Photos of the week

Image 1 of 20: School boys stand near fuel trucks which were set ablaze in the Bolan district of Pakistan's Baluchistan province December 12, 2011. Gunmen on motorcycles opened fire to nine fuel trucks in the Bolan area of southwestern Baluchistan province, setting them on fire and killing one of the drivers, police and witnesses said. REUTERS/Amir Hussain

Image 2 of 20: Memoona, 23, a survivor of an acid attack, poses for a photograph inside her residence in Karachi December 14, 2011. Memoona says the acid attack took place on August 13, 2002, when a boy threw acid on her face and body over an old family feud. Memoona, who is currently enrolled in nursing school, said she lost her eye but not her spirit. The Pakistan Senate unanimously passed the Acid Control and Acid Crime Prevention Bill on December 12, recommending a 14-year to lifetime imprisonment sentences and levies fines up to Rs1 million ($11,160) for the perpetrators of the crime, local media reported. REUTERS/Insiya Syed

Image 3 of 20: Farmers dig a water well in a field that includes an abandoned building that was to be part of an amusement park called 'Wonderland', on the outskirts of Beijing December 5, 2011. Construction work at the park, which was promoted by developers as 'the largest amusement park in Asia', stopped around 1998 after funds were withdrawn due to disagreements over property prices with the local government and farmers. With local governments often dependent on land sales to fund payments on a staggering 10.7 trillion yuan ($1.7 trillion) of debt, Beijing worries that a collapsing property market will trigger a wave of defaults that in turn will hit the banks. More worrisome, the property market, which contributes about 10 percent of Chinese growth and drives activity in 50 other sectors, could drag the real economy to a hard landing. REUTERS/David Gray

Image 4 of 20: Ivan Vasilevich, 60, chops firewood in the village of Garenichi, some 110 km (68 miles) east of Minsk, December 14, 2011. Vasilevich used to work at a farm, often wearing rubber boots, and had his legs freeze over time. He then had to have them amputated 13 years ago after gangrene set in, and now earns money by weaving baskets. He weaves up to 25 baskets a month and sells them at a local market at a price of $2.50. Ivan has a disability pension of $140 a month, so the income he garners from weaving baskets is a significant amount for his family to subsist. REUTERS/Vladimir Nikolsky

Image 5 of 20: A protestor affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement dances in the center of Winter Garden Atrium, at Three World Financial Center in New York, December 12, 2011. People began protesting in the building after a protest earlier in the morning outside Goldman Sachs New York offices. REUTERS/Andrew Burton

Image 6 of 20: An ultra-Orthodox Jew walks past graffiti sprayed on the outside of a mosque in Jerusalem December 14, 2011. The unused mosque in Jerusalem was set ablaze and graffiti was sprayed on its walls on Wednesday in a manner similar to recent attacks associated to hardline Jewish settlers. The graffiti reads in Hebrew "A good Arab is a dead Arab."REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

Image 7 of 20: Family members mourn for their relatives, who died after consuming bootleg liquor, outside a hospital at Diamond Harbour, a town about 50 km (31 miles) south of West Bengal's capital Kolkata, December 15, 2011. An adulterated batch of bootleg liquor has killed at least 100 drinkers in eastern India, with dozens more arriving at a cramped rural hospital with poisoning symptoms. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri

Image 8 of 20: An injured protester is evacuated by a fellow protester on the back of a motorcycle during clashes with army soldiers at the cabinet near Tahrir Square in Cairo December 16, 2011. Stone-throwing demonstrators clashed with troops wielding truncheons and electric prods in central Cairo on Friday, witnesses said, in the worst violence since the start of Egypt's first free election in six decades. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh

Image 9 of 20: Green Bay Packers' Jordy Nelson (R) celebrates a touchdown against the Oakland Raiders in the first half during their NFL football game in Green Bay, Wisconsin December 11, 2011. REUTERS/Darren Hauck

