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The Week that Was

March 16, 2015 11:40 IST

Here's a look at the events that shaped the world last week.


Image: Actor Amitabh Bachchan poses for a photograph after the unveiling of a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Parliament Square, London, March 14, 2015. British sculptor, Philip Jackson, was commissioned to create the work, his previous pieces include statues of the Queen Mother and Bomber Command. Photograph: Paul Hackett/Reuters



Image: US President Barack Obama puts on his jacket before boarding Air Force One at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport to return to Washington from Phoenix, Arizona March 13. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters



Image: Fighters from Misrata fire weapons at Islamic State militants near Sirte. Militants loyal to Islamic State, the group which has seized much of Iraq and Syria, have established a larger presence in central Libya in recent weeks. Islamic State, which analysts say is splintered into smaller factions in Libya, has sought to exploit turmoil in the major oil producer where two rival governments and their respective allies fight for power. Photograph: Goran Tomasevic/Reuters



Image: Thousands of anti-government protesters march along Copacabana beach on March 15 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Protests across the country were held against President Dilma Rousseff's government with many protesters calling for her impeachment. A massive corruption scandal at Brazil's state-owned oil company Petrobras has rocked the government and Dilma's approval ratings are now around 23 percent. Brazil's inflation rate has hovered around ten-year highs recently while the currency, the Brazilian real, has passed twelve-year lows when measured against the US dollar. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images



Image: In this handout provided by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Soyuz TMA-14M spacecraft is seen as it lands with Expedition 42 commander Barry Wilmore of NASA, Alexander Samokutyaev of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and Elena Serova of Roscosmos March 12 near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. Photograph: Bill Ingalls/NASA via Getty Images



Image: A Palestinian girl sits on a suitcase as she waits with her family for a travel permit to cross into Egypt, at the Rafah crossing between Egypt and the southern Gaza Strip, March 10. Egyptian authorities opened the Rafah border crossing on Monday for two days, officials said. Rafah is the only major crossing between impoverished Gaza, home to 1.8 million Palestinians, and the outside world that does not border Israel, which blockades the strip and allows passage mainly on humanitarian grounds. Egypt shut the crossing in October last year after Islamist militants in Egypt's adjacent Sinai region killed members of its security forces. Since then, it opened the crossing partially and on a few occasions to allow thousands of Palestinians to travel in and out of the Gaza Strip. Photograph: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters



Image: A huge poster shows a model wearing jeans and part of a nun's habit, on a building in Naples March 11, 2015. Rosso di Sera, an Italian ready-to-wear clothing chain, caused a stir by putting up the huge publicity poster of a semi-nude woman dressed as a nun in Naples less than two weeks before Pope Francis is due to visit the southern port city. Photograph: Ciro De Luca/Reuters



Image: Police arrest a protester outside the City of Ferguson Police Department and Municipal Court in Ferguson, Missouri, March 11. The police chief of Ferguson, Missouri, resigned on Wednesday, following a scathing US Justice Department report that found widespread racially biased abuses in the city's police department and municipal court. Protesters had called for Chief Thomas Jackson's removal since the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white Ferguson police officer on August 9. The killing triggered nationwide protests and drew scrutiny to police use of deadly force, especially against black men. Photograph: Kate Munsch/Reuters



Image: Solar Impulse 2, the world's first airplane flying on solar energy, lands in Ahmedabad March 10. The Swiss-built solar aircraft took off from Muscat in Oman earlier on Tuesday to begin the second leg of its epic journey. The unprecedented attempt at the first flight around the world seeks to prove that flying is possible without using fossil fuel. On its five-month journey of 35,000 km (22,000 miles), the engines will be powered only by solar energy. Two Swiss pilots, Bertrand Piccard and Andre Boschberg, will take turns at the controls in the tiny cabin for five consecutive days and nights in the air. Photograph: Jean Revillard/Handout via Reuters



Image: Madeleine Klonoski, 2, sits on her father's leg at a kite festival in Redondo Beach, California. Photograph: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters



Image: Police hit a student protester during violence in Letpadan March 10, 2015. Myanmar police beat students with batons and detained some of them as they broke up a group of about 200 protesters who had been locked in a standoff with security forces for more than a week, a Reuters witness said. The students were protesting an education bill they say stifles academic independence, and a group of them set out on foot from the central city of Mandalay more than a month ago in a symbolic protest. They made it as far as Letpadan, a town north of Yangon, where police blockaded them behind vehicles and barriers made of wood and barbed wire. Photograph: Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters