Photos Of The Week -- December 24-31

Surfing Santa Michael Pless, 61, catches a wave at Seal Beach, south of Los Angeles on December 24. (AFP/Frederic J. Brown)

Pope Benedict XVI lights a candle in his private window at the end of a ceremony unveiling the crib on St Peter's Square in the Vatican on December 24. (AFP/Andreas Solaro)

Eight-month-old Cooper Wall Wagner reaches out to touch U.S. President Barack Obama as he poses for a photo with Cooper's parents, Captain Greg Wagner and Meredith Wagner, while greeting military personnel in Hawaii on December 25. (AFP/ Mandel Ngan)

Men look at the wreckage of a car following a bomb blast at St Theresa's Catholic Church outside the Nigerian capital Abuja on Christmas Day. A radical Islamist group claimed responsibility for the attack. (AFP/Sunday Aghaeze)

Church spires shrouded in fog at St. Peter's Abbey in the Black Forest, Germany, on December 27. (AFP/Rolf Haid)

At the cemetery of Gulyazi village on December 30, Kurdish people mourn for victims of a Turkish air raid near the Iraqi border. (AFP/Bulent Kilic)

Kurds carry the coffins of victims of a Turkish air raid outside the district hospital in Uludere, Sirnak province, on December 30. (AFP/Bulent Kilic)

A man transports bricks on donkeys at a brickyard on the outskirts of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, on December 28. (Reuters/Faisal Mahmood)

A boy selling homemade biscuits waits for customers on a sidewalk in Quetta, Pakistan, on December 30. (Reuters/Naseer Ahmed)

People are silhouetted against the sun while feeding birds in Karachi, Pakistan on December 30. (Reuters/Athar Hussain)

Ethnic Albanians walk past a store selling wedding dresses in Pristina, Kosovo, on December 26. (AFP/Armend Nimani)

A member of the former Kosovo Liberation Army looks through an ice-covered window as he smokes a cigarette while taking part in a peaceful protest dedicated to Kosovo war veterans in Pristina on December 30. (AFP/Armend Nimani)

An opposition activist takes part in a Moscow rally on December 29 in support of Sergei Udaltsov, the leader of the Left Front movement who has been detained by the authorities. (Reuters/Denis Sinyakov)

An Egyptian woman walks past new year's greetings in Cairo on December 29. (AFP/Filippo Monteforte)