AP Poll: Police Killings Of Blacks Voted Top Story Of 2014..... 1) POLICE KILLINGS 2) EBOLA OUTBREAK 3) ISLAMIC STATE- ISIS.....It was the worst Ebola epidemic on record, with a death toll now approaching 7,000, mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.

NEW YORK, (AP):The police killings of unarmed blacks in Ferguson, Missouri, and elsewhere and the investigations and tumultuous protests they inspired, was the top news story of 2014, according to The Associated Press' annual poll of United States editors and news directors.

POLICE KILLINGS:

Police wearing riot gear walk towards a
man with his hands raised, in Ferguson,
 where a white police officer fatally shot
Michael Brown, an unarmed black
18-year old, in the St Louis suburb.

Some witnesses said 18-year-old Michael Brown had his hands up in surrender; others said he was making a charge. But there was no dispute he was unarmed and shot dead by a white police officer in Ferguson. In New York City, another unarmed black, Eric Garner, was killed after a white officer put him in a chokehold during an arrest for unauthorised cigarette sales. After grand juries opted not to indict the officers, protests erupted across the country, punctuated by chants of "Hands up, don't shoot!" and "I can't breathe." In both cases, federal officials launched investigations.

EBOLA OUTBREAK:

An election worker takes the temperature
of a voter in the West Point slum before
 she casts her vote, during the
 senate election in Monrovia, Liberia.

The first wave of Ebola deaths, early in the year, attracted little notice. By March, the World Health Organization was monitoring the outbreak. By midsummer, it was the worst Ebola epidemic on record, with a death toll now approaching 7,000, mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. A Liberian man with the disease died at a Dallas hospital, followed by a few other cases involving US health workers, sparking worries about the readiness of the US health system.

ISLAMIC STATE:

Militant fighters from the Islamic State group startled the world with rapid, brutal seizures of territory in Iraq and Syria. The US and its allies responded with air strikes, hoping that Iraqi and Kurdish forces on the ground could retake captured areas. Revulsion towards the Islamic State intensified as it broadcast videos of its beheadings of several Western hostages. more