Featured Stories

A meditation on December: the year's final month as a season of reckoning, ritual, and the quiet arithmetic of what the year added up to.

After Sandy Hook, CNN's Piers Morgan called gun-rights advocate Larry Pratt 'unbelievably stupid' on air, igniting a debate on guns and journalism.

Days after the December 2012 Delhi gang rape, Amitabh Bachchan asked the question haunting India: a nation that worships goddesses yet brutalizes daughters.

First-grade teacher Kaitlin Roig hid 15 students in a classroom bathroom during the Sandy Hook shooting, promising them they would see Christmas.

Remembering the 26 victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting: 20 first-graders and six educators, and the lives they were living.

Retro Reel volume 14 revisits West Side Story, the 1961 musical that turned Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet into a New York street tragedy.

In December 2012, researchers proposed that epigenetic 'epi-marks' explain homosexuality, offering a new answer to an old evolutionary puzzle.

Pandit Ravi Shankar, the sitar legend who carried Indian classical music to the world, died in San Diego on December 11, 2012. He was 92.

In December 2012, Nelson Mandela was flown to a Pretoria hospital for tests, prompting a fresh wave of global anxiety about the 94-year-old icon's health.

Jacintha Saldanha, the nurse duped by a prank call to the hospital treating the Duchess of Cambridge, was found dead in December 2012.

Bolly Volley's year-ender: 2012 was the year Bollywood's middle cinema broke through, from Barfi! and Kahaani to Gangs of Wasseypur.

Thieves stole thousands of dollars in donated Christmas gifts from St. Anne's Parish in Shrewsbury, MA. Then Hasbro stepped in to replace them all.

Seniors at The Willows in Newhall protested a 2012 order to remove their Christmas tree. The management company backed down within a day.

Naperville's 'Chai, Chat with Books' club brings eight women together over chai and chaat to talk books. A diary note on why book clubs endure.

In late 2012, Chandrasekhar Vallabhaneni and his wife Anupama were convicted in Oslo of gross maltreatment of their seven-year-old son and jailed.

In November 2012, France's industry minister said ArcelorMittal was no longer welcome in the country, escalating the fight over the Florange steel plant.

Shaheen Dhada questioned Mumbai's shutdown for Bal Thackeray's funeral on Facebook. She was arrested. Her friend was arrested for liking the post.

Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old Indian dentist, died in an Irish hospital in October 2012 after being refused a termination during a miscarriage.

Tabloids periodically claimed Barack and Michelle Obama had secretly filed for divorce. No credible evidence ever emerged, and the marriage endured.

Diwali is the festival of lights, but the real diya is the mind. A short reflection on what the festival asks of us, from our 2012 archives.