The most STUNNING photographs of the week gone by

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An anti-government protester pushes an armchair to set up a roadblock during clashes with riot police in the village of Sanabis, west of Manama, Bahrain, March 21, 2012.

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Somali police officer (R) arrests a suspected rebel member (L) of the Al Qaeda-affiliated al Shabaab among beach goers at the Lido beach, north of Somalia's capital Mogadishu, on March 23, 2012.

Lido beach was a famous attraction before Somalia tumbled into chaos in 1991 with the ousting of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. In the last few years, the beach was a frontline for the Islamist al Shabaab militants, who later withdrew from most parts of Mogadishu around August 2011. 

Military police restrain mourners surrounding the ambulance carrying the coffin of Pope Shenouda III, the head of Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Church, upon its arrival for burial at St Bishoy Monastery in Wadi al-Natrun, 100km north of Cairo, March 20, 2012.

Thousands of mourners dressed in black gathered in Cairo for the funeral of Egypt's Orthodox Christian Pope Shenouda, who spent his final years trying to comfort a community disturbed by the rise of political Islam. 

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A coach scolds a young gymnastics student during a training session at a gymnastics school in Shanghai, on March 23, 2012.

More than 30 children, aged between 5 and 9, were chosen from local kindergartens or elementary schools to attend training courses five times a week. 

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A veterinarian conducts sterilization surgery on a cat in a pets clinic near Calvia on the Spanish Balearic island of Mallorca, on March 19, 2012.

Many local governments pay part of the costs of sterilization to control the population of stray animals. 

George Andrianakis, 56, milks a sheep in the yard of his farm in the village of Stafania in the Peloponesse area of Greece, on March 21, 2012.

Andrianakis lives with his wife Athina, 48, and sons Dimitris, 24, and Panagiotis, 21. They all help with the milking of the goats and sheep as well as the harvesting of orange and olive trees, but his profit margins are down by almost 50 percent with production costs rising by almost 30 percent. He says: "I am surviving rather than living".

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An aerial view of houses near a U.S. military base in Jalalabad, eastern Afghanistan, on March 22, 2012. 

A boy plays in the mud on the bank of the Bago river in Bago, Myanmar, on March 20, 2012.

A child plays on the road near the bank of Yangon River, Myanmar, on March 18, 2012.

People react around unclaimed human remains taken out of grave during a Thai Chinese ceremony at the Mang Teung Sua Jung Cemetery in Chonburi province, southeast of Bangkok, on March 18, 2012.

Every 10 years, hundreds of people wearing white, a customary colour for funerals and visiting temples, gather at this cemetery to exhume and cremate corpses as they believe they are helping the dead who have no friends or relatives.

The ashes of the unclaimed bodies are spread on the sea to make room at the burial ground for more unclaimed bodies in the coming years. The tradition originated 90 years ago after diseases like Malaria killed many Thais of Chinese descent living in Chonburi.

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Seventeen-year-old prostitute Hashi, embraces a Babu, her "husband", inside her small room at Kandapara brothel in Tangail, a northeastern city of Bangladesh.

Many young and inexperienced prostitutes have "lovers" or "husbands" who normally live outside the brothel occasionally taking money and sex from them in exchange for security in this male dominated society. She earns about 800-1000 taka daily ($9.75 - $12.19) servicing around 15-20 customers every day.

Hashi is one of hundreds of mostly teenage sex workers living in a painful life of exploitation in Kandapara slum's brothel who take Oradexon, a steroid used by farmers to fatten their cattle, in order to gain weight and appear "healthier" and more attractive to clients.

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Several inches of snow cover a house and its surroundings in Flagstaff, Arizona, on March 18, 2012. The late winter storm kept temperatures well below normal in California last Sunday and generated heavy snow fall in several states, including Arizona, where several highways in the northern part of the state were temporarily closed, according to the Arizona Department of Transportation.