Photo Galleries

Homecomings: Tech. Sgt. Dale Anderson is greeted by his family on the tarmac of Lahm Airport in Mansfield, Ohio, on Dec. 23 as 62 Airmen from the 179th Airlift Wing of the Ohio Air National Guard were welcomed home after 60 days of deployment in Iraq as part of the Air Mobility Command. (Dave Polcyn/Mansfield News Journal/AP)

Boys play football on a dusty patch of land on the streets in Bentiu, south-central Sudan, on Nov. 8. Bentiu was a flash point during the two-decade civil war between North and South Sudan. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Newscom)

German Bundeswehr army soldiers of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) wear Santa Claus hats as they attend a Christmas celebration at Camp Marmal in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan, on Dec. 22. (Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters)

A pedestrian braves the snow in northeastern Philadelphia on Saturday, Dec. 19. A major winter storm buried the Mid-Atlantic and East coast over the weekend. (Joseph Kaczmarek/AP)

People play in floodwaters during a period of seasonal high water in Venice, Italy, on Nov. 30. The water level in the canal city rose to four feet above normal. (Michele Crosera/Reuters)

Maywood, Calif., residents Minerva Ayala and her son Alexis play by a monitoring well near a Superfund site that regulators have declared safe. City officials still worry about long-term exposure to contaminants. (Tony Avelar/The Christian Science Monitor)

Children are seen sledding in Coulsdon, Surrey, outside London. (Zuma/Newscom/File)

Festive lights cover a house on 34th St in Baltimore's Hampden neighborhood. (Andy Nelson/The Christian Science Monitor/FILE)

The White House is seen as heavy snow falls in Washington on Dec. 19. The East Coast was hit with a snowstorm that was forecast to dump up to two feet of snow in the area. (Yuri Gripas/Reuters)