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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.

On Election Day 2012, a judge ordered a giant Obama mural covered at a Philadelphia polling place. Workers covered it only partly, leaving it visible.

On Election Day 2012, President Obama made a surprise stop at a Chicago field office, congratulated Mitt Romney, and phone-banked volunteers himself.

In October 2012, Elzbieta Plackowska killed her 7-year-old son and the 5-year-old girl she was babysitting in a Naperville townhome.

This book column looks at Lawrence Anthony's The Elephant Whisperer: a rogue elephant herd, a Zululand reserve, and a bond that crossed species.

Developer Kevin Burke showed Virgin Mobile USA's 6 million accounts could be brute-forced with just a phone number — and the company first shrugged.

France closed 20 embassies across the Muslim world in September 2012 after Charlie Hebdo's cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad — a landmark free-speech clash.

Bravery-award winner Henna Bakshi was booked under the IT Act for allegedly abusive posts on Chandigarh traffic police's Facebook page after her stolen-car

Visually impaired Pratish Datta topped his M.Sc. Mathematics batch at IIT Kharagpur in 2012 and received the gold medal from President Pranab Mukherjee.

Volume 13 of Sreepathy's Retro Reel looks back at three Hindi classics — Namak Haram, Reshma Aur Shera, and the film that launched Amitabh Bachchan.

The sharpest of Aseem Trivedi's anti-corruption cartoons — and why the sedition charge under colonial-era Section 124A collapsed under legal scrutiny.

The attempt by Matthew Heimbach, then a student at Towson University in Maryland, to form a White Student Union on campus in 2012 attracted national media…

Jeff Truelove spoke out after his daughter Hannah, 16, was found dead in Georgia in 2012; her killer's conviction was upheld on appeal.

India trains huge numbers of doctors and loses many to emigration. Why rural service bonds don't work — and what might actually keep them.

Days after the Norway children returned home, Indian papers reported another custody row in the US — a Bengali couple fearing the loss of their infant son.

After Obama's Charlotte acceptance speech in September 2012, both parties had their nominees: the race was essentially tied, Gallup showing Obama 47, Romney 46.

In 2012, Indian-Americans backed Obama by lopsided margins — up to 84% in exit polls. Immigration policy, more than economics, explains why.

Alleged MNS workers vandalized a Maharashtra theatre screening a Bhojpuri film — part of a 2012 campaign against north Indians in the state.

In August 2012 Paul Ryan told a radio host he'd run a marathon in under three hours. The record said 4:01:25. A small fib with a long shadow.

California's legislature passed SB 1298 in August 2012, legalizing Google's driverless-car tests on public roads — the first step toward autonomy.