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THE WEEK IN PICTURES

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• Jan. 21: People look at burned luxury vehicles at a car dealership in the northern Athens suburb of Kifissia. Three car dealerships and five banks were damaged in arson attacks across Athens early Monday. Police said the attacks appeared to have been coordinated, occurring within 15 minutes in several central and northern parts of the capital. The targets included a Porsche car dealership and a branch of U.S.-based Citibank.
• Jan. 21: An Iraqi soldier guards blindfolded, handcuffed detainees who were arrested during a U.S.-Iraqi military operation just outside the city of Baqouba, some 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, Iraq. About 15 men were detained, suspected to be insurgents.
• Jan. 21: Spectators watch a pre-dawn fire that swept through more than a dozen buildings in downtown Lawrence, Mass. Fire Chief Peter Takvorian said one person was injured.
• Jan. 21: Indian policemen carry wounded protesters in Srinagar, India. At least eight people, including three policemen, were injured Monday in running battles between Sunnis and police who fired smoke shells and used batons to quell violence. Youths belonging to the Sunni sect, protesting the alleged assault on them by Shias on Saturday evening, took to the streets and pelted stones at police, according to a news report.
• Jan. 21: A woman carries vegetables through a snow-covered field in Xiangfan, in central China's Hubei province. The death toll from a heavy snowfall that created traffic chaos in central China ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday rose to 17 on Tuesday as Beijing told local governments to prepare for worsening conditions.
• Jan. 22: Egyptian security personnel use a water cannon to disperse Palestinian women, supporters of Hamas, during a demonstration at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Hundreds of Palestinian protesters briefly broke through the Egypt-Gaza border terminal on Tuesday, pushing back helmeted Egyptian riot police who fired in the air to try to contain the crowd. Ten Egyptian police and about 60 protesters were hurt in melee, in which protesters hurled stones and Palestinian gunmen fired briefly in the air. The confrontation capped a Hamas-organized protest calling for a lifting of the full closure of Gaza, imposed by Israel last week.
• Jan. 22: An Iraqi soldier inspects a damaged classroom in a school in Baqouba, some 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, Iraq. One student was killed and 21 others injured when a homicide bomber targeted the school pushing a trolley loaded with explosives.
• Jan. 22: Marty Brien, 82, points to the house he's owned since 1948 in Lawrence, Mass., which was among homes destroyed by a fire early Monday that also damaged or destroyed 15 other buildings in the neighborhood. One person was injured in the seven-alarm fire, which devastated most of a city block, leaving approximately 150 people homeless.
• Jan. 22: A man passes The New York Stock Exchange. Wall Street was expected to plunge at the opening of trading Tuesday, extending its huge losses from last week and taking more cues from heavy selling that has spread throughout the world.
• Jan. 22: Funny Path Car 9/11, a battery-operated toy featuring President Bush riding a tank to capture Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden, is shown on display by a roadside toy vendor in Bangalore, India.
• Jan. 22: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson gestures while speaking at the Chamber of Commerce in Washington. Paulson said that Congress and the administration need to agree quickly on a package of tax cuts, and the Federal Reserve cut a key interest rate by three-fourths of a percentage point to reinvigorate the faltering economy.
• Jan. 22: Seth and Kelly Levy of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., hold their 10-month-old cat, Gracie Mae, at home in Palm Beach Gardens. The cat sneaked into Seth's suitcase for a flight to Dallas-Ft. Worth and landed in Texas. At baggage claim, another passenger mistakenly grabbed the suitcase and when he returned home Gracie Mae jumped out. The traveler brought Gracie Mae back to her owner for a return flight home and the feline is doing fine.
• Jan. 22: Maria Elizabeth Arias, center, talks to her 2-year-old twin daughters, Fiorella, left, and Yurella, after a news conference at Lucille Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford in Palo Alto, Calif. The conjoined twins, separated by Stanford surgeons in a risky November operation, will be heading home to Costa Rica 'healthy and safe' after several follow-up surgeries, according to the doctor who led the separation effort.
