Tensions still high in Crimea, cat beauty competition in Romania | March 9
Protesters reportedly clash in Crimea as tensions rise in Ukraine, the U.S. women’s 4×400 relay team take the gold at the indoor track and field world championships, cats strut their stuff in Romania and more in today’s photo brief.
- U.S. athletes Francena McCorory, Natasha Hastings, Cassandra Tate and Joanna Atkins (from left) pose as they celebrate after a first-place finish in the women’s 4×400 meter relay final at the world indoor athletics championships in Sopot, Poland, March 9, 2014. (Kacper Pempel/Reuters)
- Indian sand artist Sudersan Pattnaik gives final touches on a sand sculpture at Puri Beach in India with a message of prayers for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which vanished from radar early on March 8 somewhere at sea between Malaysia and Vietnam. (Asit Kumar/AFP/Getty Images)
- People attend a two-day forum entitled “Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies” on March 9, 2014 in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. (Karim Sahib/AFP/Getty Images)
- Pro-Ukrainian supporters are seen though a Ukrainian flag as they take part in a rally in Simferopol, Ukraine, March 9, 2014. Russian forces tightened their grip on Crimea on Sunday despite a U.S. warning to Moscow that annexing the southern Ukrainian region would close the door to diplomacy in a tense East-West standoff. (David Mdzinarishvili/Reuters)
- The silhouette of a man’s face is seen on a Soviet Union flag during a rally in St. Petersburg to show support for pro-Russian authorities in the Ukrainian region of Crimea on March 9, 2014. Russia’s incursion in Crimea is a “serious miscalculation” and Moscow could face far-reaching economic consequences unless a diplomatic solution can be found, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said on March 9. (Olga Maltseva/AFP/Getty Images)
- Former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky addresses Ukrainians during an anti-war rally at Independence Square in Kiev, March 9, 2014. Khodorkovsky, addressing thousands of people at the cradle of the uprising against Ukraine’s Moscow-backed leader, accused Russia on Sunday of being complicit in police violence against protesters. (Tatyana Makeyeva/Reuters)
- Riot police stand guard in front of the regional government building during a pro-Russian rally in Donetsk, Ukraine, March 9, 2014. Russian forces tightened their grip on Crimea on Sunday. (Konstantin Chernichkin/Reuters)
- An Indian worker sifts colored powder, known as ‘gulal’, to be used during the forthcoming spring festival of Holi, inside a factory at Fulbari village on the outskirts of Siliguri on March 9, 2014. Holi, the popular Hindu spring festival of colors, will be celebrated on March 16 this year. (Diptendu Dutta/AFP/Getty Images)
- A pro-Ukrainian supporter, dressed to depict the “Grim Reaper” character, holds a poster with a caricature of Russian President Vladimir Putin as Adolf Hiter in central Kiev, March 9, 2014. (Konstantin Grishin/Reuters)
- Armed men, believed to be Russian servicemen, march outside an Ukrainian military base in the village of Perevalnoye, near the Crimean city of Simferopol March 9, 2014. Shots were fired in Crimea to warn off an unarmed international team of monitors and at a Ukrainian observation plane, as the standoff between occupying Russian forces and besieged Ukrainian troops intensified. (REUTERS/Thomas Peter)
- Pro-Russian “self-defense” activists use a bat and a whip to beat a pro-Ukrainian supporter during clashes in Sevastopol on March 9, 2014. Pro-Russian activists attacked a pro-Kiev rally in the Crimean city of Sevastopol with clubs and whips on March 9 as thousands took to the streets across Ukraine in rival demonstrations, escalating separatist tensions. (Stringer/AFP/Getty Images)
- Jamaica’s Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (lane 5) crosses the finish line to win the women’s 60-meter final in the world indoor athletics championships in Sopot, Poland, March 9, 2014. (Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters)
- Residents gather near the body of a Muslim villager who was shot dead in a rubber plantation in Thailand’s southern province of Narathiwat on March 9, 2014. The region is one of three Muslim-majority provinces in the grip of a bloody decade-long insurgency that has claimed over 5,900 lives — the majority of them civilians. (Madaree Tohlala/AFP/Getty Images)
- A man tries to fix the satellite equipment at a local public television hall in Petevo in the Central African Republic’s capital of Bangui, March 9, 2014. The United Nations estimates that some 650,000 people have been displaced by violence within Central African Republic, while nearly 300,000 have crossed into neighboring countries. (Camille Lepage/Reuters)
- A car belonging to the media burns during a protest by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi inside Cairo University, in Cairo, March 9, 2014. (Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters)
- An anti-nuclear protester wearing zombie makeup and a costume walks in front of the Parliament in Tokyo, March 9, 2014. Thousands of anti-nuclear protesters marched in the Japanese capital on Sunday, ahead of the third anniversary of an earthquake and tsunami that triggered the world’s worst atomic disaster in 25 years. (Yuya Shino/Reuters)
- A Canadian Sphynx cat is evaluated during an international feline beauty show in Bucharest, Romania, March 9, 2014. (Bogdan Cristel/Reuters)
- People gather near the carcass of a 33-foot whale on a beach at the port of Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia, March 9, 2014. The whale died after it become tangled in a fisherman’s net off the coast. (Zoubeir Souissi/Reuters)
- A woman survivor holds her crying baby in a hospital in Aleppo’s al-Sakhour district, after what activists said was a barrel bomb dropped at Aleppo’s Haydariye district by forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, March 9, 2014. (Hosam Katan/Reuters)