World News in Pictures

[Mr Lick]

Youssef (centre L), a member of the Free Syrian Army, holds his wife as his comrades fire their weapons to commemorate his wedding ceremony in Aleppo January 17, 2013.



A woman stands in her food stall in the flooded business area in Jakarta January 17, 2013. Heavy monsoonal rains triggered severe flooding in large swathes of the Indonesian capital Jakarta on Thursday, with many government offices and businesses forced to closed because staff could not get to work. Weather officials warned the rains could get worse over the next few days and media reports said that thousands of people in Jakarta and its satellite cities had been forced to leave their homes because of the torrential downpours this week.




One of hundreds of Lego figures is seen by a pool as construction continues in North America's first ever Lego Hotel currently being built at Legoland in Carlsbad, California, January 17, 2013. The three-story, 250-room hotel will open on April 5.


General view of the entrance of a tunnel January 17, 2013, dug by thieves in order to enter the safe deposit room of a bank in Berlin. Robbers dug the 100-foot (30 metre) long passage, which was discovered by police on Monday, from a nearby underground parking garage into a branch of Berliner Volksbank and stole the contents of several hundred safe-deposit boxes



An All Nippon Airways (ANA) of Japan 787 Dreamliner jet sits idle on the tarmac parking at Paine Field in Everett, Washington, January 17, 2013. Airlines scrambled to rearrange flights as Europe, Japan, Qatar and India joined the United States in grounding Boeing Co's 787 Dreamliner passenger jets while battery-related problems are investigated.

[Mr Lick]

Free Syrian Army fighters pray around a grave damaged by a mortar shell fired by Syrian Army soldiers at Mleha suburb in Damascus January 17, 2013.



A man with a boy wearing a Batman jacket arrive at the movie theater where 12 people were killed in a shooting rampage at a Batman film last July in Aurora, Colorado January 17, 2013. The theater was set to reopen tonight with a private "night of remembrance" for survivors and others connected to the tragedy.



A soldier with 1st Battalion, 36th Infantry Regiment, listens to a brief before a mission outside command outpost Hutal, Maywand District, Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, January 17, 2013

[Mr Lick]

Lance Armstrong ended years of denials by admitting he took performance enhancing drugs during all 7 of his Tour de France victories



A giant sculpture of a baby titled Planet by British artist Marc Quinn is unveiled in Singapore

[Mr Lick]

A trainee bodyguard of the Genghis Security Academy is reprimanded by instructor Marco Borges (2nd R) following an ambush exercise at an army training ground on the outskirts of Beijing on January 18. In sub-zero winter cold, trainees at an army base outside Beijing wake before dawn to practise martial arts and evasive driving, under the instruction of a Portuguese ex-special forces soldier. The roughly 40-strong group -- mostly with previous military experience -- are on a commercial training course to become elite bodyguards protecting Chinese firms as they seek ever more resources and contracts in some of the world's most unstable regions.






Trainees of a bodyguard camp stand with taped masks on their heads before a freestyle blind wrestling training session at the Genghis Security Academy in Beijing. Nearly three dozen recruits took target practice and conducted evasion and extraction drills as part of preparations to provide security for the growing number of Chinese businesses investing in turbulent regions of Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere. The academy is one of several bodyguard schools in China that offer protection for the country's growing number of wealthy businessmen and women, but in its case, the focus is on the international market.



A trainee of a bodyguard camp sheds tears as he is briefed on his performance after the day's training by a coach at the Genghis Security Academy in Beijing.

[Mr Lick]

The northern lights glow over a snowy Finnish landscape in a photo taken on the night of Jan. 16-17 by Thomas Kast. Watch the time-lapse video on Vimeo.



Swedish astrophotographer Goran Strand captured this view of an aurora lighting up the night sky above a moonlit landscape. The constellation Orion, the Pleiades and the planet Jupiter also gleam in the skies above.



The northern lights compete with the city lights of Ålesund, Norway



The Space Weather Prediction Center says that two more coronal mass ejections are heading toward Earth — but like the earlier plasma blob, these outbursts "are not expected to be very strong." To find out where auroral displays are expected to glow, check NOAA's Ovation chart, the prediction center's website, the University of Alaska Geophysical Institute's aurora indicator or SpaceWeather.com

[Mr Lick]

A Belarus Orthodox believer plunges into icy waters as a priest blesses him on the eve of the Epiphany holiday in Pilnitsa some 30 km outside Minsk, on Jan. 18. Thousands of believers jump into holes cut in ice, braving freezing temperatures, to mark Epiphany, when they take part in a baptism ceremony.

[Mr Lick]

Fredrik Hjelmquist shows the CataCoffin in Stockholm Jan. 18. Music and video equipment store owner Hjelmquist said his hi-fi coffin would entertain the dead and provide solace for grieving friends and relatives by making it possible for them to alter the deceased's playlist online.



The coffin, which retails for about $30,000, boasts two-way front speakers, 4-inch mid bass drivers, a wide range tweeter with external cooling, an 8-inch sub bass element and more.

[Mr Lick]

Model train enthusiasts view a replica of the Abbey Road Tube station which also depicts the Beatles' famous album cover, at The London Model Engineering Exhibition at Alexandra Palace on Jan. 18, in London.









A model of Abbey Road Tube station at The London Model Engineering Exhibition at Alexandra Palace, Jan. 18, in London.

[Mr Lick]

People share a sledge as they take advantage of the snow covering the Bath Approach Golf Course besides Victoria Park on Jan. 18 in Bath, England.



London



Richmond Park

[Mr Lick]

A young girl is rescued from flooding in Jakarta, Indonesia, Jan. 18.

[Mr Lick]

Snow in the UK

Wintry weather with heavy snowfalls caused concern as well as celebration in various parts of Britain



Anthony Gormley's Another Place stands covered in snow on Crosby Beach, Merseyside



Bristol






Hampshire






Worcester



Somerset






Heathrow






Fife



A man checks the size of the icicles at Gibson's Cave in Teesdale



Stockport



North Yorkshire



Peak District



Gatwick



Bath Spa



Bristol

[Mr Lick]

One of three Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft parked at the international airport of Santiago de Chile, Chile. Chilean airline Lan announced the suspension of operations of its Boeing 787 Dreamliners



Great Britain's Heather Watson shakes hands and looks dejected after her defeat to Poland's Agnieszka Radwanska, right, in the third round of the Australia Open tennis in Melbourne

[Mr Lick]

In today's canine news, a dog waits to be blessed by a Catholic priest during the Day of Saint Anthony of Abad in Mexico City, last night.



Performers dressed in Lama monk costumes blow horns during a ceremony marking the beginning of the winter fishing festival in Kangping county, Liaoning province, China.



Not the UK this time: this is Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir as a 'tuc tuc' vehicle makes its way through a snowfall



Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the Honour Guard as he inspects them at the State Palace in (a dry part of?) Jakarta, Indonesia.



Tee'd off: Tiger Woods after hitting a poor shot during the second round of The Abu Dhabi HSBC golf championship, in the United Arab Emirates



A Palestinian protester uses a sling to hurl a stone amidst tear gas fired by Israeli security officers during clashes in the West Bank village of Budrus near Ramallah



A model presents a creation of designer Miranda Konstantinidou during the Mercedes Benz fashion week for autumn winter 2013 in Berlin.



Ancient graffiti recently discovered during restoration work is seen inside a gallery of Rome's Colosseum. A long-delayed restoration of the Colosseum's only intact internal passageway has yielded ancient traces of red, black and blue frescoes as well as graffiti and drawings of phallic symbols

[Mr Lick]

An Islamist protester and a policeman pray as Egyptian security forces stand guard during a protest against the French operation in Mali outside the French embassy in Cairo



A sculptural covering of snow on bikes locked together in Bath, UK



More boys' toys: Spanish Formula One Ferrari driver, Fernando Alonso in action during a go-kart race on the frozen lake of Madonna di Campiglio, Italy



Syrian rebel fighters watch smoke rising in the city of Aleppo, today



Former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni, the leader of the new party The Movement, campaigns on in Tel Aviv, Israel. Israel will go to the polls on January 22

[Mr Lick]

New Orleans ex-mayor Ray Nagin indicted

Ray Nagin's indictment has been long expected

Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has been charged with 21 federal counts of wire fraud, bribery, filing false tax returns and money laundering.

Mr Nagin, 56, mayor from 2002-10, came to national attention when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005.

Beginning in June 2004, Mr Nagin took payments, travel and other gratuities in exchange for city contracts and other favours, prosecutors said.

At least four Nagin associates have already pleaded guilty in the case.

"Mayor Nagin used his public office and his official capacity to provide favorable treatment that benefitted the business and financial interests of individuals providing him bribery/kickback payoffs," the indictment reads.

According to the federal indictment, Mr Nagin accepted more than $160,000 (£100,000) in bribes from local businessman Frank Fradella.

In exchange, Mr Nagin helped Fradella secure millions of dollars in contracts from the city in the wake of Katrina, including construction at the airport and sidewalk repair projects, prosecutors said.

Mr Nagin is also charged with accepting payoffs worth at least $60,000 from another businessman, Rodney Williams, who was given consulting and construction contracts with the city.

