Pictures of the Year 2006: Editor's Choice

Sara George, 20, of Houston, cries for her brother, Lance Corporal Phillip C. George, during a memorial service in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, Jan. 31. He was killed in Afghanistan and was remembered with three other Marines of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment from the Marine Corp Base in Hawaii.
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Iraq operations continue. A U.S. Marine with Combat Logistics Company-117 rigs a rope from a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter to a hovering CH-53E Super Stallion in Al Asad in western Iraq's Al Anbar province, March 18.
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Amidst the seemingly endless stream of reports of car bombings weekly in Iraq, 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team soldiers take a moment to greet a young Iraqi boy in central Baghdad's Karradah district, Oct. 27.
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Outgoing U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resigned under pressure that intensified as the year went on. Rumsfeld made a surprise trip to Iraq to bid goodbye to the troops, and during a visit to Iraq at Balad Air Base north of Baghdad on Dec. 9, he thanks crews from the 2/135th General Support Aviation Battalion Medical Evacuation unit for their service to the country.
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Once again this year, wildfires were big news. An inmate hand crew prepares to cut a fireline in the early morning hours at the Edgemont fire on July 15, near Redlands, Calif.
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Rance Pendrey, 3, of Okeechobee, Fla., enjoys his ride on his sheep as he competes in the Mutton Bustin' competition for 3- to 5-year-old children at the Okeechobee Cattlemen's Association Speckled Perch Rodeo March 11.
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President George W. Bush hands back a crying baby to a woman in the crowd as he arrived for an outdoor dinner with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Trinwillershagen, Germany, July 13.
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Bindi Irwin, daughter of Australian environmentalist and television personality Steve Irwin, reads a speech about her father at his memorial service at Australia Zoo in Beerwah, Australia, Sept. 20. Irwin, known as the "Crocodile Hunter," was killed Sept. 4 by a stingray barb during a diving expedition on the Great Barrier Reef.
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A fire department diver retrieves a dead swan Feb. 17, in Wittow on the Baltic island of Ruegen in north-eastern Germany. Preliminary tests showed two wild swans had died of the H5N1 strain on Ruegen island in the Baltic Sea, German officials said Tuesday, following in the wake of Austria who said it had found two cases of the virus in dead swans in the south.
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Barbour County employee Bill Stemple remembers the Sago Mine disaster victims as he lights candles Jan. 6 at in Philippi, W.Va., the base of crosses for the four miners who were killed in the explosion. Only one miner survived.
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Amish men gather in front of the one-room schoolhouse where a 32-year-old milk truck driver took hostages, eventually shooting and killing five girls, aged 7-12, before killing himself in Nickel Mines, Pa., Oct. 2. Ten days later, a bulldozer tore down the school.
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Lebanese citizens watch Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah speak on television as black smoke rises from new Israeli attacks on the Hezbollah stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, July 16. The "July War," in which some 1,400 people died, lasted about two months.
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An earthmover fills a grave with mud as shadows from mourning villagers shroud the mass burial ceremony for victims of a June 16 landmine explosion set by suspected Tiger rebels. It killed at least 64 people in a village about 130 miles north of Colombo, Sri Lanka.
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Vika Chervinska, an 8-year-old Ukrainian girl suffering from cancer, waits to receive treatment with her mother at the children's hospital in Kiev April 18. That month, the world marked the 20th anniversary of the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which sent a radioactive cloud across Europe.
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