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THE WEEK IN PICTURES

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• Dec. 3: Anna Abrams, left, and Austen Gillen- Keeney throw snowballs in Montpelier, Vt.
• Dec. 3: President Bush and first lady Laura Bush with 7-year-old Malik Lawson, center, watch the Children's Holiday Reception and Performance in the East Room the White House in Washington.
• Dec. 3: Steve Hoey, slain Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor's high school football coach at Gulliver Prep in Miami, kneels before the casket at Taylor's funeral service at PharmEd Arena on the Florida International University campus in Miami.
• Dec. 3: Republican presidential hopeful and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani speaks during a 'North Carolina Women for Rudy' event at North Carolina A&T University in Greensboro, N.C.
• Dec. 3: Pakistan former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, left, receives her political rival former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, right, at her residence in Islamabad, Pakistan.
• Dec. 3: A released Palestinian prisoner, left, is hugged by a relative as he arrives in the West Bank town of Hebron.
• Dec. 3: Hundreds of Christmas lights and festive characters decorate the house and garden of Bernhard Nermerich in Kelkheim, near Frankfurt, central Germany.
• Dec. 3: Marianne Cruz smiles after winning the Miss Dominican 2008 pageant in Santo Domingo.
• Dec. 4: Masked Hamas militants pray during a funeral for three members of their group in the Deir El-Ballah refugee camp.
• Dec. 4: An unidentified Carabinieri paramilitary police officer stands next to a computer display showing photos of arrested Mafia mobsters during a press conference in Catania, Sicily, Southern Italy.
• Dec. 4: Penn State football head coach Joe Paterno speaks after being introduced as a 2007 inductee to the College Football Hall of Fame at a news conference in New York.
• Dec. 4: Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, left, welcomes French President Nicolas Sarkozy, center, and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner during their arrival at the Presidential Palace for a meeting in Algiers, Algeria.
• Dec. 4: People dance and sing during the start of Hanukkah in front of the Moscow Kremlin.
• Dec. 4: IBF & IBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko talks to the media in New York before a news conference to announce his fight against WBO heavyweight champion Sultan Ibragimov.
• Dec. 4: Norman Hsu, a top Democratic fundraiser accused of cheating investors of at least $60 million and using some of the money to make illegal donations to political campaigns, was indicted by a federal grand jury.
• Dec. 5: This image taken from a video surveillance camera and released by the Omaha Police Department shows gunman Robert A. Hawkins raising a rifle in the Von Maur Department store in the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Neb., moments before killing eight people and himself.
• This undated yearbook photo shows Robert A. Hawkins, identified by police as the man who opened fire with a rifle at a busy Omaha, Neb., department store, killing eight people and himself on Wednesday.
• Dec. 5: This photo distributed by the Spanish Interior Ministry shows one of hundreds of items, including missing gold artifacts from Peru's glittering pre-Inca past and possibly from museums elsewhere, found by Spanish police in Madrid.
• Dec. 5: Firefighters battle a fire that started when a tanker carrying about 9,000 gallons of gasoline overturned in a traffic circle and exploded in Everett, Mass.
• Dec. 5: Children play on an artificial ice luge track set up for Christmas outside the Paris town hall.
• Dec. 5: Supporters of Pakistan's former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, top center, raise their hands in support of Sharif during a rally at Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan's controlled portion of Kashmir.
• Dec. 5: Defense Secretary Robert Gates, left, is introduced to soldiers by Army Maj. Gen. Mark Hertling, commanding general of Multi-National Division North, right, after arriving at Mosul Airfield in Mosul, Iraq.
• Dec. 5: Christina Silva, 24, takes off her crown as she poses for a photo at her home in Los Angeles, Calif. Silva was declared the winner of the annual state beauty pageant, Miss California USA, but she was asked to give up the title to Raquel Beezley, who originally was named the second runner-up. Beezely, 21, will represent the state at the Miss USA pageant next April. An accounting mix-up led to the wrong woman being crowned Miss California USA, and she's relinquished her crown to the rightful winner, organizers said.
