World News in Pictures

[Mr Lick]

A blast of heavy rain sent landslides barreling through South Korea's capital and a northern town Wednesday, killing at least 32 people, including 10 college students doing volunteer work.



People try to climb on top of a car on a flooded road during heavy rainfall in Seoul, South Korea, on July 27. Wild weather has battered the peninsula since late Tuesday, causing widespread flooding.






A rescue worker checks a block of flats after a landslide hit the apartment building in southern Seoul on July 27. Torrential rain pounding South Korea triggered landslides that killed 18 people and flooded hundreds of homes, rescuers said.

[Mr Lick]

A car is swept along by floodwaters next to tilted electric posts on a damaged road, after typhoon Nock-Ten hit Daraga, Albay in central Philippines on July 27.

[Mr Lick]

Anesthesiologist Fabienne Roelarts hypnotizes patient Christel Place prior to her thyroid surgery in the operating theater of the Cliniques Universitaires St. Luc Hospital in Brussels, Belgium, in a picture taken on July 15 and made available on July 27. At the hospital, one third of all surgeries to remove thyroids and one quarter of all breast cancer surgeries are performed using hypnosis and local anesthetic rather than full anesthesia.



An aerial photo shot of the London 2012 Olympic Stadium with the number one mown into the grass to start the celebrations for the '1 year to go' milestone.

[Mr Lick]

Rescue workers at a landslide scene, caused by torrential rains, which destroyed several houses, including a pension, in a mountain resort in Chuncheon on Wednesday.



A rescue worker carries a person who was saved from a collapsed house in Chuncheon, northeast of Seoul on Wednesday, July 27, 2011. A landslide has swept four houses and killed at least six people, local media reported.



Rescue workers carry a person who was saved from a collapsed house in Chuncheon, northeast of Seoul on Wednesday



A driver and a police officer push a stalled car on a submerged road in Seoul, South Korea, as downpours of more than 300mm pounded Seoul in the early Wednesday morning on July 27, 2011

[Mr Lick]

Olympic Medalist 'Speedy' Peterson Dead at 29
Jeret "Speedy" Peterson, a popular freestyle skier who won a silver medal at the Vancouver Games in 2010 (above), was found dead in a remote Utah canyon on Tuesday in what police are calling a suicide

[Mr Lick]

Sudden Death in Morocco
A body lies amid the wreckage of a military transport plane after it crashed in Goulmim, southern Morocco, on Tuesday. The plane slammed into a mountainside in bad weather, killing all 80 people on board.



Amy Winehouse Laid to Rest
A private service was held for Amy Winehouse at London's Edgwarebury Cemetery. It was announced that her remains will be cremated. Pictured: Flowers, candles, and cards by her home in Camden Square.

[Mr Lick]

China Mourns Train Crash Victims
People grieve for victims of the train collision at Century Square in Wenzhou in China's Zhejiang Province. At least 39 died in the high-speed rail crash and derailment on July 23.

[Mr Lick]

The site where Kandahar's city mayor Ghulam Haidar Hamidi was killed after a suicide blast in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on July 27.

[Mr Lick]

Norway in mourning after massacre




A family drops red roses from their boat into the sea, close to Utoya island, near Oslo, Norway, on Tuesday, July 26.

[Mr Lick]

People stand outside the courthouse where Anders Behring Breivik is due to appear in Oslo on July 25.



Norway's HH Princess Martha Louise, left, and HRH Norway's Crown Princess Mette-Marit react while listening to a speech as hundreds of thousands of people gather at a memorial vigil following Friday's twin extremist attacks on Monday in Oslo, Norway

[Mr Lick]

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, left, hugs Queen Sonja as King Harald, right, looks on outside a government building in Oslo on July 24.

[Mr Lick]

German Marcel Gleffe stands on Utvika camping ground in front of Utoya Island, Norway, July 24. According to news sources, Gleffe, who has a military background, saved up to 30 youths from the Utoya island shooting. Reports state that he was on holiday with his family at a campground across the water from Utoya when he heard the gunfire. He and others reportedly jumped into boats and began ferrying people escaping the island to safety.

[Mr Lick]

Gualish, Libya: Rebel fighters launch rockets at pro-Gaddafi positions in the desert



Fairfield, US: Firefighters battle a fire at the Macro Plastics Plant in California



Ciudad Juárez, Mexico: A detective runs for cover during an operation to regain control of a jail. At least 17 prisoners died in a riot when inmates staged a gun battle

[Mr Lick]

Kiryat Arba, West Bank: A Jewish settler carries a child in a hut, which is under construction as part of a settlement



Oslo, Norway: Travellers wait outside the evacuated central station as police investigate an abandoned suitcase. The city is on high alert in the wake of Friday's bombing and shootings

[Mr Lick]

Guatemala City, Guatemala: Clowns gets in position for a group picture during the 3rd Latin American Clown Congress inaugural parade



Jerusalem: A boy rests inside a tent in a camp during a protest against the rising cost of living

[Mr Lick]

Canada's national parks: from Hollywood beauties to beautiful beasts

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the world's oldest national parks service: Parks Canada. Here's a selection of photographs - old and contemporary - of some of the 42 national parks under its umbrella



During the 1880s, railway workers stumbled across a hot springs cave in Alberta’s Canadian Rockies. When the railwaymen tried to commerically exploit the springs - long known to First Nations people - the Canadian government stepped in and Canada’s first National Park, Banff, was created in 1885. Soon, luxurious hotels like the Banff Springs were built to attract visitors. ‘If we can’t export the scenery, we’ll import the tourists,’ said one railway boss. Parks Canada was created in 1911 to bring the small number of national parks - like Banff - under government direction



Banff’s 3,464m Mount Victoria is one of the most photographed Canadian landscapes. Mountaineering in the area was cultivated earlier in the century when local hotels employed Swiss guides to escort wealthy European and American climbers - including female American mountaineering pioneer Georgia Engelhard, (pictured above with her guide, Ernest Feuz), around the area's snow-capped peaks and ridges. Today, the region is world famous for its ski resorts, mountaineering and hiking - the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge being among the most recent famous visitors to enjoy the area’s natural beauty

[Mr Lick]

Hollywood discovered Banff national park decades ago when it made films such as the River of No Return, a 1953 western adventure starring Marilyn Monroe and Robert Mitchum. The actress starred as a singing and guitar-strumming showgirl who ended up stranded with farmer Robert Mitchum and his son. They endure a treacherous journey over rapids to escape the wilderness. The film was shot on location in and around the national park - including Lake Louise - and neighbouring Jasper national park. The chateau-like Banff Springs Hotel became the crew’s base

[Mr Lick]

In the 1930s, Grey Owl, an aboriginal trapper-turned-conservationist, pictured right, became the Parks Service’s first naturalist. After he died, he was exposed as a fraud: born Archibald Belaney in Hastings, Sussex, he had moved to Canada in 1906, learnt Ojibwe - an aboriginal language - and assumed the identity, as well as the accent, of a First Nations man. But he has also been recognised for his important contribution to conservation. Grey Owl’s cabin - which he shared with his wife and two beavers - (She had 2? ), can be visited in the Prince Albert national park

[Mr Lick]

North of Banff, Jasper national park is one of Canada's oldest (1907) and largest, embracing 11,000 square kilometres of ice, rock and forested Canadian Rocky Mountains scenery. It's home to some of Canada's highest mountains, including 3,700m Mount Columbia. Hikers can enjoy 1,000km of trails, thousands of campsites and wildlife including grizzly bears, cougars and bighorn sheep. A big draw for visitors is the Columbia icefield - up to 360m deep - which sits astride the continental divide of North America. It feeds many glaciers including the Athabasca, pictured, the most visited glacier on the continent



