© Tarik Tinazay/WpN

Soldiers transporting a wounded soldier to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center from the Ramstein Air Base, in Landstuhl, Germany, on Thursday, Oct. 23, 2008. Since the 2003 inception of the wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan, nearly 30,000 American military members have been wounded. Most of the soldiers who have suffered severe bodily harm are airlifted to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, the largest American military hospital outside of the U.S. It is the primary treatment center for coalition casualties.

© AP Photo/Jerome Delay

Esperance Nirakagori holds her granddaughter, Reponse; her daughter, Protegee, sits at right in their hut in the east Congo village of Kiseguru, some 20 kms from Kiwanja, after being reunited for the second time, Monday, Nov. 17, 2008. UNICEF says hundreds of children have been separated from their families since fighting flared in eastern Congo in August, and that more than 1,600 children in the province were seeking their parents last week. On Nov. 6, Protegee was photographed carrying her niece, Response, and crying as she searched for her mother in eastern Congo.

© David Turnley

Justice Jongintaba's grandson holds up a portrait of Nelson Mandela wearing his first suit, taken during his college years.

© Steven J. Kaslowski

Polar bear, Ursus maritimus, sow with cub walking on multi-layer ice (freshwater pans formed over the years where the salt is squeezed out of the ice) on the Chuckchi Sea, off the National Petroleum Reserves, Alaska.

© Max Whittaker/Getty Images

Tammy Tyra of Texas tries to warm up in a tent city for the homeless in downtown Reno, Nevada, Oct. 6, 2008. Tyra works cleaning trucks but is unable to make enough money to afford housing. The City of Reno set up the tent city when existing shelters became overcrowded as Nevada struggles with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country.

© Paul Taggart/WpN

Rusudani, 27, stands with her children in one of the dark rooms at the Khobi Swimming Complex on Sept. 29, 2008, in Khobi, Georgia. Rusudani and her children along with nine other families live in the Khobi Swimming Complex which has been a Collective Center (CC) for IDPs from Abkhazia since the conflict in the 1990s. The building is structurally unsound, has no running water, and no functioning heating during the winter.