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Majid Saeedi, Getty ImagesSupporters of the defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi run in the streets during protests in Tehran on June 16, 2009. The landslide victory by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad four days earlier had shocked the opposition, who claimed widespread election irregularities. As demonstrations escalated, the Iranian government banned foreign media from covering protest rallies, shut down text-messaging services and blocked cell phone transmissions and access to some websites. -
Bruce Ely, The OregoniaParents join the students of Heppner High School in Oregon at the homecoming bonfire. "There's not a whole lot to do here," says Principal Daye Stone. "That's the great thing about small towns." -
Katie Falkenberg, The Washington TimesErica and Rully Urias of Island Creek, Kentucky, bathe their daughter, Makayla, 5, in water containing high levels of arsenic. The family attributes the contamination primarily to the runoff from the mountaintop mines surrounding their home as well as the blasting, which they believe has disrupted the water table and cracked the casing in their well, allowing seepage of heavy metals into the water. The coal company that mines the nearby land has never admitted to causing the problem, but they supply the family with bottled water for drinking and cooking. -
Susana Vera, FreelanceFredi Montero, a 19-year-old Wiwa, sells fique fiber for weaving handbags to a neighbor in Potrerito, Colombia. One of four indigenous groups inhabiting the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Wiwas—along with Kogis, Arhuacos and Kankuamos believe the sacred Sierra Nevada is the heart of the world. By protecting the mountain range, they keep the entire planet in balance. Yet over the past three decades, the Sierra Nevada has become a battleground of guerrillas, paramilitary groups, drug dealers and multinational corporations. Besieged by violence, the indigenous people now find themselves and their culture at risk of extinction. -
Tomasz Gudzowaty, Yours Gallery/Agentur FocusOften considered a game of the wealthy, golf is believed to have evolved from a 12th century pastime of Scottish shepherds, who used crooked sticks to knock stones into rabbit holes. In India, a group of boys from the Mumbai slums some of whom have studied the game as caddies at a local club continue the sport's evolution. They fashion golf clubs from iron rods and use cheap plastic balls for golf balls. -
Kitra Cahana, COLORS MagazineArianna Desjardin, 19, at the 2009 National Rainbow Gathering in the Santa Fe National Forest, New Mexico. Held every summer in a different U.S. National Forest, the Rainbow Gathering is a haven for train-hoppers, hobos and teenage runaways. Thirty-eight gatherings have taken place since the first event in Colorado in 1972, and as many as 30,000 people attend each year. -
Brian L. Frank, Redux/Global PostA child plays in his suburban backyard near Phoenix, Arizona. The Colorado River, a waterway stretching over 1,400 miles from its origin in northern Colorado to the Sea of Cortez in Mexico, irrigates suburban Arizona. The river is a shell of its former self as overpopulation, pollution, damming, global warming and apathy deteriorate the natural habitat and the economies that once relied on its bounty. -
Lu Guang, Contact Press ImagesThe Tianjin Steel Plant in She County, Hebei Province, China, March 18, 2008. Pollution from the plant deeply affects the lives of local residents. -
Adam Nadel, FreelancePham Van Diep, 12, right, and his brother, Pham Van Duc, 10. The boys live near Da Nang, Vietnam, an area heavily sprayed with defoliants during the Vietnam War, and both have undergone numerous medical procedures to correct ailments doctors attribute to dioxin contamination. The places in Vietnam that were heavily sprayed with Agent Orange, an herbicide containing dioxins, have a birth defect rate of 2.4 percent, significantly higher than the national average of 0.6 percent. Diep says his friends all think his scars are the result of a fight. He doesn't correct them. -
Craig Golding, Freelance for Getty ImagesJack Mathieson, 91, of Nowra, New South Wales, Australia, after competing in the 800-meter freestyle swim at the Sydney 2009 World Masters Games at Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre, in Sydney, Australia, on October 10, 2009. The World Masters Games is an international multi-sport event held every four years; competitors range in age from 25 to 101. The 2009 event marked the seventh time the games were held and included athletes from more than 100 countries competing in 28 sports -
Kitra Cahana, COLORS MagazineA participant at the 2009 National Rainbow Gathering in the Santa Fe National Forest, New Mexico. Despite attracting hundreds of young people each year, the Rainbow Gathering has no official leadership, no formal structure, no official spokespersons and no membership. A changing network of "focalizers" takes responsibility for passing on Rainbow information year-round. -
Brian L. Frank, Redux/Global PostThe Cerro Prieto Geothermal Power Station in Baja California, Mexico, is believed to pollute a large swath of the Colorado River in Mexico. Downstream from the plant, many people rely on the water for fishing and to irrigate their crops. The U.S. purchases a large amount of electricity from Cerro Prieto, which doesn't have to abide by the same strict environmental standards as U.S.-based power plants. -
Lu Guang, Contact Press ImagesA salt field worker expresses anger in Lianyungang City, Jiangsu Province, China, July 19, 2008. "I can't bear any longer the pungent smell of the gas from the chemical factories when the wind blows." -
Ricardo Moraes, ReutersPeople look at the body of a man found dead in a supermarket cart in the Morro dos Macacos slum of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, October 20, 2009. Brazil's president offered nearly $60 million in federal funds to help Rio de Janeiro police combat drug gangs after 17 people were killed the previous weekend, raising questions about the city's ability to safely host the 2016 Olympics -
Arpad Kurucz, NepszabadsagOn November 3, 2004, the last conscripts left the Hungarian Army after a 135-year tradition of the draft. Today, nostalgia for the army is intense, and military survival camps have become fashionable. For the past three years, the Military Traditional Association in Mogyoród, Hungary, has hosted military camps for children. For one week, kids learn what was taught to soldiers in a month of basic training and take part in shooting exercises with dummy ammunition. The practice has made some wonder if the camps are a way for extreme right-wing groups to acquire military training and experience. -
Kitra Cahana, COLORS MagazineJeffrey Martin, 18, at the 2009 National Rainbow Gathering in the Santa Fe National Forest, New Mexico. Every summer, hundreds of vagabond young people attend the Rainbow Gathering, an annual festival held in a different U.S. National Forest each year during the first week in July. Many of the youth, known at gatherings as "The Dirty Kids," travel around the country during the rest of the year. -
Stephanie Sinclair, VII for National Geographic and The New York Times MagazineJoe S. Jessop, a patriarch of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), with his five wives and many children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, the day after his 89th birthday. In April 2008, law enforcement officials raided the FLDS Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado, Texas, after receiving a call from a woman claiming to be an abused 16-year-old living there. Authorities removed 440 children, who they said had been sexually, physically and emotionally abused. After two months in state custody, two courts ruled there was insufficient evidence of abuse, and the children were returned to their parents. -
Ed Ou, Reportage by Getty ImagesMayra Zhumageldina bathes her daughter, Zhannoor, in Semey, Kazakhstan, March 2, 2009. Zhannoor, 16, was born with microcephalia, an abnormally small brain, and sixth-degree scoliosis, a twisted spine. Caused by exposure to high levels of radiation, these birth defects left Zhannoor unable to think, speak or perform basic functions. Her mother must bathe her every day because she cannot afford diapers. -
Rodrigo Abd, Associated PressDon Carlos, owner of Valles del Sol car repair shop turned funeral home, prepares the body of a murdered man for burial in Guatemala City, Guatemala, August 29, 2009. -
Hyunsoo Leo Kim, The Virginian PilotDut Daniel Aketch, a Lost Boy of Sudan, holds the first documented picture of himself taken at a refugee camp in Kenya. He does not know his own age, but he knows he was young when he fled the massacre of his village in Southern Sudan. He is one of thousands of children who escaped the country's civil war. -
Craig F. Walker, The Denver PostIan Fisher's father, Eric, waits in the driveway with the recruiter who will take Ian to 14 weeks of basic training, as Fisher embraces friends Nick "Buddha" Nelson, left, and Shane "Pineapple" Doiel. Between hugs, Fisher's eyes welled with tears. "As soon as we saw him driving off," Nelson says, "that's when we realized how real it was." -