Fradella and Williams have already pleaded guilty in connection with the case and are expected to testify against the former mayor, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

[Mr Lick]

Fake Mexico TV crew jailed in Nicaragua for 30 years

The fake Mexican TV vans were stopped near Nicaragua's border with Honduras.

A court in Nicaragua has jailed for 30 years each 18 people who tried to enter the country with $9.2m (£5.8m), posing as Mexican TV journalists.

A judge in Managua found them guilty of money-laundering and organising a drug link between Mexico and Costa Rica.

They were arrested in August after police found the cash and traces of cocaine in six vans, some painted with Mexico's Televisa network logo.

Central America is increasingly a transit route for Mexican drug gangs.

The only woman in the group was named as their leader and sentenced to 20 years for international drug-trafficking, eight-and-a-half years for organised crime and seven years for money-laundering - a total of more than 35 years.

However, 30 years is set by Nicaraguan law as the maximum prison sentence.

"Raquel Alatorre Correa will finish her sentence on 24 August, 2042," said the judge.

The money and the vans have been confiscated by the judge.

The 18 Mexicans had already been found guilty in December but were awaiting their sentences.

At the time of their arrest, the self-proclaimed journalists said they had been sent to cover a high-profile murder for Televisa, Mexico's biggest TV network, but the company quickly denied any link to the group.

Its lawyer said they were still awaiting results of the analysis of the signature on the supposed letter of accreditation to ascertain the possible involvement of a Televisa employee, local newspaper La Prensa reports.

The defendants denied the charges against them.

[Mr Lick]

Snow in the UK

Wintry weather is enjoyed and endured by sledgers, squirrels and swimmers



Bristol



Sussex



Newcastle



Notts



Burton



Notts



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Devon



Whitley Bay



York

[Mr Lick]

This is the bow wave of a star travelling at 24 kilometres per second through clouds of dust. The wave, revealed in this infrared image from the Spitzer Space Telescope, is created by stellar winds preceding the star



Saturn, captured by the Cassini spacecraft while it was in the shadow of the gas giant. Two of the planet's moons can be seen below its rings on the left of the picture. Enceladus is uppermost, Tethys is below and to the left



A star-forming ring surrounds the heart of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1097 in this image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. At the galaxy's centre is a black hole 100 million times the mass of our sun. The area immediately around the supermassive black hole shines brightly with radiation from the material being sucked in



Holy grail: Nasa's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (Grail) used precise microwave measurements between two spacecraft, named Ebb and Flow, to map the moon's gravity in unprecedented detail. Red corresponds to excess gravity compared to the average and blue to lower gravity

[Mr Lick]

Some of the most monstrous black holes in the universe may be even more fearsome than we thought. Supermassive black holes typically have masses ranging from a few million to a few billion times that of our sun, but a new analysis using data from Nasa's Chandra X-ray Observatory suggests that a few are between 10 and 40 billion times the mass of the sun – earning them the title 'ultramassive'. The black hole at the center of this galaxy was part of the survey of 18 of the biggest known black holes in the universe



The Bubble Nebula in the constellation Cassiopeia, as seen by the new One Degree Imager Camera at the WIYN 3.5-metre telescope on Kitt Peak in Hawaii. It's a shell of gas and dust 10 light-years across that has been carved out by the stellar wind of the massive central star and ionised by its high-energy light



This image from the Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2012 may contain the most distant object ever seen. It shows several newly discovered galaxies with redshifts between 8.6 and 11.9 – the most distant object observed to date



The Hubble Space Telescope captured the planetary nebula NGC 5189 in unprecedented detail. Despite their name, planetary nebulae have nothing to do with planets. When a star like our sun reaches the end of its life and consumes the last of the fuel in its core, it expels its outer regions, which then heat up and glow brightly

[Mr Lick]

The star nursery Carina Nebula as seen by the VLT Survey Telescope at the European Southern Observatory's Paranal Observatory in Chile. The picture was released to mark the new telescope's inauguration in Naples on 6 December



The asteroid Toutatis, which is 4.8km (3 miles) long, made its closest approach to Earth on 12 December – 7 million kilometres away – and had its picture taken by Nasa's Goldstone Solar System Radar. You can watch a video sequence of the asteroid tumbling through space here



The spiral galaxy NGC 3627, which is about 30 million light years from Earth. This composite image includes x-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope (red), and optical data from Hubble and the Very Large Telescope (yellow)



A circle of bright pink nebulae skirts a spiral galaxy in this Hubble image of the galaxy NGC 922. The ring and the distorted spiral shape result from a smaller galaxy crashing into the galaxy's centre some 330m years ago. X-ray sources identified by the Chandra X-ray Observatory are shown in blue



