

22: Thailand's second military coup in eight years ousts the interim government

29: Abdul-Fattah al-Sisi becomes Egypt's new president. The influential former general led the ousting of President Mohamed Morsi in 2013

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June:

2: King Juan Carlos of Spain announces his abdication after 39 years on the throne. He is succeeded by his 46-year-old son, Felipe

30: The militant group ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) renames itself the Islamic State and declares a caliphate in the territory under its control in Syria and Iraq

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July:

8: Israel launches an offensive on the Gaza Strip to stop rocket fire into Israel. The seven-week conflict kills over 2,000 Palestinians, many of them children

13: Germany beats Argentina 1-0 in the final of the FIFA World Cup In Brazil

17: All 298 people on board a Malaysian airliner from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur die when Flight MH17 crashes in Eastern Ukraine. Satellite images indicate it was shot down by a Russian-made surface-to-air missile in a region where pro-Russian separatists are battling government forces

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August:

7: The U.S. launches limited airstrikes on ISIS militant strongholds following the seizure of the strategic Iraqi city of Mosul

9: An unarmed black teenager is shot dead by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, sparking outrage across the U.S.

10: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan secures a historic win in Turkey's first direct presidential election

19: ISIS militants behead U.S. photojournalist James Foley, who is the first of five western hostages to suffer the same fate

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September:

12: South African athlete Oscar Pistorius is convicted of culpable homicide over the shooting death of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. He is jailed for five years

18: Scotland votes to remain part of the United Kingdom in a referendum on independence

26: Protests erupt in Mexico after 43 students are abducted in the town of Iguala after clashing with police. It is believed they were turned over to a drugs gang and killed

27: Hollywood star George Clooney marries Lebanese-British lawyer Amal Alamuddin in a lavish ceremony in Venice

29: Ashraf Ghani is sworn in as Afghanistan's new president in the first democratic transfer of power since the Taliban were toppled in 2001

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October:

1: Hong Kong stages huge pro-democracy rallies, demanding that Beijing withdraw plans to vet candidates for Hong Kong's leadership election in 2017

21: Dilma Rousseff is narrowly re-elected as President of Brazil

31: The Virgin Galactic space plane, SpaceShipTwo, breaks up and crashes soon after takeoff. One of the two pilots is killed

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November:

3: One World Trade Centre opens 13 years after the original twin towers were destroyed in the attacks of September 11, 2001

3: The U.S. midterm elections see the Republicans regain control of the Senate and increase their majority in the House of Representatives

12: The Rosetta mission's Philae probe touches down on 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, becoming the first ever spacecraft to land on a comet

23: Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton wins the F1 championship for the second time in his career

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December:

1: The death toll in the world's worst Ebola outbreak tops 6,000, with the worst affected countries Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone

10: Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, shot by the Taliban for demanding education for girls, becomes the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize

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Additional entries that did not make the final cut:

Jan 16: Protests in Ukraine turn violent after parliament bans demonstrations

Feb 27: The UK Met Office says Britain suffered its wettest winter in more than a century

Aug 28: The UN says more than three million Syrians are now registered as refugees, with a further 6.5 million internally displaced

Sep 24: Barcelona star Lionel Messi breaks the 50-year-old La Liga scoring record and two days later becomes the all-time top scorer in the Champions League