Pictures of the Week: Feb. 23-29

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  Spanish matador Enrique Ponce prepares to perform a pass during a bullfight in Coliseo de Atarfe bull ring in Atarfe, near Granada, Spain, Feb. 28.

  Pepe Marin, Reuters

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  A resident retrieves water from the partially dried-up Dongjinghe River, a branch of Hangjiang River, in central China's Hubei Province, Feb. 26. A spill in the river Sunday has affected water supply for 200,000 people living along three tributaries.

  Reuters

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  Shiite Muslim worshippers celebrate the end of Ashura by pounding their hands on their chests during a procession in Islamabad, Pakistan, Feb. 27. The holiday of Ashura is when Shiites remember the death in 680 A.D. of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, the event that led to the split in Islam between Shiites and Sunni Muslims.

  Emilio Morenatti, AP

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  Lolo Jones wins the Womens 60-meter hurdles with a time of 7.88 as Damu Cherry falls at the USA Indoor Track & Field Championships in Boston, Feb. 24.

  CJ Gunther, Reuters

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  French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, talk together during their visit to the Gugulethu AIDS institute near Cape Town, South Africa Feb. 28, during a two-day official visit.

  Eric Feferberg, Pool / Reuters

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  The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Longyearbyen, Norway, a "doomsday" vault built to withstand an earthquake or nuclear strike, is readied Feb. 25 for its official inauguration on March 4, less than year after crews started drilling in Norway's Svalbard archipelago, about 620 miles from the North Pole. Built deep in the permafrost of an Arctic mountain, where it will protect millions of agriculture seeds from man-made and natural disasters, the vault has the capacity to store 4.5 million seed samples from around the globe, shielding them from climate change, wars, natural disasters and other threats.

  John McConnico, AP

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  US soldiers of Apache troop, 1-33 Cavalry, 3rd Brigade combat team, 101st Airborne Division, search a back yard of a house as an Iraqi girl hangs out wash at Carbawi village south of Baghdad, Iraq, during a routine patrol Feb. 27.

  Petros Giannakouris, AP

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  A Nenets girl, with "binky" in mouth, stands at her settlement Feb. 25 in the Tundra region near the village of Yar-Sale, located in the Yamal peninsula above the Polar Circle, some 1,336 miles northeast of Moscow. The Nenets are indigenous people in Russias artic region north of the Ural Mountains.

  Vasily Fedosenko, Reuters

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  Villagers gather around a bare light bulb as they begin to watch an open-air movie in Pingyin county, Shandong province, China, Feb. 27.

  Reuters

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  Daniel Day-Lewis (l-r), best actor winner for "There Will Be Blood," Tilda Swinton, best supporting actress for "Michael Clayton," Marion Cotillard, best actress for "La Vie en Rose" and Javier Bardem, best supporting actor for "No Country for Old Men," pose with their Oscars backstage at the 80th annual Academy Awards in Hollywood, Feb. 24. For more Oscars photos, go to: 2008 Oscars Coverage.

  Mike Blake, Reuters