Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah receives Syrian President Bashar Assad at Riyadh Air Base. (SPA)
An oiled bird sits on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast after being drenched in oil from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill on June 3. (AP)
In this Dec. 2 photo, police clash with demonstrating students outside Greece's Parliament in the latest protest against austerity measures in Athens. (AP)
Matt Sky holds up a sign during a press conference to announce a rally for solidarity and unity against Islamophobia and racism over the demonstrations against the proposed Islamic cultural center at Cordoba House in New York City. (AP)
An Iraqi woman is kissed by a nun at a funeral for two slain Christian brothers in Mosul on Nov. 23. Gunmen shot and killed the brothers in the latest spate of attacks. (AP)
Rescued miner Omar Reygadas, center, wearing a blue helmet, emerges from a capsule after being rescued at the San Jose Mine near Copiapo, Chile, on Oct. 13. One by one, 33 miners trapped for 69 days climbed into the rescue capsule and ascended to the surface. (AP)
Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, right, meets with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri in Tehran. (AP)
Downpours caused by tropical storm Agatha created on June 1 a giant sinkhole in Guatemala City, while throughout the country officials reported 120 people dead and at least 53 missing. (AP)
A file picture dated Nov. 16 shows Britain's Prince William, right, and Kate Middleton during a photo call to mark their engagement in the State Rooms of St James's Palace in London. The royal wedding will be held on April 29, 2011 at Westminster Abbey in London. (EPA)
Saudi Aramco invited bids for the biggest gas plant in the country as well as for a power plant at the Kingdom's Shaybah oil field. (AN photo)
Over 5,000 Saudi and expatriate women created the world's largest human pink ribbon to create awareness about breast cancer in Jeddah on Oct. 29. (AN photo)
Security men walk into the Falcon Express office, the partner service provider of FedEx in Yemen on Oct. 30 in Sanaa. Yemeni authorities were checking dozens of packages in search for those who tried to mail bombs to Chicago's synagogues. (AP)
Crown Prince Sultan, deputy premier and minister of defense and aviation, signing an airport terminal deal in Morocco. (SPA)
A police officer points his weapon at a youth who had taken goods from quake-damaged stores in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. In 2010 crisis has piled upon crisis in Haiti. More than 230,000 are believed to have died in the quake, and more than a million remain homeless. A cholera epidemic broke out in the fall, and in its midst a dysfunctional election was held, its results still unclear. (AP)
I used to wonder at the word “Al-Jazeera” that appeared on many cabs in London around the middle of the nineties until Qatar’s Al-Jazeera television channel arrived with a bang drawing the attention of the whole world.
Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, left, the emir of Qatar, and Sheikha Mozaa Bint Nasser Al-Missned, center, hold the World Cup trophy while Fifa President Josef S. Blatter applauds on stage after Qatar was declared host for the 2022 World Cup during the FIFA 2018 and 2022 World Cup Bid Announcement in Zurich, Switzerland, on Dec. 2. (EPA)
A man wades through waist-deep waters with his child while escaping floods in Pakistan's northern region on July 30. (Reuters)
An Israeli naval attack on May 31 on a Turkish aid flotilla that set out from Turkey to Gaza killed nine Turkish activists. (AP)
Pilgrims use the new fast commuter train Mashair (Makkah Metro) on its first run on Nov. 15. (EPA)
Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein's long time foreign minister, speaks to the Associated Press in Baghdad, Iraq. An Iraqi court on Monday convicted Tariq Aziz of terrorizing Shiite Kurds during the Iran-Iraq war, sentencing him to 10 years in prison. The jail term piles a new penalty on the 74-year-old Aziz, who already faces an execution sentence from another case. (AP)
Octopus Paul in the SeaLife Aquarium in Oberhausen, Germany, fixes the Spanish box during his oracle for the semifinal match at the World Cup in South Africa between Germany and Spain on July 6. Paul predicted all German matches during the World Cup right. (AP)
An Israeli naval attack on May 31 on a Turkish aid flotilla that set out from Turkey to Gaza killed nine Turkish activists. (AP)
Manouchehr Mottaki was abruptly fired as foreign minister by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The country's nuclear chief was named as acting top diplomat. (AP)
Secretary-General of Arab League Amr Moussa, left, and Qatar's Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim, center, talk with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abo El Gheit during the meeting of Arab Initiative Follow up Committee in Cairo on May 1. (EPA)
South Sudanese demonstrate in favor of a separation between south and north Sudan in Juba. (AP)
Prince Felipe, heir to the Spanish throne, and Catalonia's President Jose Montilla tour the Arabian Routes exhibition at CaixaForum museum in Barcelona with Prince Sultan bin Salman, head of the Supreme Commission for Tourism and Antiquities, after its opening on Nov. 13. (AN photo)