Stephanie Sinclair, VII for National Geographic and The New York Times MagazineThe Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), one of the largest practitioners of polygamy in the U.S., emerged in the early 1900's after splitting from the Mormon Church over the issue of plural marriages. The FLDS gained international notoriety when its leader Warren S. Jeffs was indicted in 2005 on charges of rape as an accomplice in Arizona and Utah for arranging marriages between adult males and underage girls. Jeffs fled, becoming one of the FBI's most wanted fugitives, before being arrested in August 2006. He was later sentenced to 10 years in prison in Utah and awaits trial in Arizona. -
Lu Guang, Contact Press ImagesWuhai City, Inner Mongolia, April 10, 2005. Workers in the factories have no immune defenses, causing them to become ill after one or two years on the job. -
Alejandro Bringas, ReutersMilitary and forensic experts inspect the body of a man killed outside a nightclub in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico, August 31, 2009. The man had been handcuffed to the fence and shot several times by drug hit men, reported local media. The assailants had left a warning, known as a "narco mensaje," near the body. -
Thomas Lekfeldt, Ekstra Bladet/MomentVibe and her father Michael enjoy a playful moment in the bathroom at their home in Hundested, Denmark. -
Craig F. Walker, The Denver PostIan Fisher, right, waits for a medical exam with other Army recruits at the Denver Military Entrance Processing Station on June 18, 2007. Over the next three days, Fisher would fill out forms, stand in formation, and join in the constant repetition of the Soldier's Creed: "I am an American Soldier. I will always place the mission first. I will never accept defeat. I will never quit. I will never leave a fallen comrade." -
Barbara Davidson, Los Angeles TimesThomasina Nez, 35, gives Bobbi, 4, a bath in a tin basin in their dilapidated trailer on a Navajo reservation in Cameron, Arizona. Without running water, Nez must bathe her children in water hauled from 30 miles away and heated on the family's wood stove. The "Bennett Freeze," lifted officially in March 2009, prohibited some 8,000 Navajos living on 1.5 million acres of disputed land in Arizona from erecting or repairing homes, including putting in water lines, unless approved by the neighboring Hopi Tribe. Consequently, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs says 77 percent of the homes in the area aren't suitable to live in. -
Adam Nadel, FreelanceNambassa Miriyamge, Uganda. Miriyamge's three-year-old daughter died of malaria. "It was a very sad time, a bad time for the entire family," she recalls. "We are still deeply affected by her death, and I truly fear this disease." As many as 2.5 million people die from malaria each year, leaving an inescapable legacy of guilt and sorrow. -
Rina Castelnuovo, The New York TimesA woman bathes her son in the unauthorized West Bank outpost of Maoz Esther. Although ideological settlers disagree with the decision, Israel has promised to dismantle two dozen outposts as part of its commitment to a two-state solution. -
Thomas Lekfeldt, Ekstra Bladet/MomentVibe takes a shower, spraying water all over the floor. The tube in her chest has been inserted for injections. In June 2007, the five-year-old Danish girl was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The cancer's location made surgery impossible, so Vibe would undergo chemotherapy and radiation treatments for two years before dying on January 17, 2009. Every year 200,000 children around the world develop cancer, and 40 new cases of pediatric brain cancer are diagnosed in Denmark. -
Manpreet Romana, Agence France-PresseU.S. Marine Sergeant Anthony Zabala of 1st Combat Engineering Battalion, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, runs to safety as an improvised explosive device (IED) explodes in the Garmsir district of Helmand Province, Afghanistan, July 13, 2009. A foot patrol was advancing when the blast shot a cloud of dust and rocks into the sky, killing Sergeant Michael W. Heede and Staff Sergeant David S. Spicer. -
Barbara Davidson, Los Angeles TimesA torn American flag flies over a cemetery in Tuba, Arizona, where Thomasina Nez's former partner and father to five of her children is buried. The Bennett Freeze ban, instituted in 1966, prohibited home and property improvements on land in Arizona that was disputed by the Navajo and Hopi tribes. The law left 1.5 million acres frozen in bureaucracy until it was reversed in March 2009. -
Adam Nadel, FreelanceThese mosquitoes are being used to create a malaria vaccine thought to be the Holy Grail of malaria control. Mosquitoes kill more people than any other insect or animal. By transmitting malaria from human to human, mosquitoes are responsible for as many as 2.5 million deaths a year. Nearly half the world's population lives under the threat of contracting malaria. The parasite prays on the most vulnerable of society: at least 700,000 children under 5 years of age will die this year. The disease takes an economic toll, too. Malaria costs Africa an estimated 12 billion dollars annually in lost productivity. -
Rina Castelnuovo, The New York TimesA Jewish settler throws wine at a Palestinian woman in the West Bank city of Hebron, March 10, 2009. Hebron is a center of conflict between the two groups. -
Thomas Lekfeldt, Ekstra Bladet/MomentVibe lies in a hospital bed in the living room of her home in Hundested, Denmark, while her parents, Michael and Helle, eat dinner with a friend. In her last days, Vibe lost almost all ability to move or speak. Only occasionally was she able to gesture with her left hand or make a small sound. Michael used to say that he would catch the stars in the sky if Vibe asked him to. Now he tells Vibe's twin sister Laerke that Vibe has become one of those stars. -
Adam Ferguson, Time MagazineSpecialist Codey Johnson cries by the side of Specialist T. J. Fecteau in the Tangi Valley, Wardak Province, Afghanistan, September 8, 2009. Fecteau was injured during an improvised explosive device (IED) attack on his mine- resistant ambush-protected vehicle. The Tangi Valley, on the doorstep of Kabul, had become a hotbed of insurgency and had not seen a permanent coalition force until the arrival of the U.S. Army's 102-man Apache Company on July 12, 2009. In early August, Apache Company saw 26 soldiers injured and one killed in action, all from IEDs. -
Joshua A. Bickel, Columbia MissourianColumbia College men's basketball coach Bob Burchard dances in the locker room following the Columbia Cougars' victory over MidAmerica Nazarene University in the national semifinals of the NAIA Division I National Championship on March 23, 2009 at Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City, Missouri. As the unranked Cougars continued to win throughout the tournament, Burchard told his team to "just keep riding the wave." -
Adam Nadel, FreelanceA boy on his way back from cutting the grass in Sa Pao, Cambodia. The yearly monsoon rains provide much needed respite from the tropical heat and bring life-sustaining water for crops and livestock. But standing water left behind also provides a breeding ground for malaria-bearing mosquitoes. As a result, in the humid aftermath of the monsoon, infection and mortality rates increase. Paradoxically, intense rain adversely affects mosquito reproduction by disturbing the standing water enough to lower hatching rates. However, populations can increase when the rain lessens. -
Paula Bronstein, Getty ImagesAn inspector combs through the rubble in the parking garage of the Pearl Continental Hotel in Peshawar, Pakistan, on June 10, 2009. A car bomb there the day before killed 17 people. -
James Chance, FreelanceAs in any society, the North Cemetery has its social classes. At the bottom of the cemetery's hierarchy are the squatters, who live in shanties perched on top of the wall of tombs that forms the northern exterior wall. The most populated area of the burial grounds, roughly 100 families live here. -
Victor J. Blue, The Stockton RecordPrivate First Class Lonnie Carter of 3rd Platoon Delta Company, 2-87 Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, searches an Afghan man before he and his family can pass through a U.S. position in Wardak Province, Afghanistan, on June 10, 2009. The first wave in the Afghan surge, the 3rd Brigade's mission is to turn the tide in the face of a revived Taliban insurgency. -
Joe McNally, National Geographic MagazineA new generation of giant telescopes will carry the eye to the edge of the universe. This twin-mirrored Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona will deliver images ten times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope. -
Carolyn Drake, Panos Pictures/ProspektOne of several preserved species on display in the history museum of Aralsk, Kazakhstan, located on the site of a formerly bustling Soviet fishing port on the Aral Sea. The animals were placed in Kazakhstan's Red Book of Endangered Species after water from the Syr-Darya and Amu-Darya rivers was diverted for cotton farming, causing the Aral Sea and the life it supported to deteriorate. Steadily shrinking since the 1960's, by 2007, the Aral Sea had declined to 10 percent of its original size. Even the museum's taxidermied evidence of the once-vibrant natural life is slowly disintegrating. -
Massimo Berruti, Agence VUPortrait of a man who lost two children and a sister in a June 10, 2009 car bomb blast, Peshawar, Pakistan, November 2009. -
James Chance, FreelanceResidents of the North Cemetery's squatter neighborhood look down from their homes at a funeral below. -
