Merit Prize Winner: “A Well Earned Rest in the Sahara”. This photo of Moussa Macher, our Tuareg guide, was taken at the summit of Tin-Merzouga, the largest dune (or erg) in the Tadrat region of the Sahara desert in southern Algeria. Moussa rested while waiting for us to finish our 45-minute struggle to the top. It only took ten minutes of rolling, running, and jumping to get back down. The Tadrat is part of the Tassili N'Ajjer National Park World Heritage area, famous for its red sand and engravings and rock paintings of cattle, elephants, giraffes, and rhinos that lived there when the climate was milder. Photo location: Summit of Tin-Merzouga, Tadrat, Tassili N'Ajjer National Park, Algeria. (Photo and caption by Evan Cole/National Geographic Photo Contest)

“The 2008 Sichuan earthquake or the Great Sichuan Earthquake was a deadly earthquake that measured at 8.0 Ms and 7.9 Mw occurred at 14:28:01 CST (06:28 UTC) on Monday, May 12, 2008 in Sichuan province of China, killing an estimated 68,000 people”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A woman cries as she cannot find her 4-year-old daughter and husband on the top of the ruins of a destroyed school in earthquake-hit Beichuan county, Sichuan province, May 17, 2008. (Photo by Jason Lee/Reuters)

Tokyo DisneySea at Urayasu, Chiba prefecture, is holding Christmas festivities each night until December 25, 2012. At neighboring Tokyo Disneyland, the Christmas Fantasy parade is held twice daily at the theme park. (Photo by Disneyland)

Two F-15E Strike Eagles wait to receive fuel from a KC-135R Stratotanker during exercise Red Flag 15-1 on their way to Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., Jauary 23, 2015. The F-15s are assigned to the 4th Fighter Wing. U.S. (Photo by Airman 1st Class Aaron J. Jenne/Reuters)

Workers carry a rope line to fasten a decommissioned ship at the Alang shipyard in the western Indian state of Gujarat, March 27, 2015. The European Union plans to impose strict new rules on how companies scrap old tankers and cruise liners, run aground and dismantled on beaches in South Asia. However the practice in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, hazardous for humans and the environment, will still be hard to stop. European, Turkish and Chinese recyclers are set to benefit from the revamped standards. Depending on raw material prices, ship owners can make up to $500 per tonne of steel from an Indian yard, compared with $300 in China and just $150 in Europe. (Photo by Amit Dave/Reuters)

A protester jumps on the table in front of the European Central Bank President Mario Draghi during a news conference in Frankfurt, April 15, 2015. The news conference was disrupted on Wednesday when a woman in a black T-shirt jumped on the podium. (Photo by Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters)

Protesters hold on to each other as they are sprayed with water from police water cannons in Martyr square, downtown Beirut, Lebanon October 8, 2015. Lebanese security forces fired tear gas and water cannons to break up an anti-government protest in Beirut on Thursday, and the country's fractious leaders postponed talks aimed at resolving a political crisis that is feeding public discontent. (Photo by Aziz Taher/Reuters)