President Obama holds hands with his daughters Malia (left) and Sasha as they leave Sea Life Park, a marine wildlife park, with family friends on Dec. 27 in Waimanalo, Hawaii. (Associated Press)
Debris litters the scene of explosions in Jalalabad in Nangarhar province, east of Kabul, Afghanistan, on Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2012. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)
A man stands on the porch roof of a house buried in snow Saturday in Cordova, Alaska. Massive snowfalls have collapsed roofs, triggered avalanches and even trapped some people in their homes. (Associated Press)
A man stands on the porch roof of a house buried in snow in the fishing town of Cordova, Alaska, on Saturday, Jan. 7, 2012. (AP Photo/Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, Kim Weibl)
The bungee cord tied to Erin Langworthy, 22, of Perth, Australia, snaps during her jump from the Victoria Falls Bridge over the Zambezi River in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, on Saturday, Dec. 31, 2011. (AP Photo/Australian Channel 9 via APTN)
**FILE** A Chesapeake Energy natural gas well site operates near Burlington, Pa. Natural gas locked in dense rock deep beneath Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia and Ohio requires a powerful drilling process called hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” to release it. (Associated Press)
Workers move a section of well casing into place at a Chesapeake Energy natural gas well site near Burlington, Pa. Fracking uses water mixed with sand and chemicals to break underground rock and release large amounts of gas. (Associated Press)
GEOEYE SATELLITE IMAGE VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
This Sept. 26, 2009 file satellite image shows a facility under construction inside a mountain located about 20 miles northeast of Qom, Iran. Iran has begun uranium enrichment at a new underground site that is well protected from possible foreign airstrikes, a leading hard-line newspaper reported Sunday.
Wake Forest's C.J. Harris, right, shoots the game-winning shot over Virginia Tech's Erick Green, left, in the final seconds of Wake Forest's 58-55 win in Winston-Salem, N.C., Saturday, Jan. 7, 2012. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton)
Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (center) is joined Jan. 6, 2012, at a campaign event in Conway, S.C., by South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (left) and wife Ann. (Associated Press)
In this Thursday, Dec. 22, 2011 photo, Mizuho Nakayama shops at a grocery shop near her house in Tokyo. Japan's nuclear crisis has turned Nakayama into one of a small but growing number of Internet-savvy activist moms. In the days and weeks following the March 11 tsunami, frustration over the sketchy information coming from the government about the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant drove many Japanese to Twitter and alternative media webcasts. (AP Photo/Malcolm J. Foster)
Ryan Homes is building 106 single-family homes on quarter-acre to half-acre sites at Lake Linganore at Eaglehead in Frederick. The Avalon model, with 2,935 square feet, is priced from $419,990 to $455,990.
"The situation on the ground now, in humanitarian terms, is grim. Because people fled town, they didn't take anything with them. They've been in the bush for up to a week. They haven't had food, they haven't had access to clean water, in a number of cases their people are wounded." - Lise Grande, U.N. deputy humanitarian coordinator for South Sudan.
Elephant herds were thriving in Kenya's Tsavo East National Park and other parts of eastern and southern Africa since ivory trade was banned in 1989. Now, the animals are not safe from poachers just about anywhere on the continent. (Associated Press)
Malaysian customs officers last month seized hundreds of elephant tusks worth an estimated $1.3 million. Asian crime syndicates are increasingly involved in poaching and in the illegal ivory trade across Africa, a wildlife trade monitoring group says. (Associated Press)
Northstar Disposal Services LLC in Youngstown, Ohio, has halted operations at its injection well, which disposes of brine used in gas and oil drilling, after a series of small earthquakes in the area, including a magnitude 4.0 on New Year's Eve. (Associated Press)
James Durbin, an "American Idol" finalist, married longtime girlfriend Heidi Lowe in a New Year's Eve ceremony at the edge of a California redwood forest. (Associated Press)
Flames raise from a gas pipeline after an explosion near the town Rastan in the restive Homs province of Syria on Jan. 3, 2012. The Syrian government blamed the explosion on terrorists, according to the Syrian official news agency SANA. (Associated Press/SANA)