Some of the most compelling photographs from RFE/RL's broadcast region and beyond for the first week of 2013. (38 PHOTOS)
Photos Of The Week #1
1
Two sisters light candles during an Orthodox Christmas service in a church in the Kyrgyz village of Sokuluk, near the capital, Bishkek. (AFP/Vyacheslav Oseledko)
2
People walk past a church in the Serbian city of Sabac, 80 kilometers west of Belgrade, during an Orthodox Christmas Eve ceremony. (AFP/Andrej Isakovic)
3
An ethnic Serb boy roasts lamb and pig for a traditional Orthodox Christmas meal in front of his home in the village of Vojkovici, near the capital, Sarajevo. (Reuters/Dado Ruvic)
4
A Romanian diver shows a wooden cross he retrieved from the Black Sea during an Epiphany religious service in Constanta. Thousands of Romanian Orthodox believers attended the celebration in the Black Sea coastal city. (AFP/Daniel Mihailescu)
5
An Indian demonstrator gets his head shaved in protest following the death of a gang-rape victim in New Delhi. The brutal gang-rape of the 23-year-old medical student on December 16 has led to a bout of national soul-searching over the treatment of women in Indian society and provoked daily protests. (AFP/Prakash Singh)
6
A zookeeper holds a bullfrog during the annual stocktake at ZSL London Zoo in central London. ZSL London Zoo embarked on their annual complete head count of every animal at the zoo, which houses more than 17,000 animals. (AFP/Ben Stansall)
7
Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai waves as she is discharged from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England. Malala, 15, was shot in the head by the Taliban for advocating girls' education. Doctors said she was well enough to spend some time recovering with her family. She is due to be readmitted in late January or early February for reconstructive surgery to her skull. (Reuters)
8
The president of the sushi restaurant chain Sushi-Zanmai, Kiyoshi Kimura, displays a 222-kilogram bluefin tuna at his main restaurant near Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market. The bluefin tuna was traded at 155.4 million yen ($1.77 million) at the wholesale market, smashing a previous record. (AFP/Yoshikazu Tsuno)
9
A fisherman stands on a mooring on the Yenisei River, in air temperatures of about minus 20 degrees Celsius during winter in Russia's Siberian town of Divnogorsk. (Reuters/Ilya Naymushin)
10
A father reacts after the death of two of his children, whom activists said were killed by shelling by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, in Aleppo on January 3. (Reuters/Muzaffar Salman)
11
Fatme Ulanova stands during her wedding ceremony with Djamal Sirakov (not pictured) in the village of Ribnovo in southwestern Bulgaria. The people of the mountain village are famous for performing their unique wedding ceremonies in winter only. The inhabitants of the village of Ribnovo are Bulgarian-speaking Muslims, sometimes referred to as "Pomaks" or "people who have suffered." Muslim Bulgarians are descendants of Christian Bulgarians who were forcibly converted to Islam by the Turks during the 14th, 16th, and 18th centuries. (AFP/Dimitar Dilkoff)
12
An environmental activist holds a picture of a dead and finned shark next to shark fins drying in the sun in Hong Kong. Environmentalists and other concerned groups have raised concerns that the over-harvesting of fins is causing an environmental calamity. Hong Kong is one of the world's biggest markets for shark fins, which are used to make soup that is an expensive staple at Chinese banquets. (AFP/Antony Dickson)
13
A devotee smokes hashish outside the shrine of Muslim Sufi Saint Data Ganj Bakhsh on his death anniversary in Lahore on January 2. Devotees started a three-day celebration of the 969th festival of Hazrat Ali Bin Usman, popularly known as Data Gunj Bakhsh. (Reuters/Mohsin Raza)
14
Students attend a winter military camp in Ansan, south of Seoul, South Korea. Hundreds of students between 11 and 17 years old attend winter boot camp training courses every year. The winter courses range from four to 14 days at the Blue Dragon Camp run by retired marines. (Reuters/Kim Hong-Ji)
15
An aerial view shows the shrines of Imam al-Abbas and Imam al-Hussein during the religious ceremony of Arbain in Karbala on January 2, 2013. (Reuters/Muhammad Amin)
16
Shi'ite pilgrims pray at the shrine of Imam al-Hussein during the Shi'ite religious ceremony of Arbain in the holy Iraqi city of Karbala, southwest of Baghdad. (Reuters/Mohammed Ameen)
17
Afghan girls wait for treatment at the Mobile Clinic, provided by Afghan Family Guidance Association, on the outskirts of Kabul. (Reuters/Mohammad Ismail)
18
An Afghan woman holds her child as she waits to receive winter aid supplies in Kabul. (RFE/RL/Sabawoon)
19
Frost covers the cap and scarf of a Russian child walking on a bank of the Yenisey River in air temperatures of about minus 30 degrees Celsius outside the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk. (Reuters/Ilya Naymushin)
20
Children sit on school benches at the Al-Tawheed school in the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo. (Reuters/Muzaffar Salman)
21
Women carrying placards attend a prayer ceremony in New Delhi for the victim of a gang rape. The ashes of the Indian student who died were scattered in the Ganges River as reports of more attacks stoked a growing national debate on violence against women. (Reuters/Adnan Abidi)
22
A man sits in a tent while ice fishing at sunrise on Lake Vileika, some 130 kilometers north of the Belarusian capital, Minsk. (AFP/Viktor Drachev)
23
Nationalists hold torches during a march in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on January 1, as they mark the 104th anniversary of the birth of Stepan Bandera, one of the leaders of the Ukrainian national movement. Bandera was responsible for a series of terrorist acts against Polish and Ukrainian civilians committed in interwar Poland. (AFP/Yuriy Dyachyshyn)
24
Fireworks erupt from the Taipei 101 building to mark the new year in Taipei. (AFP/Sam Yeh)
25
People release balloons to mark the arrival of the new year during an annual countdown ceremony near the Prince Park Tower Tokyo. (AFP/Kazuhiro Nogi)