Week in pictures: 12 - 18 September 2020 - BBC News

源济

MARIO ANZUONI / REUTERS

A tanker drops fire retardant as the so-called Bobcat fire burns near Juniper Hills, California. Wildfires have burned through a record number of acres in California this year, with Los Angeles County reporting its highest ever temperature of 49.4C (121F) on 6 September.

JONATHAN BRADY/PA

Two technicians handle Banksy's "Show me the Monet", on display at Sotheby's in central London. The work is the artist's contemporary re-interpretation of Claude Monet's depiction of the Japanese bridge in his garden at Giverny.

KELLY BARNES / GETTY IMAGES

image captionEnglish springer spaniel Floki is one of two dogs taking part in Covid-19 detection training at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Researchers want to train sniffer dogs to detect the virus so that people could potentially be screened at airports, hospitals and quarantine facilities.

ALEXANDER KUZNETSOV / REUTERS

image captionThe aurora borealis, or Northern Lights, illuminates the sky in Rovaniemi, Finland. The phenomenon occurs when solar wind - a stream of charged particles escaping the Sun - collides with Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere.

ADAM IHSE / EPA

Hungary's Zsofia Racz and Lilla Turanyi and Sweden's Amanda Ilestedt fight for the ball during the Uefa Women's Euro 2021 Group F qualifying football match in Gothenburg.

MAURO PIMENTEL / AFP

The fire-ravaged wetland of Pantanal, in Brazil's Mato Grosso state, reveals the corpse of an alligator. There have been more than 15,000 fires in the wetlands so far this year - triple the number recorded in the same period in 2019 - causing widespread devastation.

CHRISTOPHE SIMON / AFP

A swimmer competes in the 22nd edition of Le Defi de Monte-Cristo competition, Europe's largest open-water race, over 5km (three miles) between Chateau d'If island and Marseille, in southern France.

MUHAMMAD HAMED / REUTERS

Norma Rashia, 22, undergoes facial massage with giant African land snails at a centre in Amman, Jordan. Importation of the snails, regarded as an invasive species, is banned in some parts of the world because of concerns that their slime contains harmful parasites.

BORUT ZIVULOVIC / REUTERS

A new bronze statue of US First Lady Melania Trump is unveiled near her hometown in Slovenia. It replaces a wooden sculpture erected last year, which was set alight shortly afterwards by unknown arsonists. Some described the original as a "disgrace" or a "Smurfette", saying it did not look like Mrs Trump.

VITALY NEVAR / REUTERS

Ole, a young orangutan, plays in his enclosure on a rainy day at Kaliningrad Zoo, Russia.