• Jan. 22: James Floyd, Fun Beverage Inc.'s warehouse operations manager, peers out of the back of a trailer that overturned on U.S. 93 just south of Whitefish, Mont. According to Montana State Trooper Roger Dundas, the driver was heading northbound for a delivery to Whitefish when the back tires of the trailer hit snow berm in the center median. The truck jackknifed 270 degrees to the left and rolled into the side of a hill off the southbound lanes. The driver was treated for minor injuries at Kalispell Regional Medical Center and released. All products onboard the trailer, excluding the kegs, were taken to the dump where they were destroyed.
• Jan. 22: Firefighters comb through the rubble of a seven-alarm fire in Lawrence, Mass., which damaged or destroyed 16 buildings and left approximately 150 people homeless in the city's largest fire in more than a decade. No one was seriously injured in the blaze, which started early Monday morning.
• Jan. 22: Men detained by Mexican federal police stand next to weapons and armament found in a home as they are shown to the media in Mexico City. Eleven alleged hitmen for the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel were captured Tuesday at two Mexico City mansions stocked with grenades, automatic weapons and body armor, a day after Mexican authorities reported nabbing one of the cartel's leaders.
• Jan. 23: Pakistani firefighters struggle to control a fire that broke out in a paint factory in Karachi, Pakistan. At least five people were injured in the blaze that engulfed the paint factory in the Pakistani port city Karachi.
• Jan. 23: A makeshift memorial for actor Heath Ledger is left outside the building where his body was found in the Soho neighborhood of New York.
• Jan. 23: An opposition supporter runs away with a car radio he stole before he helped set two cars on fire in Nairobi, Kenya. Dozens of protesters set fire to an office building Wednesday after police fired tear gas at youths throwing rocks outside a memorial service, which was held in honor of victims of the country's election violence.
• Jan. 23: Off-duty police officers march through London to protest the government's refusal to implement a pay rise they say effectively cuts their salaries. Anger over salaries already has prompted Britain's major police union to demand the resignation of the country's top law-and-order official and sparked calls for a lifting of the law which bans police from taking strike action.
• Jan. 23: Palestinians cross the border into Egypt after militants exploded the wall between Gaza Strip and Egypt in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip. Masked Palestinian gunmen blew holes into the Gaza-Egypt border wall Wednesday, and thousands of Gazans trapped in their territory by a tight blockade poured into Egypt to buy food, fuel and other supplies that have become scarce. Egyptian border guards and Hamas police took no action as Palestinians hurried over the border and began returning with bags of food, boxes of cigarettes and plastic bottles of fuel.
• Jan. 23: Forensic experts secure evidence in a pit of a construction site in Kassel, Germany. Construction workers uncovered at least 36 bodies in the central city, which city officials believe could be the remains of slave laborers from a Nazi armaments factory. The first four skeletons were found last week at a construction site at the University of Kassel, said police spokeswoman Sabine Knoell. Another 26 were found on Monday and Tuesday, and a further six to seven were being unearthed Wednesday, she said.
• Jan. 23: Firefighters rush in with charged water lines at the scene of an early morning three-alarm fire in Worcester, Ma. The fire leveled a three-decker house and extensively damaged an adjacent dwelling.
• Jan. 23: People wade through a flooded street in Puerto Villaroel, Bolivia. Bolivia's government declared a national emergency Tuesday due to flooding that has killed 20 people nationwide in the last three months.
• Jan. 23: Fred Barnes holds up a 73-pound striped bass he caught in the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, seen in Virginia Beach, Va. Barnes hauled in the monster on Wednesday off Cape Henry. The previous record was a 68-pound, 1-ounce fish caught in 2006 by Clay Armstrong. The fish fell short of the International Game Fish Association all-tackle world record, though, a 78-pound, 8-ounce striper caught off a New Jersey beach in 1982 by Albert McReynolds.