Shannon Stapleton, ReutersEric Lipps, 52, waits in line to enter the NYCHires Job Fair in New York on December 9, 2009. U.S. employers cut 85,000 jobs in December, confounding expectations that the labor market was finally stabilizing and piling pressure on President Barack Obama to spur job growth -
Joe McNally, National Geographic MagazinePortraits of Crab Nebula, the most famous supernova remnant, captured in visible, infrared and x-ray wavelengths, left to right, and projected on screens in Monument Valley, Utah, beneath a star-filled sky. Telescopes of the next decade will reveal our universe in unimaginable ways. -
Leo Maguire, The Sunday Times MagazineJoe is an alpha male macaque at the Medical Research Council's breeding center in the United Kingdom. Joe, whose sole purpose is his highly productive mating capability, will spend his life in captivity and his offspring will be killed in medical experiments. -
Carolyn Drake, Panos Pictures/ProspektSchoolchildren pick cotton in Zhetisay, Kazakhstan. The area was sparsely populated before the Soviet Union government began building towns in order to launch its massive cotton industry, which now spans all the countries in Central Asia. Water being funneled away from the Syr Darya River to irrigate the fields is one of the reasons for the Aral Sea's depletion. -
Robert Beck, Sports IllustratedTiger Woods flips clubs in midair with his caddy, Steve Williams, during practice at the 2009 World Golf Championships' Accenture Match Play Championship at The Ritz-Carlton Golf Club, Dove Mountain in Marana, Arizona. It was Woods' first tournament since having reconstructive surgery on his left knee. Tim Clark of South Africa would defeat Woods in the second round. Geoff Ogilvy of Australia was ultimately the winner. -
Renée C. Byer, The Sacramento BeeThird-grader Devin Bryson, 8, and kindergartener Elizabeth Bryson, 6, both students at Matsuyama Elementary School, shout in support of teachers at the State Capitol in Sacramento, California, on Friday March 13, 2009. Public school teachers gathered outside the Capitol after school hours—to protest the estimated 25,000 preliminary layoffs of teachers, librarians and other staff statewide due to cuts in education funding. Many demonstrators dressed in pink to call attention to the pink slips. The California Teachers Association blasted the unusually high number of cuts as school districts tinkered with their budgets in the hopes of limiting layoffs. -
Elizabeth Kreutz, FreelanceSeven-time Tour de France champion and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong prepares for his comeback to competitive cycling on a training ride in Austin, Texas, September 6, 2008. -
Joel Sartore, National Geographic MagazinThe number of dusky seaside sparrows, found mainly on Florida's Merritt Island, declined from some 3,000 pairs to none when the salt marsh they inhabited was sprayed with DDT and taken over for use by NASA. The bird shown here is the very last dusky. It died in 1987 and is buried in a bottle of alcohol at the Florida Museum of Natural History. -
Carolyn Drake, Panos Pictures/ProspektIn the Tajikistan village of Akjar, the irrigation canal is the only source of water. Plumbing shut down after the Soviet Union collapsed, so the village relies on dirty water for survival. -
Steven Day, Associated PressPassengers wait to be rescued on the wings of US Airways jetliner that safely landed on the Hudson River after birds knocked out both of its engines, January 15, 2009. -
John Moore, Getty ImagesHotel property manager Paul Martinez kicks in a tenant's door after no one answered the knock during an eviction on February 26, 2009 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The tenant, Rocki Holmes, says he was laid off from his job in a retail store two months earlier, causing him to fall behind on his rent payments at the low-budget hotel. -
Elizabeth Kreutz, FreelanceLance Armstrong's legs look ready to race before the start of the Tour de France in Monaco, July 3, 2009. After a four-year hiatus, the 37-year-old announced his return to competitive cycling in September 2008. Armstrong rode into Paris in third place. -
Tomas van Houtryve, Panos PicturesA hotel staff member polishes benches under a picture of Chairman Mao Zedong on November 3, 2009 in Nanjie Village, Henan Province, China. Nanjie is a model collective village run along Maoist lines. Residents live in identical apartments and receive free health care and education, but earn only a token salary, paid in coupons rather than currency. The government-supported Red Tourism program glorifies the deeds of past communist leaders through monuments, battle reenactments and tours of model communist villages like Nanjie. Hardly a reference can be found to the millions killed during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. -
