A ten years old boy carries a mortar shell in a weapons factory of the Free Syrian Army in Aleppo, September 7. (Anti-clockwise from bottom left) A submerged statue of the Hindu Lord Shiva stands amid the floodwaters of the Ganges river at Rishikesh in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand June 17; a child runs to safety as armed police hunt gunmen who went on a shooting spree at Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi September 21; Islamists in Egypt protest against a 'coup' that disposed Mohamed Mursi on July 05; survivors of Super Typhoon Haiyan after a week on November 18,2013.

PHOTO: AFP, REUTERS

Snowden shakes the world

The cache of documents released by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden shed light on the extent of US espionage operations in various parts of the world and threatened to damage US relations with some key international players, who claimed in public to be furious with the US's snooping in their own countries.

The repercussions echoed far outside the intelligence community: US web companies could lose billions of dollars as international users turn to products they think are less prone to spying eyes. And it does the already tetchy relationship between Washington and Moscow little good when the latter is giving asylum to America's now best-known fugitive.

Syria's civil war and the war that didn't happen

On the morning of Aug. 21, reports emerged from a Damascus suburb of a sarin gas attack, a grim event in a civil war that had already cost the lives of 100,000 people and spurred the largest refugee crisis in a generation. Chilling videos of women and children, some twitching, others lifeless, brought out the strongest reactions yet from an international community that has sat on the sidelines for much of the country's grinding two-year-long civil war.

Ten days later, after releasing to the public an intelligence report determining that Syrian President Bashar Assad fired the weapons and killed at least 1,429 people, President Barack

Obama announced that he was going to ask Congress for authorization to strike Syrian chemical weapons installations. While Assad and his allies dismissed these allegations, the rebels seeking his overthrow appeared poised for a major breakthrough.

And then it never happened. US public opinion was dead set against another intervention in the Middle East. Russia, one of Assad's closest backers, managed to convince Damascus to cede its chemical weapons stockpile to a UN Security Council mandate. The Assad regime has reportedly been cooperating with UN inspectors as it goes about now eradicating its stockpile.

Iran's new chapter

It was clear the new Iranian President Hassan Rohani, elected in June, was trying a new strategy when he wished Jews, in atweet, a "blessed Rosh Hashanah" on the Jewish new year.

In the space of a few months, Rohani and his new cabinet transformed the atmosphere surrounding Iran, a nation made into something of a pariah by the bellicose rhetoric of previous President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In September, after charming the international press corps at the UN General Assembly, Rouhani held a historic phone call with President Obama—the first direct dialogue between an American and Iranian head of state for three decades. In November, Iran reached a tentative agreement with the US and other global powers to curtail its nuclear program in exchange for waiving billions of dollars worth of sanctions. Skeptics abound — Israel is at

the head of the pack — but the deal could also jumpstart a new era of rapprochement with the Islamic Republic that will have repercussions across the region. Supertyphoon Haiyan

The deadliest storm to hit the Philippines since at least Typhoon Tehlma in 1991, Haiyan smashed into the archipelago with wind speeds as high as 170 mph (more than 20 mph faster than Hurricane Katrina's worst gusts) and surging sea levels up to 20 feet. Despite preparations, including the evacuation of nearly 800,000 people, more than 5,000 people were killed as the storm wreaked havoc in central Philippines and leveled entire parts of the coastal city of Tacloban. Nearly 2 million people were left homeless.

Pope Francis

The first time the little-known Argentinian appeared on the balcony at Saint Peter's on March 13, it was a shock that this was the man chosen to be the new pope. And the surprises have not stopped coming.

A pope unlike any other, Jorge Mario Bergoglio is using his skill as a communicator and his image as a man close to ordinary people to rehabilitate the battered image of Catholicism, addressing some of the thorny issues his predecessors had preferred to avoid, speaking out on world affairs and giving the Church a relevance and shine that is not only reversing its plummeting popularity but also winning over new followers.He was choosen as the Times person of the year.

Unrest in Egypt

In a televised speech July 3, Egyptian army chief Abdul Fatah el-Sisi told millions of Egyptians that the military had removed democratically-elected President Mohamed Morsi. The move was welcomed by millions of Egyptians who had taken to the streets to protest the divisive, one-year rule of the Islamist president, who, critics said, exploited his position to simply consolidate the power of his Muslim Brotherhood.

The post ouster clashes between supporters of the two camps killed dozens, polarizing Egyptian society. Thenew rulers have cracked down on dissent so harshly that many say the Egyptian revolution has come full circle since the ousting of IHosni Mubarak in 2011.