World News in Pictures

[Mr Lick]

Pro-Russian militants stormed a Ukrainian police station in Odessa on Sunday and freed 30 fellow activists following their Friday arrest.






Pro-Russian supporters clash with Ukrainian policemen during a rally demanding the release pro-Russian supporters arrested during deadly clashes on Friday

[Mr Lick]

São Paulo gay pride parade

[Mr Lick]

The surface of Mars




Nili Patera, one of the most active dune fields on the planet Mars is shown in this handout photo taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter March 1, 2014 and provide by NASA May 2, 2014.






Mars’ northern-most sand dunes are seen as they begin to emerge from their winter cover of seasonal carbon dioxide (dry) ice in this image acquired by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter January 16, 2014.


A view of the Noctis Labyrinthus region of Mars, perched high on the Tharsis rise in the upper reaches of the Valles Marineris canyon system is seen in this NASA handout picture acquired on August 31, 2013 by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and released by NASA on September 24, 2013.






A cliff, up to 4,000 m high, located in the eastern part of Echus Chasma, one of the largest water source regions on Mars, July 2008. Echus Chasma is the source region of Kasei Valles which extends 3,000 km to the north.

[Mr Lick]

A car burns following a bomb explosion in Abuja, Nigeria, Thursday, May 1, 2014. A car bomb exploded on a busy road in Nigeria's capital late Thursday, killing at least 12 people days before the city is to host a major international economic forum. (

[Mr Lick]

Assam violence



Hundreds of people have fled their homes in India's north-eastern Assam state after separatist rebels killed at least 32 people in two attacks last week.



















Extra security forces have been deployed and a curfew has been declared in the affected areas.



In Kokrajhar, the Bodo heartland, Muslim migrants are regularly attacked by Bodo separatist rebels and this periodically erupts into full-scale riots. More than 100 migrants were killed in one such raid at Bansbari, a makeshift camp for displaced Muslims in 1993.

[Mr Lick]

Squirrels take part in a nutty magic trick. Photographer Max places his self-made stages in his garden in Teddington, London, and then waits hours - and sometimes days - for his subjects to get into the exact position to capture his shot



A Siberian tiger mother feeds her cubs at the Heilongjiang Siberian Tiger Garden in China

[Mr Lick]

French coast rescuers support a 23-year-old Afghan trying to cross the Channel on a makeshift raft using a bedsheet as a sail off Sangatte. The man, who had started developing hypothermia, 'was first disappointed and then glad at being rescued,' said Bernard Barron, the head of the coast rescue service in Calais



Katherine Jenkins performs the Leonard Cohen classic 'Hallelujah' on the flower adorned steps of British Airways new Boeing 787 Dreamliner to celebrate the inaugural flight from London Heathrow to Chengdu in China

[Mr Lick]

Oscar Pistorius looks back as he arrives at the high court in Pretoria, South Africa



A dog looks at a pro-Russian activist standing in front of a occupied security service building in Lugansk, Ukraine



A paramilitary policeman crawls under fire obstacles during a drill at a military base in Chaohu, China

[Mr Lick]

Wall’s offered people the chance to have more fun on their journey to and from work. Suited and booted city workers swapped their stuffy, packed tubes, trains and bikes for a Wall’s Waterbike on Regent’s Canal



A rugby ball is projected onto City Hall in London to mark 500 Days until the start of the Rugby World Cup which will be hosted in England

[Mr Lick]

A Pakistani man cools off under a leaking water pipeline during a heat wave in Karachi. Heatwave conditions in Pakistan have brought temperatures in excess of 40 degrees celsius in many parts of the country



The sun rises over Sugar Loaf mountain. Rio de Janeiro is one of the host cities for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil

[Mr Lick]

Singer Cristina Scarlat, representing Moldova, performs her song 'Wild Soul' during rehearsals for the first semi-final of the 59th Eurovision Song Contest in Copenhagen, Denmark



A Buddhist monk places a flower on a barricade set up by police officers during a demonstration near the Phnom Penh Municipal Court in central Phnom Penh. The protesters demanded the release of 23 detainees who have been jailed since January 3, when military police opened fire on workers striking over low pay, killing four people



A Buddha statue, damaged by an earthquake, is seen at the Udomwaree temple in Chiang Rai, in northern Thailand. An earthquake of 6 magnitude struck northern Thailand on Monday causing some damage to buildings and roads



An anti-government protester is photographed on a march in Bangkok to mark the 64th anniversary of the coronation of Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej



Members of a laughter club participate in a laughing exercise in Mumba. Hundreds of people, who believe that laughter is the best medicine for a happy and healthy life, took part in an attempt to break a world record of the largest gathering of senior citizens at a laughing exercise



A man taking part in the commemoration of Mexico's victory over France in the Battle of Puebla in 1862, poses for photographs in Penon de los Banos, Mexico City

[Mr Lick]

Kermit the frog shoots a wide beamed grin as its bulbous bloodshot eyes stare into the camera in West Sussex



Ethnic minorities female militia parade during official celebrations of the 60th anniversary of Vietnam's Dien Bien Phu victory over France at a stadium in the Northwestern town of Dien Bien Phu.

[Mr Lick]

South Africans queue to vote at a polling station in Diepsloot, north of Johannesburg



A diver gets a close look at a giant 52ft humpback whale near Hona, Hawaii

[Mr Lick]

Participants take part in a bun scrambling competition during Bun Festival at Hong Kong's Cheung Chau Island. The festival celebrates the islanders' deliverance from famine many centuries ago and is meant to placate ghosts and restless spirits



Hoppie (left) the sea lion who was rescued from an almond orchard follows Eugene as they are released back to the wild at Chimney Rock, California. Hoppie, a male California sealion pup treated for malnutrition and skin mites at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito was rescued after being found at the Mape's Ranch almond orchard in Modesto on March 31. Two other sealions were released along with Hoppie.

[Mr Lick]

Rescue personnel work at the site where a bus crashed into a house in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Police say the bus hit one house, then crossed the street and crashed into another. There were no children on the bus at the time of the crash. The bus driver was taken to the hospital with a head injury



An old jumbo jet destined for scrap has been salvaged and converted into a luxury hotel suite in the Costa Rica rainforest



This still from a surveillance video shows a California teenager, left, after hopping from a jet's wheel well in Maui, Hawaii. Police said that they plan to interview the teen who stowed away on a Hawaii-bound flight two weeks ago, surviving sub-freezing temperatures as it crossed the Pacific Ocean

[Mr Lick]

Survivors from Abi Barik village attack a teenager (centre) from a neighbouring village after police fired into the air to disperse a crowd that had rushed toward a truck carrying aid near the site of Friday's landslide that buried Abi Barik village in Badakhshan province, northeastern Afghanistan. Many villagers have complained that aid has been slow to arrive while officials have said their efforts have been complicated by villagers from nearby areas coming to get handouts



Robots from the University of Miami, College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Computer Science play a game of football at the eMerge Americas Techweek held in Miami.



A Nigerian man rides a modified handbike past a soldier near the World Economic Forum, in Abuja, Nigeria. Security has been increased in Abuja ahead of the World Economic Forum on Africa following the two recent bomb blasts by Boko Haram militants in the Nigerian capital

[Mr Lick]

People are seen feeding fish using a baby's bottle at the Er Tong Park in Nanchang, Hubei Province



Armed paramilitary police officers stand guard at Beijing Railway Station. An assailant stabbed six people on Tuesday at a railway station in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, police and state media said, the latest in a series of attacks that have unnerved the country, some of which Beijing has termed terrorism



President Bashar al-Assad his wife Asma greet the children of the 'martyrs' of the Syrian Army and the National Defense Forces during a ceremony marking the Martyrs' Day in Damascus

[Mr Lick]

The world's grandest ocean liner, Queen Mary 2 and her sister ships Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria sail in formation from Lisbon to the UK ahead of HRH The Duke of Edinburgh's visit to celebrate Queen Mary 2's 10th anniversary in Southampton



The Earl of Wessex learns how to present the weather with ITV's Laura Tobin and students of the Department of Meteorology during a visit to the University of Reading in Berkshire



A woman holds electoral pins of Colombia's presidential candidate Oscar Ivan Zuluaga of the Democratic Center during a rally in Bogota, Colombia

[Mr Lick]

One person died after a fire broke out in a multi-storey building in Manila, Philippines. The cause of the fire is yet to be established



A TV screen displays a judge reading the verdict ruling that caretaker prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra must step down, outside the constitutional court in Bangkok, Thailand



Ukrainian police guard the entrance of a state city building in Mariupol

[Mr Lick]

Afghan villagers gather near the site of a landslide at the Argo district in Badakhshan province



Mango, a 19-year-old male Syrian brown bear, is sedated and has the fur on his back shaved as he is prepared for an operation to treat a slipped disc at the Ramat Gan Safari park near Tel Aviv. This is the first operation of its kind



Models wearing Gucci walk on the wall of the Sony building in Tokyo's Ginza fashion district as a promotion for Precious, a Japanese fashion magazine



Trouble is still flaring in Venezuela where anti-government students confronted the national guard with Molotov cocktails during clashes at the Metropolitan University in Caracas

[Mr Lick]

A swallow feeds her babies under the ceiling of a residential house in Dongfeng, China.



Newly married brides wait for their photo to be taken on Charles Bridge in Prague.



Mark Selby celebrates after beating Ronnie O'Sullivan to win his first World Snooker Championship.



A guest on a media flight takes a photograph of Lake Washington from the front gun turret of a model of the Memphis Belle World War Two Flying Fortress bomber as it nears Seattle.

[Mr Lick]

Women dressed as Vietcong soldiers parade during celebrations of the 60th anniversary of Vietnam's victory over France at the battle of Dien Bien Phu.

[Mr Lick]

Friends and family mourned 21-year old nurse, Yulia Izotova, during her funeral in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, on Monday. Witnesses say Izotova was killed by shots from a Ukrainian military column on the road near Kramatorsk.

On Saturday the government said it was pressing on with an offensive in southern Ukraine for a second day, and had recaptured a television tower and a security services building from rebels in Kramatorsk, a town near the rebel stronghold of Slaviansk.





Police said at least four people were killed, and dozens wounded in running battles between people backing Kiev and pro-Russian activists. The clashes ended with separatists holed up in the trade union building

[Mr Lick]

Some people in Thailand had a tricky time traveling along earthquake-damaged roads on Tuesday.

The magnitude 6.0 earthquake struck northern Thailand on Monday, causing some damage to buildings and roads and knocking goods off shelves in shops. There were no immediate reports of any casualties.





The quake struck 17 miles southwest of the town of Chiang Rai, the U.S.

Geological Survey (USGS) said. It was felt in the Thai capital of Bangkok, and in neighboring Myanmar.

[Mr Lick]

The introduction of Sharia law in Brunei continued to ripple to the shores of California on Wednesday as the oil-rich nation's ownership of the iconic Beverly Hills Hotel resulted in business cancellations amounting to at least $1.5 million