Top Photos From Around The World

Fireworks light up the skyline of Singapore's financial district during celebrations for the city-state's 42nd year of independence.

Activists from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), wearing skull masks and dressed in black hooded costumes, representing "horsemen of the apocalypse", pose for the photographers as they demonstrate outside Smithfield meat market in central London. The activists protested outside the market where meat has been bought and sold for more than 800 years, to highlight the "pestilences" resulting from factory-farm methods of rearing animals and advocating vegetarianism as the solution.

Indian Paramilitary soldiers chase a Kashmiri protester during a demonstration against the arrest of Kashmiri girl Naseema Akhtar, in Maloora, on the outskirts of Srinagar, India. Paramilitary soldiers fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of angry protesters demonstrating against the arrest of Akhtar.

An young Iraqi girl peeks out as women pilgrims line up for a security checkpoint leading to the shrine of Imam Moussa al-Kadhim in the primarily Shiite Kazimiyah neighborhood of north Baghdad, Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims went for the annual march, to commemorate the eighth-century death of Imam Moussa al-Kadhim, a key Shiite saint.

Family members watch sarcophagus of animal statues with bones of some 14 corpses are burnt during a mass cremation ceremony in Sukawati, Bali, Indonesia. The previously buried corpses have to be dug up and placed in a temporary shrine in the ceremony for cremation. Balinese believe the ceremonial burning of the corpses of the dead liberates their souls so that they can enter the higher world and free for reincarnation into better beings.

Kashmiri protesters run over burning tires during a protest against the arrest of a girl by paramilitary soldiers in a raid in Maloora, on the outskirts of Srinagar, India. Paramilitary soldiers fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of angry protesters demonstrating against the arrest.

Protestors burn an effigy of "Wal-Mart" during a demonstration, in New Delhi, India. A broad alliance of small shop owners, trade unions and left-wing activists planned rallies across India on Thursday to protest moves by Wal-Mart and other foreign mega stores to enter the Indian market.

South Korean protesters burn North Korean flags during an anti-North Korea rally against two Koreas summit near the President House in Seoul, South Korea. South Korea insisted Thursday that this month's summit with North Korea would help efforts to rid the communist nation of nuclear weapons, while Washington said the international focus on disarming the North remained with six-nation talks that include the U.S. and regional powers.

Protesters burn an effigy of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo during a rally in celebration of the International Day for Indigenous People in Manila as a member of the tribal Filipinos looks on. The protesters called for justice for victims of political killings and the stop of mining operations that had encroach into their ancestral lands of tribal Filipinos. Text on mock shield reads, "End the U.S.-Arroyo regime".

Bangladeshi women hold relief material, as others await their turn outside a relief center in Munshigonj, about 12.5 miles south of the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, Bangladesh. More than two weeks of monsoon rains across much of northern India, Bangladesh and Nepal have flooded rivers and inundated plains, killing at least 457 people and stranding some 19 million more, officials said.

Pope Benedict XVI gestures to the faithful during a special audience for Spanish pilgrims, from the balcony of his residence in Castelgandolfo, on the outskirts of Rome.

A man jumps over a collapsed pavement as he passes cars and rubble piled up by flood waters, following a flood due to heavy rainfall in Roche, western Switzerland. Continuing rainfall caused floods in many parts of Switzerland on Wednesday, although the weather situation seems to be improving.

A wildlife ranger examines Franska, a Slovenian brown bear released last year in the Pyrenees as part of a repopulation effort, which is lying on a road outside Viger, a village in southern France near Lourdes. Franska was killed Thursday when it was hit by a car. Brown bears nearly disappeared from the Pyrenees in the 1980's, and the last native brown bear to the region, Cannelle, died in 2004. A repopulation effort in 1996 introduced a few more brown bears to the mountainous region on the French-Spanish border, and environmental officials introduced five Slovenian brown bears last year. Franska and the other four captured the hearts of many French. Farmers, however, staged protests, fearing attacks on their flocks.

Investigators talk in the entrance of a restaurant, which was the stage of an overnight shooting in Vancouver, Canada. Two people were killed and six hospitalized with gunshot wounds after two masked men burst into a Chinese restaurant in Vancouver early Thursday morning and sprayed it with bullets.

National Cadet Corps members participate in a torch rally during the August Kranti Divas celebration, marking the Quit India movement and to commemorate 150 years of the First War of Independence, in Ahmadabad, India. India will celebrate its 60th Independence Day on Aug. 15.