• Dec. 5: Two men check out the flow of the Chehalis River in Washington that destroyed the Chandler Road Bridge.
• Dec. 6: An Indian woman dries cow dung cakes, a bio fuel used for cooking in Allahabad, India. Developing nations at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Bali demanded the rapid transfer of technology to help them combat global warming, while a report warned that some of Asia's biggest cities could be threatened by rising sea levels.
• This image provided by NASA shows the official crew portrait of the Space Shuttle Atlantis, which was set to launch on Thursday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. From the left, front row, are astronauts Stephen N. Frick, commander; European Space Agency, Leopold Eyharts; and Alan G. Poindexter, pilot. From the left, back row, are astronauts Leland D. Melvin, Rex J. Walheim, Stanley G. Love and European Space Agency's Hans Schlegel, all mission specialists. Eyharts will join Expedition 16 in progress to serve as a flight engineer aboard the international space station. The crew members are attired in training versions of their shuttle launch and entry suits.
• Dec. 6: Members of the pro-Kremlin Nashi movement wave Nashi and Russian flags as they celebrate the victory of President Vladimir Putin's party in Sunday's parliamentary election, in front of St. Basil's cathedral on Moscow's Red Square.
• Dec. 6: A man dressed as Santa Claus is pictured with boots at the theater in Duisburg, Germany. The children of the city of Duisburg took 414 boots to the theater and reached a record for the Guinness Book of Records. Every boot will traditionally be filled with sweets by Santa.
• Dec. 6: Orangutan Charly eats his birthday cake at the zoo in Frankfurt, Germany. Charly, who is father of at least 18 orangutans in various zoos around the world, was celebrating his 50th birthday.
• Dec. 6: Rudy Hermann Guede, an Ivory Coast native who has been detained in the slaying of British college student Meredith Kercher in Perugia, central Italy, is held by Italian police officers as he arrives from prison in Germany to Rome's Fiumicino airport. Guede, who was arrested and detained in Germany, was be questioned by Italian prosecutors in Perugia. Two other suspects, American Amanda Knox, 20, and her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, have been detained in Perugia. All deny wrongdoing.
• Dec. 6: Police and rescuers work at the scene of an explosion in Paris in which one person was killed and another seriously injured, according to the Interior Ministry. Several others reportedly were suffering from shock. The Ministry did not say who might have been behind the bombing.
• Dec. 6: Kylon Bagofsky, a Chehalis resident who came out to John Kesting's dairy farm to help with the flood aftermath, looks at a pile of dead cattle drowned by flood waters near Curtis, Wash.
• Dec. 6: In this photo released by Vermont State Police, a horse is seen accidentally taking an icy plunge in a swimming pool in Dorset, Vt. Jet, a 6-year-old quarterhorse, walked onto the frozen in-ground pool and broke through 6 inches of ice into about 3 feet of water, becoming trapped. Rescuers broke the ice in a corner of the pool and got a rope around the horse's neck, pulling him to safety and wrapping him in a blanket. He was taken to a veterinarian and treated for a cut to his left hind leg.
• Dec. 7: Activists with their bodies painted are blocked by Indonesian police as they march toward the venue of the U.N. climate change conference during a demonstration in Nusa Dua on Bali island, Indonesia. Delegates from 190 nations assembled on the resort island for the conference, taking place from Dec. 3 to Dec. 14 and which focuses on launching a two-year negotiating process to seal a deal to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
• Dec. 7: Nobel Peace Prize laureate Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, walk in Oslo. Gore will be awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize on Dec. 10.
