The best photos from around the world this week

The couple art installation in England, the northern lights in Norway, the Milky Way, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Miss Independence beauty pageant in Moscow - see these and many other photos in our selection of the best photos from the last week.

(Total 30 photos)

1. Art installation "Pair" overlooking the North Sea on the northeast coast of England. (© PA/AP)

2. A man on a pier fishes in the Mediterranean Sea in Barcelona, Spain. (© AP)

3. Northern lights in the mountains near the village of Mestervik, in northern Norway. (© Reuters)

4. Protesters block the main street of the financial center in Hong Kong. Opposition supporters demand direct free elections in Hong Kong in 2017 for the head of the local administration. (© Reuters)

5. An attacker with a gun in his hand is on the balcony of the 13th floor of the St. Peter's Hotel in Brasilia, threatening to blow up a vest, allegedly filled with explosives, which he put on one of the hotel employees. After negotiations, he surrendered to the police. As it turned out, he was armed with a toy pistol model. (© Reuters)

6. Japanese soldiers and firefighters are looking for people after the eruption of the Ontake volcano. At the time of the eruption, about 250 people were on the slopes, of which more than 45 died. (© Reuters/Kyodo)

7. Japanese rescuers climb the slope of the Ontake volcano in Japan. (© Kimi Takeuchi / AP)

8. NASA astronaut Reid Weissman took this picture of the Milky Way from the International Space Station. (© Reuters)

9. Fields and trees are covered with a layer of crushed limestone in the Clafmills area (Northern Ireland) to correct the PH level in the soil. (© Reuters)

10. An American tanker aircraft McDonnell Douglas KC-10 Extender refuels an F-22 Raptor multirole fighter before a military operation in Syria. (© US Air Force/AP)

11. A Chinese worshiper has his cheeks drilled during the annual Vegetarian Festival in Phuket, Thailand. (© AFP)

12. A man walks down a deserted street in the financial center of Hong Kong, where tens of thousands of pro-democracy activists are protesting. (© Reuters)

13. Aerial view of the river in Peru. (© Enrique Castro Mendivil / Reuters)

14. British Prime Minister David Cameron is preparing a keynote speech in his hotel room in Birmingham during a conference of the Conservative Party. (© Peter Macdiarmid / Getty Images)

15. Muslim pilgrims walk around the Kaaba counterclockwise during the Hajj. (© Reuters)

16. A long-exposure photo shows traffic on the roads during rush hour ahead of National Day in Shanghai. (© AFP)

17. American actor and former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger poses with the contestants during the annual competition "Arnold Classic Europe" in Madrid. (© AFP)

18. Basejumper jumps from the platform, located at a height of 300 meters on a television tower in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This year, more than 100 extreme sportsmen from 20 countries of the world took part. (© AFP)

19. Climber on the Gamsberg mountain range (2385 m above sea level) in Switzerland. (©AP Photo)

20. A giant portrait called "One of many", which was painted by Cuban-American artist Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada on the National Mall in the historic center of Washington. To create a portrait, the artist took photographs of 30 Washington residents aged 18 to 25 and combined them into one face using Photoshop. Gerada used about 2,000 tons of sand, 800 tons of earth, 10,000 wooden pegs, several kilometers of rope, and a GPS navigator to accurately place materials. (© Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

21. A 9-year-old girl cries after learning about the death of her mother, who was hospitalized with suspected Ebola the day before, in Monrovia, Liberia. (© AP Photo / Jerome Delay )

22. Installation "Mission to Mars" during the religious holiday Durga Puja, Kolkata, India. (© Rupak De Chowdhuri / Reuters)

23. Volcanic smoke over Mount Ontake, Japan. (© Reuters)

24. Women in wheelchairs dance during the Miss Independence beauty pageant in Moscow September 30. The competition is organized to change the attitude of society towards women with disabilities. (© Maxim Shipenkov / EPA)

25. Ailina Tsarnaeva, sister of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is suspected of organizing a terrorist attack in Boston, appeared before a New York court on September 30. Ailina is accused of allegedly threatening to kill a woman who gave birth to a child from her boyfriend. (© Steven Hirsch / Reuters)

26. Jumping from a bridge on a bungee from a 44-meter height near Krasnoyarsk. (© Ilya Naimushin / Reuters)

27. Terek Cossack performs with sabers during the XVII Regional Youth Cossack Games in Stavropol Zheleznovodsk. More than 20 teams of Cossack societies of the North Caucasian Federal District took part in the games. (© Eduard Kornienko / Reuters)

28. Schoolchildren play ball during a break next to a copy of the Moscow Kremlin in the school yard in the village. Taseevo, Krasnoyarsk Territory. The Kremlin was built by Vladimir Chernyak, a former physical education teacher at the Taseevskaya secondary school. (© Ilya Naimushin / Reuters)

29. Tarragona Human Tower Festival in the Catalan city of Tarragona, 90 kilometers south of Barcelona. (© AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti)

30. Participant of the international marathon K42 on Uyuni Salt Flats in Bolivia. (© Reuters)