A living replica of Van Gogh’s ear, G7 leaders meet, Queen Elizabeth adresses Parliment, D-Day ceremonies begin | June 4
The day in photos around the world.
- A woman looks on the living replica of Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh’s famously severed ear which is displayed at Culture and media museum ZKM, in Karlsruhe, southwestern Germany. The ear is part of the exhibition “Sugababe” by Diemut Strebe, an artist specialized in artworks using biological material, who collaborated with scientists to reconstruct the Dutch master’s ear using DNA from a relative and 3D printers. The show will be on display in Karlsruhe until July 6, 2014 before moving to New York in early 2015. (Thomas Kienzle/Getty Images)
- A peacock is flourished on its colors in the ‘Magan Zoo Abony’, a private zoo of Abony town, about 90 kilometres east of Budapest. (Attila Kisbenedek/Getty Images)
- US soldiers patrol near Kandahar Airfield. Members of the 1st Battalion, 12th Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division patrolled areas near Kandahar Airfield to protect the base from rocket attacks, and also visited Afghan police and polling stations to check on the security for the upcoming presidential election runoff. (Brendan Smialowki/Getty Images)
- A general view of horses and exercise riders training on the main track at Belmont Park in Elmont, New York. (Al Bello/Getty Images)
- A woman poses for a photo as she leans on a grand piano that has been left beside the East Rive, during a fashion shoot underneath the Brooklyn Bridge in the Manhattan borough of New York. According to local media, the piano had been in this space for about a week, puzzling locals as to how it got there and the reason for its placement, perfectly under the bridge. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)
- A mother and child who have fled from fighting in Slaviansk, stand in their temporary accommodation in the town of Nizhnaya Krinka in eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian government forces battled separatists with artillery and automatic weapons on Wednesday as fighting raged for a second straight day in and around the eastern town of Slaviansk, forcing many frightened residents to flee. (Maxim Zmeyev/Reuters)
- Dancers get their make up done backstage before their show at the Victory Monument during a military event in Bangkok. China and Vietnam have expressed support for Thailand’s new military government, an army spokesman said on Wednesday, as pro-army supporters held a small gathering at the Australian Embassy in protest against downgrading of relations after last month’s coup. Several foreign governments have voiced disapproval of the coup, which saw General Prayuth Chan-ocha take power after months of political unrest that undermined the government of Yingluck Shinawatra.(Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)
- Civil Defence members sit on rubble at a site hit by what activists said was a barrel bomb dropped by forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo’s Bustan al-Qasr neighborhood. (Hosam Katan/Reuters)
- U.S President Barack Obama and Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski gesture at a Freedom Day event at Royal Square in Warsaw. The event marks the 25th anniversary of Poland’s first partially-free election since Moscow imposed communism after World War Two. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
- Activists dressed as musicians and wearing masks depicting leaders of the members of the G7 protest against wealth inequality outside the European Council building in Brussels June 4, 2014. The world’s leading industrialized nations meet without Russia for the first time in 17 years on Wednesday, leaving President Vladimir Putin out of the talks in retaliation for his seizure of Crimea and Russia’s part in destabilizing eastern Ukraine. The leaders depicted are (L-R) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, French President Francois Hollande, U.S. President Barack Obama and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. (Francois Lenoir/Reuters)
- (L-R) U.S. President Barack Obama, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, France’s President Francois Hollande, Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel participate in a G7 leaders meeting at European Council headquarters in Brussels. The world’s leading industrialized nations meet without Russia for the first time in 17 years on Wednesday, leaving President Vladimir Putin out of the talks in retaliation for his seizure of Crimea and Russia’s part in destabilizing eastern Ukraine. (Yves Herman/Reuters)
- Historical re-enactment enthusiasts and siblings Joshua and Faith Phillips from San Antonio, Texas, chat with Irish World War II veteran Robert McLaughlin, 90, at Carentan, France. McLaughlin was a commando in the Ulster Rifles of the British Army, participated in the capture of Pegasus Bridge during the D-Day invasion in 1944 and is visiting Normandy for the first time since the war. Friday the 6th of June is the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings that saw 156,000 troops from the Allied countries, including the United Kingdom and the United States, join forces to launch an audacious attack on the beaches of Normandy, these assaults are credited with the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany. A series of events commemorating the 70th anniversary are planned for the week with many heads of state travelling to the famous beaches to pay their respects to those who lost their lives. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
- Former member of French Captain Philippe Kieffer’s green berets commando Leon Gautier, 91 years old, attends a commando ceremony in Colleville-Montgomery. Gautier landed on the beach of Ouistreham with Kieffer’s special forces on June 6, 1944, during World War Two. Gautier, who lives in Ouistreham on the Normandy coast, is one of some 3,000 veterans attending ceremonies across the northern French coastline where Allied forces landed in the largest seaborne invasion in history to help speed up the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War Two. (Christian Hartmann/Reuters)
- The Imperial State Crown is transported to the Palace of Westminster before the Queen’s speech in the House of Lords, during the State Opening of Parliament at the Palace of Westminster in London. (Stefan Wermuth/Reuters)
- Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, accompanied by Prince Philip, travels in the new Diamond Jubilee State Coach, to deliver her speech for the State Opening of Parliament in the House of Lords at the Palace of Westminster, in central London June 4, 2014. (Eddie Keogh/Reuters)
- Britain’s Queen Elizabeth sits with Prince Philip as she delivers her speech in the House of Lords, during the State Opening of Parliament at the Palace of Westminster in London. (Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters)
- A Greater Adjutant Stork stands as a rag-picker collects recyclables at the biggest garbage dump in the northeastern state of Assam on the eve of World Environment Day at the Boragoan area in Guwahati. The UN declared the 2014 theme for World Environment Day to be ‘Small Islands and Climate Change’ with the official slogan for the year 2014 ‘Raise Your Voice Not The Sea Level’. (Biju Boro/Getty Images)
- Riot policemen are deployed during a protest against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas. (Leo Ramirez/Getty Images)
- A student of the Scorpion Youth Military Club carries AK-74 Kalashnikov automatic rifles for a training session on a summer base in a school in the village of Molodyozhny, outside Russia’s Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk. (Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)
- A young woman reenacts the famous “Tank Man” scene from the 1989 Tiananmen Square military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters om Beijing, in front of a replica of a Chinese tank in Hong Kong. Up to 200,000 people were set to take part in a candlelight vigil in Hong Kong on June 4 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown, as China seeks to wipe the incident from memory. (Alex Ogle/Getty Images)
- Chinese Paramilitary police officers salut each other as they stand guard below a portrait of the late leader Mao Zedong in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. Twenty-five years ago on June 4, 1989 Chinese troops cracked down on pro-democracy protesters and in the clashes that followed scores were killed and injured. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)
- A woman sleeps in a shop which sells recycled electronic goods at Yaojiayuan village in Beijing. According to information from the 13th China International Environmental Protection Exhibition and Conference, China has become the planet’s second biggest producer of electronic waste, or e-waste, after the United States. (Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)