Cosmic sneeze: each speck in the cloud at the centre of this Hubble image is a star in the galaxy ESO 318-13



This image from Hubble shows NGC 6388, a 'dynamically middle-aged' globular cluster in the Milky Way. Globular clusters are clutches of stars that orbit a galaxy's core. They all formed more than 10bn years ago, but a study of the distribution of bright blue stars in this one shows that it has aged at a moderate speed, and its heaviest stars are slowly migrating towards its centre



Winter wonderland: the cratered Charitum Montes region on Mars, dusted with white carbon dioxide frost. The European Space Agency's orbiting Mars Express spacecraft took this picture on 6 December

[Mr Lick]

A protester takes part as members of Egyptian security forces stand guard during a protest against the French operation in Mali outside the French embassy in Cairo January 18, 2013.



A Free Syrian Army fighter aims his rifle before opening fire at Syrian Army soldiers in the Arabeen neighbourhood of Damascus January 18, 2013



Afghan drug addicts smoke heroin on a river in Kabul January 18, 2013.

[Mr Lick]

A man wearing the costume of Tony the Tiger, a mascot of Kellogg's Frosted Flakes, takes a rest outside a pavilion at the Green Week agricultural fair in Berlin, January 18, 2013. The annual exhibition of food stuffs and agricultural products is one of the world's largest of its kind. The Netherlands is the partner nation of this year's Green Week.



A UAE fan jumps the fence and tries to run into the soccer pitch as security tries to stop him after the UAE won their final against Iraq at the Gulf Cup Tournament in Isa Town, January 18, 2013.



A reporter visits China's largest capsule hotel in Qingdao, Shandong province, January 15, 2013. The hotel has 100 capsule rooms, each equipped with an LCD TV, WiFi connection, a computer desk, a dresser and comfortable bedding. Staying in one of these 2-by-1 meter, 1.2-meter high capsule rooms costs 45 yuan ($7.2) per day during the off season and 80 yuan during peak season. Picture taken January 15, 2013.



Police officers on the Venice Beach breakwater take custody of a suspect who ran from a vehicle being pursued by police in the Venice section of Los Angeles, California, January 17, 2013. The suspect and another man confronted a Santa Monica grocery store employee with a handgun and fled in their vehicle as officers arrived, police said.



People ride motorcycles through a flooded street in the business district in Jakarta January 18, 2013. Floods eased in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, on Friday, while emergency crews laboured to assist more than 18,000 refugees and get the city back on its feet after a state of emergency was announced yesterday. Many parts of Indonesia are inundated regularly, but weather patterns in Asia brought with them the worst floods Jakarta has seen in since 2007

[Mr Lick]

A supporter of Sufi cleric and leader of the Minhaj-ul-Quran religious organisation Muhammad Tahirul Qadri burns rubbish as supporters prepare to leave the capital after Qadri reached a deal with Pakistan's coalition government in Islamabad January 18, 2013. Qadri, who has with a history of ties to the military, has been calling for the Pakistani government to resign. He reached a deal with the administration on Thursday that will give him a say in the electoral process ahead of elections. Qadri triggered a political crisis by launching mass protests in the capital four days ago calling for electoral reforms to clean up Pakistani politics. He has been pushing for the military to play a role in the formation of the caretaker administration that takes over in the run-up to scheduled elections.



A Malian gendarme checks the identity of people crossing a strategic bridge over a dam on the Niger River secured by French forces in Markala, Mali January 18, 2013. French troops' initial clashes with Islamist militants in Mali have shown that the desert fighters are better trained and equipped than France had anticipated before last week's military intervention, French and other U.N. diplomats said.



Free Syrian Army fighters walk with their rifles in the Arabeen neighbourhood of Damascus January 18, 2013.



A man walks past snow covered cars in Henley in Arden, central England January 18, 2013



A man holds a cross and the Koran at Tahrir square in Cairo January 18, 2013, during a protest demanding justice for 74 people killed in a stadium stampede in Port Said last year. Hundreds of soccer fans gathered in Cairo on Friday to demand justice for the 74 people killed in the disaster last February at the Port Said stadium during a match between Cairo's Al Ahly and local side al-Masry, as a court prepared to issue a verdict in the case

[Mr Lick]

Lego Hotel



One of hundreds of Lego figures is seen by a pool as construction continues in North America's first ever Lego Hotel currently being built at Legoland in Carlsbad, California, January 17, 2013. The three-story, 250-room hotel will open on April 5.

[Mr Lick]

New York, US: The area of Breezy Point where more than 100 homes were damaged by a fire caused by Hurricane Sandy



Markala, Mali: French soldiers stand guard in an armoured vehicle