2012: The Year in Pictures
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January 18: The cruise ship Costa Concordia lays on its side off the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, after striking a rock. At least 30 people were killed and the ship's captain was charged with manslaughter and abandoning the ship.
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February 12: Singer Adele holds her six Grammy Awards at the 54th annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, California.
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February 26: Actress Angelina Jolie poses at the 84th Academy Awards in Hollywood, California.
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March 9: A boy who fled a war across the border in Sudan's Blue Nile state waits outside a clinic in Doro refugee camp, South Sudan.
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March 15: Britain's Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge plays hockey with the Team GB hockey teams at Riverside Arena in the Olympic Park in London.
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March 26: Tibetan exile Jamphel Yeshi screams as he runs after setting himself on fire at a protest in New Delhi, India.
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March 29: Mireia Arnau sits behind the broken glass of her shop which was stormed by demonstrators during a general strike in Barcelona to protest Spanish labor reforms.
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April 8: A soldier stands guard in front of the Unha-3 rocket sitting on a launch pad at the West Sea Satellite Launch Site, northwest of Pyongyang, North Korea.
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April 11: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un waves during the Fourth Conference of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) in Pyongyang.
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April 12: George Zimmerman, charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of the 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, is directed by a Seminole County Deputy and his attorney Mark O'Mara during a court hearing in Sanford, Florida.
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April 13: A child looks up during the Bisket festival at the ancient city of Bhaktapur near Kathmandu. The nine-day festival takes place over the Nepalese New Year.
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April 17: The Space Shuttle Discovery cruised over the U.S. Capitol in Washington as a part of its tour before being retired to the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy center in Virginia. (Alison Klein for VOA)
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April 28: A Nuba woman, wounded during a raid by Sudan's air force, sits in a makeshift hospital in South Kordofan, Sudan.
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May 24: Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese dissident and legal advocate who was granted visiting scholar status in the United States, gives an interview in New York.
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May 30: A Syrian woman cries as she carries her son who was shot in the hand by a Syrian border guard when they were crossing a river from Syria to Lebanon, at the northern border town of Wadi Khaled, north Lebanon.
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May 31: Jake Beaudoin, a U.S. Army Private, takes cover during a controlled detonation in Kandahar province, southern Afghanistan.
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June 2: Britain's Queen Elizabeth after the Derby horse race in Epsom, England during her Diamond Jubilee celebrations.
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June 5: Revelers in London watch Britain's Queen Elizabeth appear on the Buckingham Palace balcony as part of Diamond Jubilee celebrations to mark the 60th anniversary of her accession to the throne.
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June 10: An ethnic Rakhine man with homemade weapons walks in front of houses that were set on fire during fighting between Buddhist Rakhine and Muslim Rohingya communities in Sittwe, Burma.
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June 26: The Waldo Canyon wildfire burns as it moved into subdivisions and destroyed homes in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
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July 23: James E. Holmes appears at a Colorado court. He was charged with 24 counts of first-degree murder in connection with the shooting rampage at a theater showing the latest Batman movie.
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August 3: Pussy Riot members, from left, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alekhina sit in a glass cage at a court room in Moscow, Russia.
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August 3: Runners pass by the Olympics flame on the first day of the athletics in the Olympic Stadium at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.
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August 5: Jamaica's Usain Bolt crosses the finish line to win gold in the men's 100-meter final during the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.
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August 5: McKayla Maroney of the U.S. with her silver medal in the women's vault victory ceremony during the London 2012 Olympic Games.