Carolyn Drake, Panos Pictures/ProspektLow water levels in a reservoir above Nurek Dam in Tajikistan. The water that nourishes the five former Soviet Union republics of Central Asia comes from melting glaciers and snow in the mountains of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. During Soviet times, decisions about how to share resources were made by the central government in Moscow. Since becoming independent in 1991, the nations now argue about how the area's dams should be used. Countries downstream want water to be stored in reservoirs during the winter and released for irrigation in the summer. Upstream countries want to use the water in winter to generate electricity. -
Barbara Davidson, Los Angeles TimesJessica Alvarado fixes her Quinceañera dress on a blood-stained sidewalk next to a memorial honoring tamale vendor Cosme Gonzaleza, who was robbed and killed in front of her Los Angeles home. -
John Moore, Getty ImagesNeighbors comfort Harvey Lesser, 58, after he was evicted from his apartment on December 11, 2009 in Boulder, Colorado. Lesser, an unemployed software developer suffering from high blood pressure, diabetes and chronic back problems, says he could not afford to make his rent payment the previous month, which led to the eviction. Since being laidoff by IBM, Lesser's savings, including his retirement, has been exhausted due to living expenses and his $700-a-month health insurance premium. -
Mark J. Terrill, Associated PressQueen Latifah speaks during the memorial service for Michael Jackson at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California, July 7, 2009. Jackson died on June 25, 2009 at the age of 50 after suffering a cardiac arrest at his home in Bel-Air. -
Tomas van Houtryve, Panos PicturesA candidate takes the oral test to become a tour leader at the Yangjialing Revolution Headquarters site in Yan'an, China, on November 8, 2009. In 1945, the Seventh National Congress of the Communist Party of China was held in this assembly hall, naming Mao Zedong the undisputed leader of the party and the revolution and enshrining Mao's "thought" into the Party Constitution. -
Emilio Morenatti, Associated PressA Pakistani boy from Swat Valley sleeps under a mosquito net outside his tent at the Jalozai refugee camp, near Peshawar, Pakistan, May 26, 2009 -
Charles Ommanney, Getty ImagesBarack H. Obama meditates backstage at the Capitol before being sworn in as the 44th President of the United States on January 20, 2009. Earlier that morning, the President-elect had listened to President Bush's parting words at the White House before making the short drive to the Capitol, where more than a million people were waiting on the National Mall. The first African-American to be elected president, Obama, 47, was poised to inherit two wars, a recession and rising unemployment. In his inaugural speech, he would say, "Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and begin again the work of remaking America." -
John Moore, Getty ImagesMary Ann Smith collects her belongings after an eviction team removed the furniture from her foreclosed house in Adams County, Colorado, on February 2, 2009. Smith says she and her husband had been renting from the house's owner, who collected the monthly payments but had stopped paying his mortgage. The bank foreclosed on the property and called the Adams County sheriff's department to supervise the eviction. The Smiths managed to borrow enough money to rent another house for themselves and their four children, but not in time to avoid eviction. -
Magnus Wennman, AftonbladetInga Schuenemann, 27, of Riverside, California, screams outside a memorial service for Michael Jackson at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California, on July 7, 2009. Some 1.6 million people applied for tickets to the memorial, but only 11,000 were given a spot inside the arena. -
Tomas van Houtryve, Panos PicturesA young Moldovan girl burns a portrait of Vladimir Lenin that rioters had taken from the Parliament building in Chisinau, Moldova, on April 7, 2009. Thousands of demonstrators had ransacked the building to protest what they said was a fraudulent victory by the governing Communist Party in the general election on April 5. -
Paul Hansen, Dagens NyheterFelix meets his new little sister, Emma Richardson, on February 26, 2009. He has helped his mother choose her first outfit: cowboy pajamas. Felix, like his older brother Mathias, has a genetic disease that progressively destroys the brain. Mathias is now deaf and paralyzed and cannot speak. While Felix shows no outward signs of the disease yet, one hope for his survival is Emma, whom his parents selected to have the exact right genes. Stem cells taken from the umbilical cord at the time of Emma's birth may save Felix if the disease breaks out. -
