Top 5: Photo galleries

Shown here on Dec. 19, 1989, Vaclev Havel waves to his supporters from a balcony in Prague prior to becoming president of Czechoslovakia later that month. (Petar Kujundzic/Reuters)

Each day, we bring you a list of Top 5 stories. Sometimes they're the most read stories of the day, other times we focus on a specific region or category.

Today we're thinking visually with some of the most recent photo galleries our Multimedia Team have cultivated over the past week. Some stories, such as the floods that scrambled landscapes in Philippines, to the late Vaclav Havel's decades-long career as a politician and hero of the Cold War.

Here are the top five photo galleries on CBCNews.ca, as well as links to the related stories.

1) Vaclav Havel: The man of letters who bestrode Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution

Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright who helped, peacefully, bring down Communism in Czechoslovakia and end the Cold War, died Dec. 18, 2011, age 75.

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2) Philippines storm devastates coastal region

The death toll from storm-triggered flash floods that devastated a wide swath of the country's south has risen to 652, the Philippine Red Cross says.

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3) Crisis in Attawapiskat

Liberal Leader Bob Rae is accusing the Conservatives and Prime Minister Stephen Harper of showing a "lack of respect" toward the troubled First Nations community of Attawapiskat.

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4) Clashes in Cairo (Warning: Some photos in this gallery are graphic in nature)

Troops and protesters clashed Sunday in Cairo for the third straight day, pelting each other with rocks in skirmishes near parliament in the heart of the Egyptian capital.

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5) Building critics: Architecture dogged by criticism

A look at some of the most eccentric architectural structures in the world, including London's Strata Tower, Building Design magazine's ugliest new building in the U.K. for 2010, and a Dutch sketch of twin skyscrapers criticized for resembling the World Trade Center during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.