
In Focus
The Week in Pictures: Dec. 27 - Jan. 3
Tear gas at the border, Mummers welcome the new year, Nancy hoists the gavel again and more.


She's back
Newly elected House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is surrounded by children and grandchildren of lawmakers at the closing of the opening of the 116th Congress at the Capitol on Jan. 3.
Pelosi was elected speaker for the second time in her political career, a striking comeback for the only woman ever to hold the post.

Climbing the wall
A migrant jumps from the border fence into the U.S. from Tijuana, Mexico, early on Jan. 1.
Discouraged by the long wait to apply for asylum through official ports of entry, many migrants from recent caravans are choosing to cross the U.S. border wall and hand themselves in to border patrol agents.

Tear gas at the border
Central American migrants run away from tear gas after they tried to cross from Tijuana, Mexico, early on Jan. 1.
U.S. authorities fired tear gas into Mexico during the first hours of the new year to repel about 150 migrants who tried to breach the border fence in Tijuana.



Way past Pluto
New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, center, celebrates with school children at the exact moment that the New Horizons spacecraft made the closest approach of distant space object Ultima Thule on Jan. 1 at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
The icy Kuiper Belt object is 4 billion miles from Earth.



Spirits undampened
Revelers celebrate New Year's Eve in Times Square on Dec. 31, 2018.
For the first time in 24 years, it was raining as New York welcomed the new year.
Photos: Hello 2019! Cities around the world ring in the new year

Icy plunge
Swimmers brave chilly water during the annual New Year's Day Loony Dook Swim near Edinburgh, Scotland.
Photos: 'Polar Bear' swimmers dive into frosty waters to celebrate New Year's


Flour war
Revelers dressed in mock military garb take part in the "Els Enfarinats" battle in the southeastern Spanish town of Ibi on Dec. 28.
During this 200-year-old tradition, participants known as "Els Enfarinats" dress in military clothes and stage a mock coup d'etat as they battle using flour, eggs and firecrackers outside the town hall as part of the celebrations of the Day of the Innocents.



Young life lost
Catarina Perez, center, grandmother of Felipe Gomez Alonzo, an 8-year-old boy who died in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, prays at an altar in memory of Felipe at the family's home in the village of Yalambojoch, Guatemala on Dec. 27.
The boy, who was initially diagnosed with a common cold, died minutes before midnight on Christmas Eve in New Mexico.