A crying child stands next to a puddle of muddy water in Uganda while another laughs as she plays in a water fountain at Sliema's St Anne Square.

The contrasting images from opposite sides of the globe are among 156 photographs taken between November 11 last year and November 10, 2009, which have been brought together in the fourth edition of The Times Picture Annual.

The majority of the photos were taken by The Times photographers Darrin Zammit Lupi, Matthew Mirabelli, Chris Sant Fournier and Jason Borg.

The 192-page full-colour book also includes a section of foreign photos by Reuters and AFP and by contributors Ray Attard and Clodagh Farrugia O'Neill.

In his foreword, former The Times editor Victor Aquilina speaks about the greatest photograph of all time - the historic photograph was taken by Joe Rosenthal for The Associated Press and shows five US marines and a US Navy corpsman raising the American flag on top of Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima on February 23, 1945.

Mr Aquilina describes the picture annual as a "celebration of pictures" rather than simply a pictorial reference source of life in the country.

The book is divided into six sections - news, people in the news, daily life, arts and entertainment, sport and foreign news.

For the first time, the foreign section includes some pictures taken by The Times photographers.

The photos include a number of images that were never published.

The Times Picture Annual 2009 is available from Word For Word from today and from leading bookstores next week at €18.75.

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