• Jan. 24: Children learn how to make radish dim sum in the shape of a mouse to celebrate the Chinese Lunar Year, celebrated this year as the Year of the Mouse in Hong Kong.
• Jan. 24: Pakistani police beat a man during a demonstration by lawyers in Islamabad, Pakistan. About 200 lawyers clashed with police after trying to break through a police cordon to see ousted Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry.
• Jan. 24: Iraqis tour the site where an explosion on Wednesday collapsed a three-story apartment building and ravaged adjacent houses just minutes after the Iraqi army arrived to investigate tips about a weapons cache in Mosul, Iraq. Police on Thursday raised the casualty toll from that blast to at least 18 killed and 146 wounded.
• Jan. 24: Iraqis work on the new Iraqi flag outside their office in the Shiite enclave of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq. The Iraqi parliament has decided that the new flag will no longer carry three stars, and Saddam Hussein's handwritten praise to God will be replaced by another style of writing.
• Jan. 24: French spelunker Geraldine Rieux, left, greets villagers after trying to evacuate an injured teammate from a cave near the town of Cuaxuspan, Mexico. Arthur Meauxone, 21, remained trapped in a cave with a fractured knee as rescue workers kept him hydrated intravenously while they drilled a hole to extract him without provoking further injuries, Puebla's state government reported.
• Jan. 25: Wearing traditional dresses for a symbolic wedding, 2-year-old Darien, right, as groom and Leonie, left, as bride dance together as they celebrate the story of ‘Bird's Marriage’ in a kindergarten in Panschwitz, eastern Germany. The children of the Sorbs, a national German minority located near the German-Polish border, thank birds that, according to a legend, give the children sweets in return for being fed during winter. The children's costumes are equivalents to the original costumes of a Sorb marriage.
• Jan. 25: Serbia's Novak Djokovic celebrates after beating Switzerland's Roger Federer during their men's singles semi-final at the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne, Australia, ending Federer's Streak of 10 Straight Tennis Grand Slam Finals.
• Jan. 25: Cars burn at the site of explosion in Beirut, Lebanon. An explosion apparently targeting a police official rocked a Christian neighborhood of Beirut on Friday, killing up to 10 people and setting several vehicles ablaze inside a blackened crater in the middle of the street.
• Jan. 25: Thousands of Catholics block a street as they rally to ask for the return of church land, in front of the old Vatican embassy, one of many church properties taken over by the government after 1954, in Hanoi, Vietnam. Thousands of Catholics blocked a busy street in Vietnam's capital Friday in a rare public demonstration, chanting and praying for the Communist government to return land once owned by the church.
• Jan. 25: Smoke rises after a fire broke out at the Monte Carlo hotel-casino in Las Vegas. The fire, which was reported around 11 a.m. local time, was spreading from the center section of the hotel across the roof.
• Jan. 25: City workers attempt to retrieve two partially submerged cars abandoned by their drivers in the Hancock Park section of Los Angeles. A powerful winter storm that unleashed a thick blanket of mountain snow, heavy rain and at least one tornado pounded Southern California for a fifth straight day Friday.
• Jan. 25: In this photo released by the Florida Keys News Bureau, spinnakers billow on Farr 40-class boats as they sail downwind during the final day of racing at the Acura Key West 2008 sailing regatta in Key West, Fla. The largest winter keelboat sailing regatta in North America attracted 262 boats with crews hailing from the United States and 16 other countries.
• Jan. 26: Indian military motorcyclists demonstrate their skills during India's 59th Republic Day celebrations in New Delhi.
• Jan. 26: Russia's Maria Sharapova smiles as she holds her trophy during a photo call on a boat on the Yarra River in downtown Melbourne after beating Serbia's Ana Ivanovic to win the final of the Women's singles at the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne, Australia.