Image 10 of 20: Todd Engle (C) and Mary Rose Engle (R) hold weapons as they pose for a photograph with a man dressed as Santa Claus at the Scottsdale Gun Club in Scottsdale, Arizona December 10, 2011. REUTERS/Joshua Lott

Image 11 of 20: Students wear chains around their ankles while sitting with their belongings at a police station after being rescued during a late night raid at the Zakariya madrassa on the outskirts of Karachi on December 13, 2011. Police in Karachi have rescued 54 students from the basement of an Islamic seminary, or madrassa, where they said they were kept in chains by clerics, beaten and barely fed. Police raided the Zakariya madrassa late on Monday on the outskirts of Karachi, Pakistan's commercial hub. They were now investigating whether it had any links to violent militant groups, which often recruit from hardline religious schools. REUTERS/Athar Hussain

Image 12 of 20: Visitors take pictures of Polipaka Gattaiah, who stands at seven-and-a-half feet and claims to be the tallest man in India, with their mobile phones at the arts and crafts centre in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad December 11, 2011. Gattaiah entertains people who visit the centre. Visitors often give money to the 38-year-old man and pose for photographs with him. In March 2011, he was given a prosthetic foot by a charitable organisation after it was amputated a few years earlier because of an infection. It is said to be the longest prosthetic foot ever made, according to local media. Gattaiah is paid 6500 rupees ($130) a month by the state tourism department, officials said. REUTERS/Krishnendu Halder

Image 13 of 20: A tribesman chews qat, a mild stimulant, as he stands guard at an airstrip where a United Nations charter plane carrying U.N. Envoy Jamal bin Omar to Yemen landed in the northwestern Yemeni city of Saada December 13, 2011. Saada has been the scene of several waves of fighting between government forces and Shi'ite rebels. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

Image 14 of 20: Brenda Lizbeth Paniagua rehearses on the roof of her home after classes at the mariachi school in Guadalajara in the State of Jalisco December 6, 2011. Mariachis, traditional Mexican musicians whose music originated in the 19th century in the State of Jalisco, play music for paying customers in public places, bars and restaurants, or at weddings and parties, and have recently been declared an "intangible cultural heritage of humanity" by UNESCO. REUTERS/Alejandro Acosta

Image 15 of 20: A fisherman stands on the frozen bank of the Yenisei River near Russia's Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, December 16, 2011. REUTERS/Ilya Naymushin

Image 16 of 20: A journalist takes a sample of the red polluted water in the Jianhe River in Luoyang, Henan province December 13, 2011. According to local media, the sources of the pollution are two illegal chemical plants discharging their production waste water into the rain sewer pipes. REUTERS/China Daily

Image 17 of 20: Debris, including a stuffed fish, sits in front of a blighted house in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, Louisiana December 1, 2011. New Orleans is seeing success from a four-year campaign to eradicate city blight, which accelerated post-Katrina due to flood damage, foreclosures and population loss. The city is about 4,000 houses into its goal of tearing down 10,000 dilapidated buildings. REUTERS/Lee Celano

Image 18 of 20: Members of the U.S. military rest on board an Air Force C-130 transport plane marking the end of their presence in Iraq after departing the Baghdad Diplomatic Support Center in Baghdad December 15, 2011. The U.S military officially ended its war in Iraq on Thursday, packing up a military flag at a ceremony with U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta nearly nine years after the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein. This ceremony is called the "casing of the colors" and signifies the departing and inactivation of the U.S. military's presence in Iraq. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

Image 19 of 20: U.S. Air Force Major Stacie Shafran carries her luggage to a loading paddock while waiting for her departure from Iraq at the former U.S. Sather Air Base near Baghdad, Iraq December 14, 2011. The former base that is currently still operational was handed over to the Baghdad Diplomatic Support Center run by the State Department on December 1st.REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

Image 20 of 20: First lady Michelle Obama applauds as U.S. President Barack Obama speaks to troops at Fort Bragg in North Carolina December 14, 2011. The visit is seen as a symbolic end of the Iraq war with a tribute to the troops who fought and died in a conflict Obama opposed from the start. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque