Blog Posts by Lylah M. Alphonse, Senior Editor, Yahoo! Shine

Happy couple: The most-popular social media image of all time. (Photo: Scout Tufankjian/Obama for America)It was an intimate snapshot of a sweet celebration: Minutes after the networks called the 2012 presidential election for Barack Obama on Tuesday night, the Obama for America campaign posted a picture of him hugging his wife along with a simple message: "Four more years." Within minutes, it became the most popular post in the history of Twitter and the most-liked image in the history of Facebook, shared more than 804,000 times, marked as a favorite by more than 289,500 Twitter users, and "liked" by more than 3.2 million Facebook friends.

PHOTOS: First Couples Reflect on the Challenges of Being Married in the White House

The simple shot of a happy husband and wife was a surprise to people who may have been expecting a grand portrait of a newly re-elected president and his people. But no one was more surprised than the woman who took the photo back in August.

Related: Michelle Obama's Advice for Her Daughters

Scout Tufankjian, a photojournalist who has been focusing her lens on Obama's

Residents wait on line to collect free gasoline the day after a Nor'Easter storm in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy in the Rockaway neighborhood on November 8, 2012 in the Queens borough of New York City. Today was the first day gasoline became available for residents in the neighborhood following Sandy. (Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)This post was written by David Fagin, a New Jersey-based musician and blogger who writes about pop culture at The Nosh Pit and The Huffington Post.

The worst part about a storm like this is the chaos it creates regarding the chain of communication. Nearly two weeks after the ocean breached the shores of Far Rockaway Beach and wreaked havoc throughout the entire New York area, hundreds upon hundreds of the sick and elderly still have no idea when their heat will return. And everyone's blaming everyone else. Meanwhile, the seniors continue to freeze.

Related: Hoboken, N.J., In the Aftermath of Superstorm Sandy

Being part of a crew documenting the aftermath of Sandy, we were asked to visit the JASA (Jewish Association Serving the Aged) Senior Housing Projects along the beach in Far Rockaway today. The reason they asked us is because practically every other media outlet has ignored their pleas for help.

Twenty-story high apartment there buildings have 16 units on each floor -- a total

Zoe Everett, seen here with her family in a photo she posted at WishUponAHero.com, is raising her siblings on her own after their parents were killed in Superstorm Sandy.Compassionate strangers banded together this week to raise more than $56,000 to help a 19-year-old college student whose parents were killed in Superstorm Sandy, leaving her to raise her three younger siblings on her own.

Related: Weather Superstorm Sandy in Delran, N.J.

Zoe Everett of Randolph, N.J., posted her story at the Wish Upon a Hero Foundation website.

Related: Sandy Damages, Losses Estimated at $50 Billion, New York Governor Says

"I was studying for an exam, waiting out Hurricane Sandy and then I received a phone call," Zoe, a student at Rutgers University, wrote at WishUponAHero.com. "At 11 p.m. on October 29th, I found out both of my parents had been killed. They were driving the pickup truck home with my two little brothers sleeping in the back seat."

Related: Talking to Kids About Hurricane Sandy

Richard Everett, 54, and his wife, Elizabeth, 46, were driving through Mendham Township when winds from Superstorm Sandy sent a 100-foot-tall tree crashing down onto the cab

Are myths stopping you from getting a flu shot? (Photo: Thinkstock)We're in the thick of cold and flu season, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that seasonal flu shots prevented 5 million cases of influenza last year and helped keep 40,000 people out of the hospital in 2011. Still, more than half of the population of the United States avoids getting an influenza vaccine each year, usually because they're afraid that the flu shot itself will give them the flu.

Related: 7 Foods the Fight Cold and Flu

It's one of the biggest myths about the flu shot out there. "It's impossible to get the flu, and it's impossible to spread the flu" from the injection, Dr. Dennis Cunningham, an infectious disease specialist at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio, told LiveScience.com

The confusion may come from the fact that some of the vaccine's side effects—low-grade fever, body aches, and soreness at the injection site—feel like flu-like symptoms. But, "the soreness is often caused by a person's immune system making protective

Jessica Clark, center, reacts after watching election results in Times Square in New York City on Nov. 6, 2012. (Photo: John Moore/Getty Images) Minutes after polls on the West Coast had closed Tuesday night -- and even before votes in Florida, Ohio, and Virginia had been counted -- news outlets declared President Barack Obama the winner of the 2012 election.

Related: Did Women Help Obama Win the Election?

"Today we congratulate President Obama on his re-election," Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, the executive director and co-founder of MomsRising, said in a statement. "We're ready to move forward with him to ensure that we close the gender wage gap, to see health care reform fully implemented so that all our families get the health care they need, and to secure earned sick days for all workers."

Related: Election Night Style: Michelle Obama vs. Ann Romney

In Boston, Mitt Romney supporters were subdued as they handed out American flags and waited for their candidate to appear on stage. Once he did, he was sure to thank his supporters, his running mate Paul Ryan, his sons, and his wife, Ann, whom he called "the love of my life."

Galicia Malone was in labor when she cast her vote Tuesday morning. (Photo: Cook County Clerks Office)Galicia Malone's contractions were five minutes apart when she arrived at her polling place in Cook County, Illinois, this morning, but that didn't stop her from studying the ballot carefully and making sure her vote counted.

The Latest on the 2012 Election from Yahoo! News

"I was just trying to read and breathe, read and breathe," the 21-year-old mom-to-be told WBBM Newsradio. "That's what I kept telling myself, 'Read and breathe, read and breathe'."

Related: As voters head to the polls, reports of problems start pouring in

Pregnant with her first child, Malone went into labor four days early. Her water had already broken when she arrived at the aptly named New Life Celebration Church near Chicago around 8:30 a.m. Tuesday. But even hard labor wasn't enough to stop her from voting in her first presidential election.

"I never voted before so this made a major difference in my life," she told WBBM Newsradio. "And I wanted this to be a stepping-stone for my daughter."

She went into

We've heard from plenty of people who feel that, in spite of the focus on so-called women's issues, their vote doesn't matter much in this election cycle. But they couldn't be further from the truth. Women in the United States earned the right to vote less than a century ago, and our foremothers fought long and hard for the privilege. They had to put up with misogynistic propaganda, much of it in postcard form, where they were compared to whiny little girls or ugly looking spinsters -- and where the not-so-subtle message was that giving rights to women was the same as stripping them away from men. Thankfully, there were plenty of penny postcards that encouraged women to become suffragettes -- pictures that remind us that liberty and justice are both ladies worth fighting for. -- Lylah M. Alphonse, Senior Editor, Yahoo! Shine

Model Lindsay Ellingson walks the runway during the 2011 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show at the Lexington Avenue Armory in New York. (Photo: Randy Brooke/WireImage) When Superstorm Sandy hit the Northeast last week, soldiers with the New York Army National Guard's 69th Infantry regiment quickly found themselves in the same situation as the people they were trying to help—without electricity or hot water, stuck in the city, supplies quickly dwindling.

PHOTOS: Brooklyn After Sandy

But the guardsmen, who usually act as angels to others during a national disaster, had an unusual guardian angel of their own.

"We were dead in the water until Victoria's Secret showed up," Captain Brendan Gendron, the Regiment's operations officer, told Wired magazine.

Victoria's Secret is slated to hold its annual fashion show at the New York Army National Guard's historic armory on 25th Street and Lexington in Manhattan on Wednesday, and producers were already in town to prep for the televised event when the storm hit. They had eight 500-kilowatt generators with them, and they were happy to put them to good use. Soon, the soldiers had power and hot water again.

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