Jahi Chikwendiu, The Washington PostAn image of president-elect Barack Obama on the back of a bus in Kisumu, Kenya, the country's third largest city. Thousands of miles from Washington, D.C., Kenyans celebrated the incoming U.S. presidency of Barack Obama. Kenyans, particularly from the village where the president's father was born, symbolically claimed the new U.S. president as their own president. -
Ruth Fremson, The New York TimesThousands of people receive free dental services at The Forum in Inglewood, California, on August 12, 2009. People waited in line for days to participate in the free, eight-day medical clinic set up by Remote Area Medical, a nonprofit organization that provides no-cost treatments using volunteer doctors and dentists. Set in an arena, cleanings, drillings and tooth extractions took place out in the open. -
Katie Falkenberg, The Washington TimesCoal miners and wives guard the entrance to a Massey Energy mountaintop mine, shouting at protesters who had marched there to demand a stop to mountaintop removal mining. Nearly 2,000 miles of streams have been contaminated or buried and more than a million acres of forest have been destroyed across Appalachia due to mountaintop coal mining. Each week, four million pounds of explosives are used in the region for mountaintop removal, the equivalent of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Coal proponents argue that America needs mountaintop mining to keep the lights on, and West Virginia needs it for the jobs. -
Tomas van Houtryve, Panos PicturesPapers fall out of the windows of the parliament building as rioters ransack the inside in Chisinau, Moldova, on April 7, 2009. Demonstrators had stormed the building to protest the victory of the governing Communist Party in the general election two days earlier. Opposition leaders accused the Communists of rigging the elections and demanded a recount. More than 30 people were injured in the protests and three demonstrators died in police custody under mysterious circumstances. The poorest country in Europe, Moldova is the only former Soviet Union state to vote the Communist Party back into power through democratic elections. -
Tomas van Houtryve, Panos Pictures/ProspektChildren clean up after lunch in the cafeteria of the Gymnasia-orphanage N.2 in Chisinau, Moldova, on May 28, 2009. The facility has over 500 children living on the campus. About 80 percent are social orphans whose parents have turned them over to institutional care. -
Adam Ferguson, The New York TimesAn Afghan woman is rushed from the scene of a suicide car bomb in Kabul, Afghanistan, on December 15, 2009. Afghan authorities reported eight people were killed and 40 were wounded in the blast. -
Craig F. Walker, The Denver PostDayvon Vaughns, 6, participates in a hip-hop dance class during the afterschool program at Fairview Elementary School in Denver, Colorado. The program focuses on low-income students, offering tutoring, mentoring, meals and recreation to children who have few alternatives. Instructor Analisa Angel says the dance class aims to increase the students' self-confidence and team-building skills. -
Katie Falkenberg, The Washington TimesRecently planted tree seedlings grow in rocky ground designated for reclamation on a mountaintop removal site in eastern Kentucky. Because the rich topsoil has been scraped off during mining, it's often difficult for native trees to survive on reclaimed sites. Complete reforestation is rare, and many mountaintops end up grassy pastures. -
Susana Vera, FreelanceAn Arhuaco girl rests on hay outside her home in Nabusimake, Colombia. The indigenous communities of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta are abandoned victims of the armed conflict in Colombia. -
Tomasz Gudzowaty, Yours Gallery/Agentur FocusA group of boys living in the slums of Mumbai, India, some of whom work as caddies at a local golf club, have begun playing their own variety of golf. Too poor to afford the equipment, they have molded iron rods to resemble golf clubs and use cheap plastic balls from toy shops for golf balls. The rules, though, remain the same as in the West. In modern India, youth are increasingly exposed to Western lifestyles, which can result in an interesting mix of local traditions and emerging aspirations. -
Craig F. Walker, The Denver PostIan Fisher has second thoughts as he cradles his injured elbow during processing into the United States Army, June 20, 2007. His decision to join the Army had grown out of many things: the opportunity to fight for his country, the desire to add to his family's military legacy and the need to point his life in a productive direction. But, from his first day in fatigues through his tour in Iraq, military life often didn't mesh with his expectations.
