The week in pictures

May 14 — Kalush Orchestra, representing Ukraine, perform on stage during the final show of the 66th Eurovision song contest at Pala Alpitour in Turin, Italy. They won.

May 14 — Rasmus Paludan burns a Koran during an election meeting in Stockholm, Sweden. The far-right politician of the Stram Kurs party, who is a controversial figure there, again became the focus of counter-protests during his latest book-burning.

May 15 — A Palestinian boy wearing the headband of Hamas’s armed wing attends a rally in Gaza City on Sunday marking the 74th anniversary of Nakba, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were removed from their homes in 1948. On Friday Israeli police charged at Palestinian mourners carrying the coffin of Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot dead in Jenin during an Israeli raid earlier in the week.

May 15 — French President Emmanuel Macron meets newly elected leader of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, to mourn Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who died on Friday, aged 73, at Al Mushrif palace in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Sheikh Khalifa presided over the country’s rapid transformation into a global business hub and regional power centre.

May 15 — Semakaleng Mathebula, SA’s first black female hot-air balloon pilot, releases propane gas in preparation for take-off in Johannesburg.

May 15 — Buddhist monks turn on the LED lights as people observe Vesak Day, an annual celebration of Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and death, at Dhammakaya Temple, near Bangkok in Thailand.

May 15 — People watch a full moon rising behind the Temple of Poseidon, before a lunar eclipse in Cape Sounion, near Athens, Greece.

May 16 — Demonstrators scuffle with police in Colombo on Monday as Sri Lanka slides inexorably towards debt default. Bloomberg reports the grace period on two unpaid foreign bonds is nearing an end, the latest blow to a country rattled by economic pain and social unrest.

May 16  — A woman lights a candle at a memorial for 10 victims of a mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, the US. Payton Gendron, 18, was charged with first-degree murder and is being held in jail without bail.

May 17 — A South Korean soldier walks past a TV broadcasting a news report on the Covid-19 outbreak in North Korea, at a railway station in Seoul, South Korea. Overall, the North has reported 1.72-million patients with fever symptoms, including 62 deaths, up to Tuesday, after initially denying the coronavirus had reached the country.

May 19 — People disembark after they were evacuated from a flooded village in the northeastern state of Assam, India, on Wednesday. More than 500,000 people have fled their homes to escape heavy floods triggered by pre-monsoon rains, which caused one of the world’s largest rivers, the Brahmaputra, to burst its banks and inundate more than 1,500 villages.

May 19 — A woman attends a Red Shirt members gathering to mark the 12th anniversary of the dissolution of the 2010 rally in the city centre of Bangkok, Thailand.

May 19 — People displaced by Russian shelling remain in an underground metro station where they have been sheltering for months, in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Though Russian shelling has largely ceased in the city, the attacks destroyed many houses and large blocks of flats, leaving thousands of residents homeless.

May 19 — A woman carries apricots to sell during the harvest season, in Al Qalyubia Governorate, Egypt, on Thursday. The country surprised most economists by delivering its biggest interest rate hike in nearly half a decade, an attempt to tackle soaring inflation and restore the allure of its local debt with foreign investors. The central bank increased the deposit and lending rates by 200 basis points each to 11.25% and 12.25%, respectively.

May 19 — Stellenbosch University students marched in the Western Cape town on Thursday demanding the expulsion of Theuns du Toit, the student who was recorded on video urinating on a fellow student’s laptop and belongings.