A selection of defining images from 2008's World News, including top choices from CYRIL BYRNE and ALAN BETSON.
CYRIL BYRNEexplains his choice: "THIS IMAGE OF the girls praying was captured during a dawn visit with Concern to a shanty town at the edge of St Paul's River outside Monrovia, in Liberia. They were listening and responding to a young pastor, some breaking away laughing and giggling as they saw me, and then suddenly they bowed their heads in prayer. I felt they represented a new emerging sense of hope.
Every morning, a steady line of people cross a narrow footbridge over swamp water to go to work and school. Before the bridge was built by the community and assisted by Concern, the locals had to pay a dollar a day to make the round trip into the city. This area, with little sanitation, is home to more than 36,000 people. Clean water is supplied by a Concern/Liberian government-backed scheme, one of the few modern comforts families have here. With more than 85 per cent unemployment - and the average life expectancy only 42 - the clock is ticking for these young people. As the Concern team moved among the small homes of scrap material, the sound of singing and praying came from behind galvanised sheds - the students were at assembly at the Joseph G Cooper School in the 12th District as prayers were being sung. Despite the lack of facilities, the students are turned out smiling and bright-eyed, wearing clean clothes and ready for the day.
The motto above the door reads: "Preparing them for a better future." They recite their allegiance to the flag in a loud chorus: "One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." "
ALAN BETSONexplains his choice: "MY FAVOURITE IMAGE this year was taken in the Shozo Bigha slum on the outskirts of Calcutta, India. A hellish place where shelters are made from rubbish, and which up to 8,000 people call home. I was visiting a Goal-sponsored education programme where children became the first in their family to become literate. The gravity of this initiative became apparent to me as I looked to caption my photographs - many people simply did not know how to spell their own names.
Children as young as my daughter walked knee-deep in sewage on the streets, and women washed their rice in pools that I saw children urinate in. As we left the slum we crossed a roadside drain, filled with green water. Three sisters lightened the humid air with the sound of laughter and splashing as they bathed - all elegant and smiling, despite the poverty."