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The Eagle Creek wildfire burns as golfers play at the Beacon Rock Golf Course in North Bonneville, Washington, on Sept. 4.
Wildfire season this year was supposed to be mild after an extremely wet winter and spring but ended up one of the worst in U.S. history in land burned. The foliage that sprouted from previous rain and snow has gone bone-dry in intense heat, feeding flames in places that have not seen downpours in months and strangling cities with smoke.
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A woman poses for a selfie in front of the carcass of a humpback whale on Ipanema beach in Rio de Janeiro on Nov. 15. Biologist Rafael Carvalho said the whale appeared to have been dead for a few days. Authorities were urging beachgoers who had flocked to Ipanema on a national holiday to stay away from the animal.
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Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and his wife, Louise Linton, hold up a sheet of new $1 bills during a tour of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington on Nov. 15.
Mnuchin and U.S. Treasurer Jovita Carranza went to see firsthand the production of the first currency to bear their signatures.
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A Cuban man wades through a flooded street in Havana, on Sept. 10. Deadly Hurricane Irma battered central Cuba, knocking down power lines, uprooting trees and ripping the roofs off homes as it headed toward Florida.
Seawater penetrated as much as 1,600 feet inland in parts of the city. Authorities said they had evacuated more than a million people as a precaution, including about 4,000 in the capital.
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John Bain and Brandon Baker take cover from the embers as they try to help stop a fire from burning a stranger’s home on Dec. 5 in Ventura, California. Strong Santa Ana winds rapidly pushed multiple wildfires across the region, expanding across tens of thousands of acres and destroying hundreds of homes and structures.
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President Donald Trump speaks on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Oval Office on Jan. 28. Of those pictured here, only one — Vice President Mike Pence — remains in the administration at year’s close. From left, the others, and their position at the time, were: chief of staff Reince Priebus, chief strategist Steve Bannon, communications director Sean Spicer and national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Trump’s calls and interactions with Putin have been closely scrutinized after U.S. intelligence assessments that the Kremlin meddled in the 2016 election, with multiple investigations still ongoing into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russians to defeat Hillary Clinton.
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A pew inside a Coptic Christian church is covered in blood after it was bombed in Tanta, Egypt, on April 9, Palm Sunday. Another Coptic church, in Alexandria in northern Egypt, was also bombed. The two attacks killed at least 43 people and wounded about 100 in an assault claimed by ISIS.
The blasts came just weeks before Pope Francis visited the Arab world’s most populous country, which has been beset by extremist violence against its minority Christians.
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A police car patrols Fajardo, Puerto Rico, as Hurricane Maria hits, on Sept. 20. The strongest hurricane to hit Puerto Rico in more than 80 years destroyed hundreds of homes and turned some streets into raging rivers in an onslaught that has plunged the U.S. territory deeper into financial crisis.
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President Donald Trump tosses a roll of paper towels into a crowd as he visits those affected by Hurricane Maria at Calvary Chapel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Oct. 3.
Trump praised the roughly 200 people gathered, saying there was a lot of “love” in the room. The president also handed out flashlights and said of the recovery: “The job that’s been done here is really nothing short of a miracle.”
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A Bangladeshi man helps Rohingya Muslim refugees disembark from a boat on the Bangladeshi shoreline of the Naf river after they crossed the border from Myanmar in Teknaf on Sept. 30.
Over 620,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar to Bangladesh in the largest refugee crisis to hit Asia in decades.
The crisis began when a Rohingya insurgent group launched attacks with rifles and machetes on a series of security posts in Myanmar on Aug. 25, prompting the military to launch a brutal round of “clearance operations” in response. Those fleeing have described indiscriminate attacks by security forces and Buddhist mobs, including monks, as well as killings and rapes. |