Nir Elias/Reuters
Customers have their lunch at a toilet-themed restaurant in Beijing September 9, 2009. The restaurant, one of its kind in Beijing since its opening in June, 2009, is decorated entirely with toilet items, customers sit on toilet seats and food is served in miniature toilet bowls and bathtubs.
I just have one word for this: G-R-O-S-S! Would you eat there?
/International Committee of the Red Cross
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, is shown in captivity at Guantanamo Bay in July.
This is the first publicly available picture of Mohammed since 2003. Taken by the ICRC and sent to family members of Mohammed, the image was then posted on Arab-language Web sites and picked up by counter-terror researcher and blogger Jarret Brachman.
Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters
A schoolgirl sits in a classroom at Syed Pasha school, which was built by Canadian troops, near Afghanistan's Kandahar Air Field on September 8, 2009.
Sometimes the simplest picture can provide meaningful human context to a news story. There's a lot of news out of Afghanistan, about NATO troops, air strikes, IEDs, election anomalies and the like. This picture makes me wonder what all of it will mean for this student.
John Moore/Getty Images
Volunteers caress the hands of terminally ill patient Annabelle Martin, 95, as her health quickly declined at the Hospice of Saint John on Sept. 1, 2009, in Lakewood, Colorado. The non-profit hospice serves on average 200 people at a time and is the second oldest hospice in the United States. The hospice accepts patients regardless of their ability to pay. End of life care has become a contentious issue in the current national debate on health care reform.
After making a trip to visit my own 94-year-old "Funny Old Mary" who has become a shell of her former vivacious self rather quickly thanks to dementia, this picture brought tears to my eyes when I saw it. If you're lucky enough to have your elderly relatives living close to you, spend every minute with them that you can. Their stories, love and wisdom are something to be valued and may leave this earth before they do.
Tony Karumba/AFP - Getty Images
A school boy wears worn-out shoes as he carries a plastic bottle he filled with river water as he and others head back to school in Nanyuki. A sweeping drought across East Africa has left millions of people at risk of starvation, in a region plagued by increasingly erratic rainfall.
This image was considered for The Week in Pictures, but didn't make the final edit. The tiny toes coming out of the bottom of the boy's shoes are an important detail the photographer is able to bring to our attention when in a larger photo, we may never have noticed.
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Marines attend to Lance Corporal Joshua M. Bernard. Bernard was wounded in a grenade attack on August 14 in Afghanistan's Helmand province. He later died at a combat field hospital. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)
On Thursday, msnbc.com chose not to run this picture with the Associated Press story. On Friday, after news broke that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates asked the AP not to publish the image, we decided after much discussion to make it available to viewers, who can decide for themselves whether to view it, and from there to make their own judgment about APs decision to transmit it and about the ensuing controversy.
Eliot J. Schechter/Getty Images
A general view of a cheerleaders Nike shoes taken during the FedEx BCS National Championship Game between the Oklahoma Sooners and the Florida Gators at Dolphin Stadium on January 8, 2009 in Miami, Florida.
I came across this while looking for a completely different image for our Sports front. This is great seeing on the photographer's part and a really fun, interesting image to look at.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger lifts a charred dumbbell as he tours homes that were burned by the Station Fire September 2, 2009 at Vogel Flats near Tujunga, California. Fire officials said that the deadly 140,000 acre Station Fire was human caused. The fire, now 22 percent contained, has destroyed over 70 structures and has forced thousands of evacuations as several thousand homes are continue to be threatened. Two firefighters were also killed on Sunday trying to save an inmate fire-crew camp on Mount Gleason.
Maybe he's thinking, "My life was so much simpler then..."
Pete Souza/The White House
President Barack Obama's daughter Sasha hides behind the sofa as she sneaks up on him at the end of the day in the Oval Office, Aug. 5, 2009.
Does this photo remind you of another child playing in the Oval office? Nice to see the first family still can have some fun.
Ranald Mackechnie/AP
Lee Redmond, right, former record holder for longest fingernails (28-ft 4-in), poses with with Melvin Booth, the male owner of the longest finger nails (29-ft 8-in). This photo was taken just a few months prior to Redmond's car accident which resulted in the loss of her fingernails. Redmond says of the loss, "The weight is so different, so much. In fact my hands seem to fly with the weight gone."
This is amazing. How would you drive? How would you open doors and type and write with a pencil or pen? How would you brush your teeth or sleep or put on a shirt or tie your shoes? Imagine being out to dinner with friends...how would you do that?
Mark Ralston/AFP - Getty Images
Homeowner Dave Johnson views his burnt Harley Davidson motorcycle that was at his cabin destroyed by the Station Fire in the Angeles National Forest on the outskirts of Los Angeles city on September 2, 2009.
That's gotta hurt.
Rafa Rivas/AFP - Getty Images
Spanish matador Jose Maria Manzanares gives a capote pass to a Nunez de Cubillo bull during a bullfight of the San Antolin festivities at the Palencia bullring, on September 2, 2009.
I'll bet this is part of what it feels like when you're in an arena with a bull. Every time we publish a bullfighting image, we get mail from folks asking how we can endorse such an activity. For the record, we're not endorsing bullfighting any more than we're endorsing roadside bombings when we publish those images.
Andrew Ferguson/NBCPhiladelphia.com
A man photographing surfers enjoying the waves off the Jersey Shore captured what may be upon closer scrutiny a Russian nuclear sub trolling the waters off America's eastern seaboard.
I've had some pretty interesting things turn up unexpectedly in my photos throughout the years, but never a Russian sub.
Sean Masterson/EPA
Noel Rincon hoses the roof of his home in Tujunga, a suburb near Los Angeles, California, USA, on 01 September 2009. Rincon was one of many residents in the neighborhood who chose to ignore mandatory evacuation orders. The Station grew to over 122,000 acres the previous night and has destroyed fifty homes. EPA/SEAN MASTERSON
I know it must be tough for some people to leave their homes with a wildfire approaching, but is that garden hose really going to keep his house from burning?
Thomas Peter/Reuters
An aerial view shows a labyrinth in the form of a cow that is cut into a field outside Berlin Sept. 2, 2009. The labyrinth was created by the Federal Institute of Risk Assessment to raise awareness for healthy eating and dangers from harmful substances in food as well as to explain the digestion process in the stomach of a cow.
In the summer months we often see images like this of field art. But this one is especially interesting in its complexity and purpose. Do you think it's effective?
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