Created in 1918, Point Pelee is Canada's smallest national park at just 15 square kilometres - also the country's most southerly point. This forest oasis boldly juts out into Lake Erie, one of the Great Lakes. It tapers off into a distinct sandspit which has occasionally been washed away: a few years ago the 'no swimming' sign marking land's end was found 100km away across the lake - and across the US border - on an Ohio beach. The park is popular with kayakers and canoeists, who enjoy exploring the waterways of the marshes to the sounds of grasshoppers and in the company of blue herons

[Mr Lick]

One of Canada’s newest (2003), Ukkusiksalik national park, Nunavut, is perched on Hudson Bay’s north-west coast just 160km south of the Arctic Circle. It’s named for the soapstone found in the park, a traditional homeland of the Inuit, who still hunt seal and caribou in this extensive region. The Park is also a great place to view the aurora borealis - or northern lights. On cold, crisp nights between October and April, brilliant sheets of green, red and purple lights dance high above the snowy landscape



At 45,000 square kilometres, Wood Buffalo national park is Canada’s biggest, stretching north across the Alberta-Northwest Territories border. It was established in 1922 to protect roaming wood bison. The park is so huge that its managers didn’t realise that it contained the world’s biggest beaver dam, detected by satellite last year. The protected landscape ranges from dense boreal forest to nearly 400 square kilometres of marble-coloured salt plains - left behind after a prehistoric sea evaporated. This visually striking feature is just one reason the park was named a Unesco World Heritage site

[Mr Lick]

It costs money and effort to reach Quttinirpaaq national park, but visitors will be rewarded with spectacular views of glaciated mountains, pristine waterways and even wildflower meadows. This seemingly lifeless environment supports polar bears, seals, Arctic fox and musk oxen



Wapusk, which means 'white bear' in Cree, is one of Canada’s newest national parks. The 11,500 square kilometre park, created in 1996, sits on the western edge of Manitoba’s Hudson Bay. Over 1,000 of the famous white bears live on and around the sea ice - ideal for hunting ring seal. Last year, most of the 1,300 tourists visiting Wapusk, inaccessble by road, viewed the bears' denning areas by helicopter



By the 1980s, the Parks Canada portfolio included National Marine Conservation Areas (NMCAs) aimed at protecting adjacent oceans and the islands and species in them. In 2010, a NMCA reserve was added to Gwaii Haanas national park, making this 5,000 kilometre 'Galapagos of the North' the only place on earth protected from mountaintop to sea bed. The pristine waters surrounding Gwaii Haanas teem with marine life as diverse as salmon, sea otters, sea lions and red urchins. No fewer than 17 species of whale, including humpback and killer, frequent the area

[Mr Lick]

A worker carries a frozen carcass of a slaughtered shark on his shoulder at a slaughter house in Puqi town, Zhejiang province, China, July 25, 2011.



Two men try to stop an elephant which freed itself and tried to escape during the filming of a commercial in the centre of Budapest, July 26, 2011.

[Mr Lick]

Meagan Williamson, 12, runs through a field of wheat in Kirby Hill, northern England July 26, 2011. Wheat prices in western European markets were higher on Tuesday, tracking U.S. gains, although traders saw little, if any, chance that EU suppliers would win business at a tender held by top buyer Egypt.



Rangers ride a motorbike past a wreckage of a truck which was burned by unidentified men during violence in Karachi, July 26, 2011.

[Mr Lick]

Dairy farmers wearing mourning clothes pour milk on themselves after setting fire to a mock-up funeral bier during a dairy farmers' rally to demand the government raise milk prices in Seoul, July 26, 2011.



A 1929 Bugatti 49 (R) sports car driven by Joerg Koenig drives ahead of Alexander Vonow in a 1928 Alfa Romeo 6C 1500 sports (front L) car through a steep turn during a race demonstration at the Offene Rennbahn cycling track in Zurich's Oerlikon suburb, July 26, 2011.

[Mr Lick]

A wounded French U.N. peacekeeper stands near a damaged U.N. vehicle in the port city of Sidon in south Lebanon, July 26, 2011. A roadside bomb blew up a United Nations vehicle near Sidon, wounding five French peacekeepers.



A policeman talks to inmates standing against a wall just hours after a prison riot, at a jail in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, July 26, 2011