The Photos That Mattered in 2012

U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama hug after
delivering remarks during a campaign event at the Alliant Energy
Amphitheater in Dubuque, Iowa, on Aug. 15. The Obama campaign posted the photo on Twitter
under the words "Four more years" shortly before the president
delivered his victory speech on Election Day in November. With more than
800,000 retweets, it is now the most retweeted post in Twitter history.




Addressing the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 27 in New York
City, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu points to a red line he
drew on a graphic of a bomb to illustrate the stage at which
preemptive military action against Iranian nuclear facilities would be
necessary. Netanyahu pressed the United States to establish "red lines"
for Iran's nuclear program during the country's presidential election.




Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng (right), who escaped from house arrest
in April and took refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, looks on as
U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke (left) talks on the phone on May 2
in the Chinese capital. After several days of tense negotiations, the
United States struck a deal with China under which Chen was permitted to
travel to the United States to study.









An armed man waves his rifle as buildings and cars are engulfed in
flames inside the U.S. mission in Benghazi on Sept. 11. The terrorist
attack on the compound killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three
other Americans.






In a cemetery in Aleppo on Oct. 13, a Free Syrian Army fighter
illuminates the body of an unknown man killed by the Syrian Army's
artillery shelling before burying the corpse in a common grave. More
than 44,000 have died from the violence in Syria since March 2011,
according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.




First-grader Henry Terifay and his sister, fourth-grader Kelly Terifay,
wait in shock outside Sandy Hook Elementary School after Adam Lanza
opened fire at the school in Newtown, Conn. on Dec. 14, fatally shooting
20 children and six adults before killing himself.



Former CIA Director Gen. Davis Petraeus shakes hands with biographer Paula Broadwell, co-author of All In: The Education of General David Petraeus,
on July 13, 2011. Petraeus, who popularized counterinsurgency strategy
while overseeing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, resigned from his
post at the intelligence agency on Nov. 9 over an extramarital affair
with Broadwell. The FBI began an investigation after it was tipped off
by Jill Kelley, a friend of the Petraeus family who received
threatening emails from Broadwell.






North Korean leader Kim Jong Un smokes a cigarette at the General
Satellite Control and Command Center on Dec. 12 after the country's
successful launch of a long-range Unha-3 rocket carrying a satellite.
Japan, South Korea, and the United States accused North Korea, which
staged a failed rocket launch in April, of testing missile technology
that could deliver a nuclear warhead.






Rising water brought on by Hurricane Sandy rushes into a subterranean
parking garage on Oct. 29 in New York City's Financial District. The
massive hurricane left more than 250 people dead across several countries and caused at least $65 billion in damage.






Water shoots out from the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze river in
China's Hubei province on July 24 after heavy downpours in the upper
reaches of the dam caused the highest flood peak of the year. Nearly 80 people died in the worst flooding in Beijing in six decades, according to Chinese authorities.