This week, we have photos of the Germanwings flight crash scene, preparations for launch at the Baikonur cosmodrome, a sinkhole in New Jersey, unrest and airstrikes in Yemen, Alaskan Wood bison returning to the wild, the last Jew in the Turkish town of Edirne, tornado damage in Oklahoma, a memorial to Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew, and much more.
1. An Orthodox priest blesses Sergey Semchenko of the Russian Search and Recovery Forces after having blessed the Soyuz rocket at the Baikonur Cosmodrome Launch pad on March 26, 2015, in Kazakhstan. The NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and the Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Gennady Padalka of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) are scheduled to launch to the International Space Station in the Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on March 28, Kazakh time (March 27 Eastern time).
Bill Ingalls/NASA
2. A building burns after an explosion on 2nd Avenue on March 26, 2015, in New York City. The seven-alarm fire drew firefighters from across the city. A number of injuries were reported.
Andrew Burton/Getty Images
3. A woman wearing a scarf covering her face to protect herself from pollution walks in a park in Beijing on March 18, 2015.
Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters
4. A snowboarder performs during the Red Bull Jump and Freeze competition at ski resort Shimbulak outside Almaty, Kazakhstan, on March 22, 2015.
Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters
5. A man bows to pay his respects to the late Lee Kuan Yew at a community club where members of the public can gather to express their condolences, on March 23, 2015, in Singapore. Singaporeans wept, and world leaders paid tribute Monday as the Southeast Asian city-state mourned the death of its founding father Lee Kuan Yew. The government announced that Lee, 91, "passed away peacefully" several hours before dawn at Singapore General Hospital.
Wong Maye-E/AP
6. Smoke and lava spew from the Villarrica volcano, as seen from Pucon town in the south of Santiago, Chile, on March 27, 2015. The Villarrica Volcano expelled smoke as scientists warn the concentration of lava contained within the structure is close to the crater. Authorities have restricted access to the area within five kilometers of the crater and have put the area under an orange alert, which means that an "eruption is probably in the short-term."
Cristobal Saavedra/Reuters
7. A Tornado forms in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, on March 25, 2015. A storm system produced at least three tornadoes in Arkansas and Oklahoma on Wednesday, killing one person and injuring several others, officials said.
Jeff Piotrowski/Reuters
8. The Sand Springs firefighter Donny McMasters walks through the tornado-damaged River Oaks Estate mobile-home park in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, on March 26, 2015. Mary Fallin has declared a state of emergency for 25 Oklahoma counties after powerful storms rumbled across the state Wednesday evening.
Sue Ogrocki/AP
9. An Afghan protester looks on as demonstrators shout slogans during a rally in front of the Supreme Court in Kabul on March 24, 2015, held to protest the killing of the Afghan resident Farkhunda. More than a thousand people protested in the Afghan capital to call for justice after a woman was brutally killed by a mob who falsely accused her of burning a copy of the Koran. The woman, 27-year-old Farkhunda, was beaten with sticks and stones and thrown from a roof before being run over by a car outside a mosque in Kabul on March 19, 2015. The mob then set her body ablaze and dumped it in Kabul River, while police allegedly looked on.
Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images
10. Visitors watch a tuna fish swim in the large tank at the Tokyo Sea Life Park in Tokyo on March 25, 2015. The park on March 24 found its second to last tuna fish floating dead in its vast doughnut-shaped enclosure that was once home to nearly 160 fish and among the venue's most popular attractions, said a spokesman for Tokyo Sea Life Park.
Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP/Getty Images
11. The main street is covered with debris at Chanaral town on March 26, 2015. The death toll in Chile rose to four after rains battered the north and caused flooding, the government said on Thursday, while 22 others were unaccounted for as the military rescued stranded villagers.
Ivan Alvarado/Reuters
12. "UFO" buildings on show at the Golden Beach on March 25, 2015, in Rizhao, Shandong province of China. Rizhao built its seaside resorts with "UFO" buildings which were retail stores, restaurants, and health and emergency centers.
ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images
13. Thirteen-year-old Naserlalah Ibrahim, who lost his left leg during fighting in Syria, uses a frame to support himself as he learns to walk on a prosthetic leg fitted at a prosthetics clinic on March 24, 2015, in Reyhanli, Turkey. Border towns such as Reyhanli have received a large number of refugees, many requiring medical help after receiving injuries from bombings. There is now a serious shortage of surgeons, wheelchairs, and artificial limbs in Syria after reports that approximately 567 doctors and medical workers have been killed during the war so far. Human rights groups have claimed that hospitals, clinics, and medical personnel have been deliberately targeted during the war.
Carl Court/Getty Images
14. An aerial view of a public cemetery ahead of the Qingming Festival, or Tomb Sweeping Day, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, March 26, 2015. The festival, which falls on April 5 this year, is a day for the Chinese to remember and honor their ancestors.
Reuters
15. Two wood bison bulls weighing upward of 2,000 pounds move toward higher ground at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center in Portage, Alaska, on March 22, 2015. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game on Sunday moved the first wood bison to a staging area in Shageluk, Alaska, for reintroduction in a few weeks to their native Alaska grazing grounds. Wood bison, which are larger than native plains bison found in the lower 48 states, disappeared from U.S. soil more than a century ago.
Dan Joling/AP
16. A Palestinian child runs past a water tank that was destroyed in Israeli bombing during the 50-day war between Israel and Hamas militants in the summer of 2014, in the village of Khuzaa, east of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on March 26, 2015.
Said Khatib/AFP/Getty Images
17. U.S. Marines walk on Invasion Beach near the site of a ceremony commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima, now known as Ioto, Japan, on March 21, 2015. The battle is one of WWII's bloodiest and most iconic battles.
Eugene Hoshiko/AP
18. An Israeli Defense Force reservist from the Home Front Command treats a doll during an exercise, together with hospital staff, simulating a chemical-warfare attack at the Wolfson Hospital in Holon near Tel Aviv, on March 26, 2015.
Baz Ratner/Reuters
19. The High Altitude Cherenkov Experiment (HAWC) observatory on the slopes of Pico de Orizaba and Sierra Negra, near Puebla, Mexico, on March 20, 2015. Sitting at the foot of a volcano, this facility looks like a water treatment plant. In fact, it's one of the largest and most powerful observatories ever built on Earth. Unlike optical observatories that use telescopes to study planets and stars, the HAWC detects high-energy cosmic particles to unravel the mysteries of black holes and supernovas. The HAWC is able to track where gamma rays originated, no matter how many light-years away.
Henry Romero/Reuters
20. Rifat Mitrani, the town's last Jew, poses at the Great Synagogue as he visits during its restoration in Edirne, Turkey, on February 26, 2015. When the domes of Edirne's abandoned Great Synagogue caved in, Mitrani knew it spelled the end of nearly two millennia of Jewish heritage in this Turkish town. As a boy, he studied Hebrew in the synagogue's gardens and, in the 1970s, dispatched its Torah to Istanbul after the community shrank to just three families. In 1975, he unlocked its doors and swept away the cobwebs to marry his wife Sara. Now, a five-year, $2.5-million government project has restored the synagogue's lead-clad domes and interior ahead of its Thursday re-opening, the first temple to open in Turkey in two generations, but one without worshipers. It is part of a relaxation of curbs on religious minorities ushered in during President Tayyip Erdogan's 12 years in power. Yet it coincides with a spike in anti-Semitism in predominantly Muslim Turkey and a wave of Jews moving away, say members of the aging community, which has shrunk by more than a third in the last quarter century.
Murad Sezer/Reuters
21. This aerial view shows polluted water flowing from the Barra channel to the Barra beach, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on March 23, 2015. Rio de Janeiro’s mayor acknowledged in a television interview Monday that the run-up to the 2016 games has proven a “wasted opportunity” to clean up the city’s blighted waterways.
Felipe Dana/AP
22. People help firefighters try to contain a fire at a petrol station in Lagos, Nigeria, on March 26, 2015. Witnesses said no one was injured in the fire that consumed a number of trucks and cars at the site.
Sunday Alamba/AP
23. An alligator swims in the waters of the Panama Canal, near Gatun, Panama, on March 23, 2015.
Arnulfo Franco/AP
24. A Houthi Shiite fighter stands guard as people search for survivors under the rubble of houses destroyed by Saudi airstrikes near Sanaa Airport, Yemen, on March 26, 2015. Saudi Arabia launched airstrikes Thursday targeting military installations in Yemen held by Shiite rebels who were taking over a key port city in the country's south and had driven the embattled president to flee by sea, security officials said.
Hani Mohammed/AP
25. Pope Francis is driven through the crowd under pouring rain as he arrives for his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican on March 25, 2015.
Andrew Medichini/AP
26. A reveler is dressed as a zarramache with her traditional costumes and masks used in carnival stands after a parade went through the streets during a gathering of different villages' carnival masks and characters in Pedro Bernardo, Spain, on March 21, 2015.
Daniel Ochoa de Olza/AP
27. A large sinkhole is shown in this handout photo provided by the South Amboy Police Department in Amboy, New Jersey, on March 24, 2015. The sinkhole, believed to have been caused by an underground water main break, forced the evacuations of four New Jersey homes about 20 miles south of Newark, after suddenly forming early on Tuesday, crumbling part of a roadway and swallowing a car, police said.
Reuters
28. Buildings of the Israeli settlement of Har Homa in annexed east Jerusalem, on March 25, 2015. Israel's outgoing government has suspended a controversial plan to build hundreds of new settler homes in annexed east Jerusalem, a news website reported. The plan involves the construction of 1,500 homes in the settlement neighborhood of Har Homa, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a controversial speech on the eve of March 17 elections, pledging to build thousands of new homes if returned to office.
Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images
29. A woman walks during a photo shoot at an abandoned freight station in Pankow, in Berlin, on March 9, 2015. The Irish writer Ciaran Fahey, who moved to Berlin in 2008, was so fascinated with the empty spaces and abandoned buildings in the German capital that he started a now-popular blog called Abandoned Berlin and has just turned it into a full book.
Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters
30. A helicopter flies over a launch pad at the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, on March 25, 2015. Russia's Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft carrying the International Space Station (ISS) crew of the U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly and the Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Kornienko is scheduled to blast off to the ISS from Baikonur early on March 28, Kazakh time.
Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images
31. Andrea Bunar delivers the mail by boat in the village of Luebbenau, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of Berlin, Germany, on March 25, 2015. For 118 years the German mail service Deutsche Post has delivered the mail between March and October with a boat in that area. The Spreewald landscape is irrigated with more than 200 small canals, and is an official UNESCO biosphere reserve.
Markus Schreiber/AP
32. Followers of the Shiite Muslim rebel al-Houthi group rally against air strikes in Sanaa, Yemen, on March 26, 2015. Warplanes from Saudi Arabia and Arab allies struck Shiite Muslim rebels fighting to oust Yemen's president on Thursday, in a major gamble by the world's top oil exporter to check Iranian influence in its backyard without direct military backing from Washington.
Khaled Abdullah/Reuters
33. Workers pick tea leaves at a tea plantation in Dongyang, Zhejiang province, China, on March 25, 2015.
China Daily/Reuters
34. Wreckage of an Airbus A320 is seen at the crash site, near Seyne-les-Alpes, French Alps, on March 26, 2015. A young German co-pilot locked himself alone in the cockpit of Germanwings Flight 9525 and set it on course to crash into an Alpine mountain, killing all 150 people on board including himself, prosecutors said on Thursday. French prosecutors offered no motive for why 27-year-old Andreas Lubitz apparently took the controls of the Airbus A320, locked the captain out of the cockpit, and deliberately set it veering down from cruising altitude at 3,000 feet per minute.
Emmanuel Foudrot/Reuters
35. A man carrying a sailfish walks through Hamarweyne district in South Mogadishu on March 25, 2015.
Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty Images
