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World
Feb 18, 2010

News in pictures on Thursday



Men dance with flags during the Dong Da Festival in Hanoi where residents celebrate the annual Dong Da Festival every January 5 of the lunar calendar to mark the late Emperor Quang Trung Nguyen Hue's victory over the Chinese Qing invaders in 1789. -- PHOTO: REUTERS




South Korean students of Taesungdong Elementary School participate in a graduation ceremony at Taesungdong freedom village in Paju, South Korea. Taesungdong is the only South Korean village sitting inside the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. -- PHOTO: AP




Miss Philippines contestants pose at the poolside of a plush hotel in Manila. Twenty four candidates from all over the country will vie for Miss Philippines and the chance to represent the nation in international beauty pageants. -- PHOTO: AP

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Israeli youths spend the day in Mount Hermon in the occupied northern Golan Heights. Thousands of Israelis flocked earlier this month to Mount Hermon -- or rather, the sliver of the mountain occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War -- for what could be the shortest ski season in the world. -- PHOTO: AFP




Hezbollah members perform during a rally commemorating the 2008 assassination of its top military commander Imad Mughniyeh in Lebanon. The leader of Lebanon's Shiite movement Hezbollah delivered an odd but deeply important political message to his followers: Heed traffic signs and pay your electric bills; a call widely seen as the latest sign that Hezbollah - long considered mainly as Iran's militant arm in Lebanon - is reinventing itself as a more conventional political movement in Lebanon. -- PHOTO: AP




French sailor Corentin de Chatelperron sits in the cabin as he prepares to set sail in an "unsinkable" eco-friendly boat made of jute from the southern Bangladeshi beach town of Kuakata. The planned six-month journey to his native France aims to promote the natural fibre jute and highlight the plight of Bangladeshi fisherman. -- PHOTO: AFP

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People burn incense as an offering to God of Fortune to pray for good luck in the Chinese Lunar New Year at the Guiyuan Temple in China's Hubei province. Millions of Chinese spend a week long holiday celebrating the Chinese Lunar New Year, also Year of the Tiger, which began on Sunday. -- PHOTO: AP




Residents sit in their flooded home in Jakarta after overnight heavy rain and flooding of the Ciliwung River from the hill to Jakarta caused the flood in some parts of the capital on Wednesday. -- PHOTO: REUTERS




Masked dancers take part in the Sixth International Festival of Poetry in the colonial city of Granada some 45 km south of the capital Managua on Wed. -- PHOTO: REUTERS

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An Andean woman walks with her llama in a street in Cuzco on Wed. -- PHOTO: REUTERS




USA's Scott Lago competes in the men's Snowboard Halfpipe semi-finals on Wed at Cypress Mountain, north of Vancouver during the Vancouver Winter Olympics. -- PHOTO: AFP




Fans takes photos of the Olympic torch through a hole in a fence at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia on Wed. -- PHOTO: AP

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Kevin Na walks through the cactus on the 18th hole during round one of the Accenture Match Play Championship at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club on Wed in Marana, Arizona. -- PHOTO: AFP




Tourists walk to the the Inca terraces of Moray near the town of Maras in Cuzco on Wed-- PHOTO: REUTERS




A Haitian woman covers her face as she walks past burning trash on a street in Port-au-Prince on Wed. The earthquake that devastated Haiti on Jan 12 killed over 200,000 people and left over a million people homeless. -- PHOTO: AFP

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Olympic pins are shown at a pin trading site in Vancouver, British Columbia on Wed. -- PHOTO: AP




This image provided by NASA shows the immense Andromeda galaxy, also known as Messier 31, captured in full in this new image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. -- PHOTO: AP