• Dec. 7: Rescue workers look on during a break from efforts to find miners after a gas explosion Wednesday at a mine in Hongtong county, northern China's Shanxi province. The death toll in the massive gas explosion at the coal mine rose to 105 Friday, making it the nation's second deadliest mining disaster this year, state media reported
• Dec. 7: Villagers walk over the rubble of the house of fugitive pro-Taliban cleric Fazlullah in Mingora, northwestern Pakistan. Security forces blew up the home of the cleric Thursday following the capture of two militant-held towns in northern Pakistan, the army said.
• Dec. 7: A Hong Kong-registered tanker spills oil into the sea after an accident near Mallipo beach, South Korea. A crane-carrying vessel slammed into the Hong Kong-registered oil tanker in seas off South Korea's west coast, causing the tanker to leak about 66,000 barrels of crude oil, officials said.
• Dec. 7: John Darwin, 57, the back-from-the-dead canoeist, leaves Magistrates Court in Hartlepool, England, after police were granted another 36 hours for questioning. Darwin's disappearance five years ago is being investigated as part of a fraud inquiry, which also involves his wife, Anne, who collected the insurance payments and was living in Panama.
• Dec. 7: Lorenzo Delloye Betancourt, the son of French-Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt, reacts during a live address in Spanish to his mother, broadcast from the Radio France Internationale, or RFI, studios in Paris. Ingrid Betancourt was kidnapped in February 2002 while campaigning for the Colombian presidency. She has become a cause celebrity in France, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy made an unusual direct appeal Thursday to Colombian rebel leader Manuel Marulanda to release her and has said securing Betancourt's release is a priority.
• This Reproduction made available Friday by Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano shows part of an article presenting the discovery of a long-missing Michelangelo sketch for the dome of St. Peter's Basilica, at right, possibly his last design before his death, found in the basilica's office. The sketch, in blood-red chalk for stonecutters who were working on the construction of the basilica, was drawn by the Renaissance artist in the spring of 1563, less than a year before his death, L'Osservatore Romano reported.
• Dec. 7: A protester kicks a police officer during an anti-government protest in Karachi, Pakistan.
• Dec. 7: U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the NATO meeting in Brussels, where Russia ignored Rice's calls for new U.N. sanctions to be imposed on Iran over its nuclear program.
• The battleship USS Arizona belches smoke as it topples over into the sea during a Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in this Dec. 7, 1941, file photo. The ship sank with more than 80 percent of its 1,500-man crew, including Rear Adm. Isaac C. Kidd. The attack, which left 2,343 Americans dead and 916 missing, broke the backbone of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and forced America out of a policy of isolationism. Americans on Friday observed the 66th anniversary of the attack.
• Dec. 8: A border policeman tries to enter a mock 'Palestinian outpost' to remove demonstrators in an area between Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement of Maaleh Adumim. Palestinian and Israeli activists built the small house, complete with a concrete foundation and flags, to protest Israel's ongoing settlement expansion.
• Dec. 8: Pope Benedict XVI delivers his blessing from his studio window overlooking St. Peter's square at the Vatican. Celebrating Dec. 8 as the Immaculate Conception of Mary national holiday, the pontiff said that boys and girls at ever more tender ages risk being misled by adults hawking false models of happiness and lamented that even their young bodies have become caught up in consumerism. Benedict appealed to young people to be on guard about consumerism just as the Christmas holiday shopping season gears up. At right are some branches of the giant Christmas tree set in St. Peter's square.
• Dec. 8: In this photo released by the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement, a bird covered in oil from the spill from a Hong-Kong-registered oil tanker sits on the beach near Mallipo, South Korea. South Korea's largest oil spill reached part of the country's scenic and environmentally sensitive western shore Saturday as the Coast Guard struggled in high waves and strong winds to keep more oil from washing up on beaches.
• Dec. 8: Four gay participants wave to the crowd during the Pride March in Manila. Lesbians, gays, bisexuals and their supporters marched in the streets to call for the passage of the anti-discrimination bill in Congress.
• Dec. 7: Wesley Silcox of Payson, Utah, rides Spin Dippin' during the second go-round of bull riding at the National Finals Rodeo at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas. Silcox won the second round.