World News in Pictures

[Mr Lick]

Divers from Freedom Star, one of Nasa’s solid rocket booster retrieval ships, help with the recovery of a spent booster from Discovery’s final launch in February 2011. Boosters would fall into the Atlantic about seven minutes after liftoff and the retrieval ships would be stationed about 10 miles from the impact area. After the spent segments were processed, they were transported to Utah for refurbishment and storage

[Mr Lick]

[Mr Lick]

Astronaut Bruce McCandless II floats untethered in space in a suit with built-in propulsion - the 'manned manoeuvring unit' - in February 1984, part of the 10th shuttle mission and the fourth flight of Challenger. McCandless II was said to have become 'the first human Earth-orbiting satellite'



Hubble is held in place by Discovery's robotic arm following the partial unfurling of its solar panels. The telescope's primary mirror was later found to be fractionally misshapen, leading to catastrophic spherical aberrations in its images. The optics were corrected during an epic 11-day mission by Endeavour in 1993 including five spacewalks

[Mr Lick]

Atlantis docked to the Russian space station Mir in June 1995. The picture was taken by Russian cosmonauts in a Soyuz capsule



Astronaut Michael Good, a mission specialist on STS-125 in 2009, attached to a foot restraint at the end of Atlantis's remote manipulator system, working on the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronaut Mike Massimino can be seen bottom right of the frame. It was the fifth and final Hubble servicing mission

[Mr Lick]

Saturday 1 February 2003. Columbia streaks across the sky over the Owens Valley Radio Observatory in California



Debris from Columbia in the sky over Dallas, Texas. The shuttle broke up during re-entry killing all seven crew. The cause of the accident was later found to have been a piece of insulating foam that fell from the external fuel tank during launch and damaged thermal protection tiles on the leading edge of one of the shuttle's wings

[Mr Lick]

Pieces of debris collected during search and recovery efforts in east Texas arranged on the floor of a hangar at Kennedy Space Center. More than 82,000 items were recovered, weighing a total of 84,800 pounds or 38% of the original weight of Columbia. Some 78,760 of the pieces of debris were identified during the investigation into the disaster



The programme resumed three years later. This is Discovery coming in to land at Edwards Air Force Base



Atlantis touches down at 10:56 BST on 21 July 2011 at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, ending its 13-day mission to the International Space Station and bringing down the curtain on Nasa's 30-year space shuttle programme

[Mr Lick]

Malawi anti-government protests

Anti-government protesters demonstrate against President Bingu wa Mutharika in cities throughout Malawi

[Mr Lick]

[Mr Lick]

[Mr Lick]

Deadly Explosion in Yemen
Yemenis look at a destroyed vehicle following a car-bomb blast in the main southern city of Aden on Wednesday. Authorities say a Briton who was the head of a shipping company was killed in the explosion.



Wait, There Must Be a Phone Booth Somewhere!
Dressed up in costumes, Tracy Ho and Demir Oral appear at the Comic-Con 2011 preview night in San Diego, California, on Wednesday.

[Mr Lick]

I'll Just Plant Myself Right Here
In a Medellin neighborhood on Wednesday, people attend a military parade marking the anniversary of Colombia's independence.

[Mr Lick]

Interior Ministry officers detain an activist of "The Other Russia" political movement for taking part in a sit-in protest near the Solovetsky Stone, a monument dedicated to victims of political repressions, in Moscow July 20, 2011.



A Libyan rebel fighter sits beside his wounded brother at a hospital near Misrata's western frontline July 20, 2011

[Mr Lick]

Britian's Queen Elizabeth poses for a regimental photograph with members of the Royal Mercian and Lancastrian Yeomanry following a homecoming service at Lichfield Cathedral, following their return from operations in Afghanistan in Lichfield, central England, July 20 2011.



Chile's Alvaro Trewhela rests after competing in the men's 10km open water race at the 14th FINA World Championships in Shanghai July 20, 2011

[Mr Lick]

A taxi driver throws a bottle of water at policemen outside the Infrastructure and Transport Ministry in Athens July 20, 2011.



An armed villager checks a public bus entering their village of Castanas for weapons, on the outskirts of Guatemala City, July 19, 2011

[Mr Lick]

A Bosnian Muslim woman cries on the coffin of a relative during a mass funeral for victims killed during 1992-1995 war in Bosnia, whose remains were found in mass graves around the town of Prijedor and Kozarac, northwest of Banja Luka July 20, 2011.



Police detain a street prostitute in Russia's Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, July 20, 2011

[Mr Lick]

An Egyptian man stands next to graffiti showing an effigy (R) of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak during a sit-in at Tahrir Square in Cairo July 20, 2011.



A Colombian officer stands inside a helicopter during Independence Day celebrations in Bogota July 20, 2011

[Mr Lick]

Streets of Ciudad Juarez

[Mr Lick]

[Mr Lick]

[Mr Lick]

[Mr Lick]

[Mr Lick]

[Mr Lick]

Woman hit by learner driver daughter dies



Susan Duke was described as someone who was always cheerful



A woman has died after she was hit by a car being reversed by her 17-year-old daughter who was a learner driver.

Susan Duke, 41, suffered serious head injuries when she was struck in the car park of Cuxton Social Club near Rochester, in Kent, on Monday.

Ms Duke was taken to a London hospital by air ambulance but died on Wednesday, Kent Police said.

It is thought Ms Duke may have been teaching her daughter to drive when the accident happened.

[Mr Lick]

Top Nazi Rudolf Hess exhumed from 'pilgrimage' grave



The grave holding the remains of Adolf Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess has been destroyed to stop it being used as a pilgrimage site by neo-Nazis.

Hess's bones were exhumed at the graveyard in the town of Wunsiedel, southern Germany, early on Wednesday.

The remains will be cremated and then scattered at sea.

Hess was captured after flying to Britain in 1941 and sentenced to life in prison.

He killed himself in a Berlin jail in 1987 at the age of 93.

As he requested in his will, he was buried in the small Bavarian town of Wunsiedel, where his family had a holiday home and where his parents were already interred.

The local Lutheran church which supervises the cemetery gave its permission for the burial at the time, ruling that the wishes of the deceased could not be ignored, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reports.

But they and local people have since become concerned by the number of far-right groups visiting the grave.

Each year on the anniversary of his death, neo-Nazis have attempted to stage a march to the cemetery, saluting the grave with its epitaph "I dared", and laying floral wreaths.

A 2005 court order banning such gatherings had little effect so the church decided to terminate the family's lease on the grave as of October 2011.

A granddaughter of Hess objected to the decision, the paper reports.

She filed a lawsuit in an attempt to prevent it going ahead, but was eventually persuaded by the parish council to drop the case and allow the exhumation to go ahead.

Hess was one of Hitler's closest aides. But in 1941 he made a solo flight to Scotland, where his plane crash-landed, in an apparently unauthorised peace mission which was denounced by the fuhrer.

He was imprisoned by the British for the duration of the war.

At the Nuremberg Trials in 1946, Hess was cleared of war crimes and crimes against humanity but convicted of crimes against peace and jailed for life.

He spent 40 years in Spandau Prison in Berlin.

He was the last remaining inmate at the prison when he was found hanged there in August 1987.

[Mr Lick]

The Greek women's water polo team concede a goal to the Russian team in the World Swimming Championships in China