The Week in Pictures: May 9 - 16

Iron worker Tyler Brown leans on a safety fence to look at the New York skyline after watching a crane lift the final piece of the spire to the top of One World Trade Center in New York, on May 10, 2013. Workers cheered and whistled as they completed the spire on New York's One World Trade Center on Friday, raising the building to its full height of 1,776 feet and helping fill a void in the skyline left by the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Pope Francis holds a dove before his Wednesday general audience at Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican, on May 15. The dove was one of two birds freed by the pope from a birdcage given to him by someone in the crowd.

An Afghan man directs his children away from the scene where a suicide car bomber attacked a NATO convoy in Kabul, Afghanistan, on May 16. A Muslim militant group, Hizb-e-Islami, claimed responsibility for the early morning attack, killing many in the explosion and wounding tens, police and hospital officials said. The powerful explosion rattled buildings on the other side of Kabul and sent a pillar of white smoke into the sky in the city's east.

A mounted Israeli policeman tries to disperse Palestinian protesters waving their national flag during clashes as demonstrators gathered outside Damascus gate in Jerusalem on May 15, to mark the 65th Nakba or "catastrophe" of the Jewish state's creation in 1948, during which 760,000 Palestinians fled their homes. Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to demonstrate on Nakba Day and assert their "right to return" to where their ancestors fled after the Israeli victory over Arab armies.

People are taken into custody by the U.S. Border Patrol near Falfurrias, Texas, on March 29, 2013. Brooks County has become an epicenter for illegal immigrant deaths in Texas. In 2012, sheriff's deputies found 129 bodies there, six times the number recorded in 2010. Most of those who died succumbed to the punishing heat and rough terrain that comprise the ranch lands of south Texas. Many migrants spend a few days in a "stash house," such as the Casa del Migrante, in Reynosa, Mexico, and many are ignorant of the treacherous journey ahead.

Editor's note: This image was received by NBC News this week.

Chinese inventor Tao Xiangli welds a component of his self-made robot (back) at the yard of his house in Beijing, on May 15. Tao, 37, spent about 150,000 yuan ($24,407) and more than 11 months to build the robot out of recycled scrap metals and electric wires that he bought from a second-hand market. The robot is 6.8-feet-tall and around 529 lbs in weight, local media reported.


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President Barack Obama sits with Attorney General Eric Holder during the 32nd annual the National Peace Officers Memorial Service, on May 15, on Capitol Hill in Washington, honoring law enforcement officers who died in the line of duty.

Rescuers pull out a female survivor, Reshma, alive 16 days after the Rana Plaza building collapsed, in Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh, on May 10. Seamstress Reshma Begum spent more than 16 days trapped in a basement mosque, subsisting on dried foods and small amounts of water. More than 1,100 people have been confirmed dead since the Rana Plaza building near Dhaka collapsed on April 24, 2013.

A Bangladeshi child wipes her mother's tears, who lost relatives believed to be trapped in the rubble of an 8-story building collapse in Savar, on the outskirts of Dhaka, on May 13. Bangladesh's army announced Monday that it was wrapping up its search for bodies following last month's collapse of a garment factory complex, saying that it believed a total of 1,127 people were killed.

General view of the exploded area in Hatay, Reyhanli District, Turkey, on May 11. At least 40 people were killed and about 100 injured in car bomb explosions in Turkey close to the Syrian border, Interior Minister Muammer Guler said.

Rock and Roll devotees Lori Barker, left, and Yvette Hillebrandt pose as they attend the 50th Hemsby Rock 'n' Roll Weekender as the biannual festival celebrates 25 years on May 12, in Hemsby, England. Fans of Rock and Roll, Rockabilly, Rockin' Blues and Americana gathered at Seacroft Holiday Camp in Hemsby to dress up in period clothing and re-live the 1940s and 1950s. Every day of the four day "weekender," a line up of top live bands play the music of the era and devotees hit the dance floor to hop, bop, jive and Rock 'n' Roll.


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A Pakistani supporter of former cricket star-turned-politician, and leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, Imran Khan, takes part in a rally in Khan's support in Islamabad, Pakistan, on May 9, 2013. Pakistan held parliamentary elections on May 11, the first transition between democratically elected governments in a country that has experienced three military coups and constant political instability since its creation in 1947. The parliament's ability to complete its five-year term has been hailed as a significant achievement.

A Free Syrian Army fighter sits on a sofa inside a house in Deir al-Zor, on May 13.

Former resident and tourist guide Norma Berg walks by a street in Epecuen, on May 6, a village that once was submerged in water in Argentina. People come to see the rusted hulks of automobiles and furniture, crumbled homes and broken appliances. They climb staircases that lead nowhere, and wander through a graveyard where the water-toppled headstones and exposed tombs to the elements.

A deflated rubber duck by Dutch conceptual artist Florentijn Hofman floats on Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour, with the island skyline in the background, on May 14. The 54-foot-tall inflatable sculpture, which made its first public appearance in the territory on May 2, was to be shown at the Ocean Terminal for a month. The rubber duck deflated after some of its parts broke.