Week in pictures: 14-20 December

MONDAY, CHINA: Chinese guards wait after Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and UAE's deputy commander-in-chief of the armed forces, leaves the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China.

MONDAY, UNITED STATES: A police boat sits in the morning fog in Brooklyn, New York City. Temperatures across much of the New York metropolitan area were unseasonably warm, with 16C recorded in many areas, leaving doubts about the possibility of a white Christmas this year.

TUESDAY, KAZAKHSTAN:

TUESDAY, ENGLAND: Actors take part in a full dress rehearsal of the Wintershall Nativity play at the Wintershall Estate in Guildford, England.

WEDNESDAY, MONACO: (Left to right) Princess Charlene of Monaco, Prince Albert II of Monaco, Camille Gottlieb and Louis Ducruet attend the traditional Christmas gifts ceremony in Monaco, surrounded by monegasque children.

Visitors look a Tyrannosaurus Rex skull at the Natural History Museum in Berlin

THURSDAY, IRAQ: An Iraqi Kurdish man walks past a giant flag of Kurdistan, as Kurds marked Flag Day on Thursday in Erbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq.

FRIDAY, CHINA: A Dong choir performs in a song competition in Rongjiang, in the Guizhou Province of China. More than 2,000 participants in 102 teams took part. The Dong are one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognised by the People's Republic of China.

FRIDAY, UNITED KINGDOM: Coal miners finish their final shift before closure at the Kellingley Colliery in Yorkshire, northern England. The mine has been shut down, closing