Disaster_Accident

20090905-153855-pic-104531754.jpg

Locals wait out a storm in Goma, where the main thoroughfare is choked with potholes that fill with rainwater. Hunger and disease have killed an estimated 5 million people in Congo since 1998. "By any yardstick, [Congo] has been a humanitarian disaster, and one the world has ignored," says John Holmes, undersecretary-general of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. (Mary F. Calvert/The Washington Times)

20090816-193346-pic-792004560.jpg

** FILE ** Pam Service, curator of the Clarke Historical Museum in Eureka, Calif., guards a stuffed condor, one of the last to fly over California's North Coast. (Associated Press)

20090811-214918-pic-403593316.jpg

ASSOCIATED PRESS OVERLOOKED: A wheelchair sits outside the main entrance to a nursing home in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

20090804-194841-pic-68735963.jpg

** FILE ** New York state troopers investigate a fatal accident in which eight people were killed July 26 in Hawthorne, N.Y. A medical examiner found that the driver traveling the wrong way on the highway was legally drunk and high on marijuana.

MONGOLIA_007.jpg

Khavdal Khurman worked in a Soviet run coal mine outside Naliakh, Mongolia, for 11 years. The mine was closed down in 1990 after the democratic revolution, because of safety concerns. Now he picks through the detritus from surface coal shafts for fuel to heat his ger. He survives on a small pension from the government because of mining related illness, but believes the new democracy will lead to a better life for Mongolians. (J.M. Eddins Jr. / The Washington Times)

20090723-224929-pic-394585424.jpg

Since 2004, Muslim separatists in the three provinces bordering Malaysia have been waging a fierce insurgency that has claimed more than 7,000 lives. (Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)

20090720-225822-pic-916964113.jpg

ASSOCIATED PRESS Officials look over two light-rail trains involved in a crash in San Francisco on Saturday. Forty-seven people were injured in the crash. The city's transit workers union blamed a "medical condition" for the driver's loss of consciousness.

20090719-220248-pic-390650583.jpg

The government's required switch from incandescent light bulbs to CFLs come with potential hazards: Improper disposal of the mercury-powered bulbs may pollute landfills and groundwater. (Associated Press)

GUN_006_09201819.jpg

**FILE** Gun safety and basic marksmanship is taught at the National Rifle Association in Fairfax on Sept. 20, 2005. (The Washington Times)

WMATA16.JPG

Emergency personnel walk along the tracks at the scene where two Metro red line trains collided. (Rod Lamkey Jr. / The Washington Times)

20090611-212419-pic-964502605.jpg

Association Press Coal River Mountain (left) forms the backdrop for a mountaintop coal-mining site at Kayford Mountain, W.Va.

Air_France.jpg

** FILE ** Brazilian sailors recover debris from the missing Air France Airbus jet in the Atlantic Ocean in June 2009 in this photo released by the Brazilian air force. (AP Photo)

20090520-182056-pic-318134556.jpg

The Field of Honor near Fort Bragg's Airborne and Special Operations Museum invites people to buy and dedicate flags to service members, current and fallen. (Kelly Twedell/Special to The Washington Times)

20090516-021938-pic-609000500.jpg

** FILE ** Fans of the Washington Capitals show their allegiance as their team takes on the Tampa Bay Lightning at the Verizon Center in 2009. (The Washington Times)

20090514-225716-pic-59340381.jpg

** FILE ** Traffic stacks up on the eastbound Santa Monica Freeway in Los Angeles in May 2009. (AP Photo)

20090507-231939-pic-203609472.jpg

A display of flags in Shanksville, Pa., stand in memory of the 40 passengers and crew members of United Flight 93 who were killed on Sept. 11, 2001. A permanent memorial is planned by the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attack. (Associated Press/File)

20090507-214745-pic-89013008.jpg

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES Contractors of the U.S. security firm Blackwater secure the site of a roadside attack near the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad in 2005. The firm, whose guards were accused of fatally shooting 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007, left Baghdad on Thursday.