TOP WORLD NEWS PHOTOS

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  • July 2: A farmer arrives to plough his field, as the first spell of rainfall arrives at Dolibari village, about 22 miles west of Gauhati, India. India's 235 million farmers depend on the annual monsoon rainfall for irrigation.
  • July 2: U.S. Marines from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, 1st Battalion 5th Marines temporarily occupy a house after arriving in an overnight air assault near the Taliban stronghold of Nawa in Afghanistan's Helmand province. Thousands of U.S. Marines poured from helicopters and armored vehicles into Taliban-controlled villages in southern Afghanistan on Thursday in the first major operation under President Obama's strategy to stabilize the country.
  • July 2: A bear sleeps in the afternoon heat during a heat wave at the Antwerp zoo in Antwerp, Belgium.
  • July 2: A 3-foot-tall krater, a vase that was used to mix water and wine at banquets, one of the 14 artifacts, spanning from antiquity to the Middle Ages that were looted or stolen from Italy and recently returned by The Cleveland Museum of Art, is displayed during a press conference in Rome. Under a November deal, the U.S. museum agreed to hand over the treasures in exchange for long-term loans of other artifacts and joint work on future exhibitions. Similar deals have yielded the return of scores of pieces from top museums, including the J. Paul Getty Museum in California and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
  • July 2: Rescue workers at Galawa Beach in Comoros, where a rescue center is based. An airliner with 153 people on board belonging to Yemen's state airline, Yemenia, crashed into choppy seas as it came in to land on the Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros.
  • July 2: Pakistani police investigate a bus after deadly bombings in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Police say a suicide bomber riding a motorcycle slammed into the bus carrying defense department employees, killing at least six people.