
In Focus
The Week in Pictures: Aug. 23 - 30
A gold-plated casket for the Queen of Soul, 117-year-old could be world's oldest, bees swarm Times Square and more.


Goodbye kiss
Cindy McCain lays her head on the casket of her husband Sen. John McCain during his memorial service at the Arizona Capitol in Phoenix on Aug. 29. The former prisoner of war and maverick politician died last Saturday of brain cancer at age 81.
Photos: McCain family bids emotional farewell to statesman in Phoenix memorial

Wedding glow
A couple watches a screen during a mass wedding at the Cheong Shim Peace World Center in Gapyeong, South Korea, on Aug. 27. The Unification Church's mass wedding was organized by Hak Ja Han Moon, wife of the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the controversial founder of the Unification Church.



Montana crisis
Michael Lee, 13, died of suicide on July 27 and is buried next to his mother, who died of suicide just over two years ago. Frederick Lee and Colleen Timmins-Lee, Michael's father and stepmother, return to the grave for the first time since the funeral.
Montana had the highest suicide rate in the country. Then budget cuts hit.

Up and down
A flag flies at half-staff above the White House on the evening of on Aug. 27 in Washington. Glowering in public and near-silent for two days, President Donald Trump relented under pressure Monday by tersely recognizing Sen. John McCain's "service to our country" and re-lowering the White House flag.
While much of the nation remembered McCain's record as a war hero, longtime senator and presidential nominee over the weekend, Trump had nursed his grievances. McCain had been an infuriating foil in a long-running feud over style and policy that did not end with the senator's illness and death.

Crash landing
Fernando Alonso's McLaren flies through the air and lands on top of Charles Leclerc's Sauber during the Belgian Grand Prix in Stavelot, Belgium, on Aug. 26. Leclerc, unharmed, was likely spared a head injury by the protective halo device surrounding the cockpit area of F1 cars.

Presidential housing
Former President Jimmy Carter works with other volunteers during the first day of the Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project, their 35th project with Habitat for Humanity, on Aug. 27, in Mishawaka, Indiana. Carter and comedian David Letterman helped launch a five-day Habitat for Humanity effort to build 23 homes in northern Indiana.


117 years young
117-year-old Julia Flores Colque sits outside her home in Sacaba, Bolivia, on Aug. 23. Her national identity card says Flores Colque was born on Oct. 26, 1900, in a mining camp in the Bolivian mountains.
At 117 and just over 10 months, she would be the oldest woman in the Andean nation and perhaps the oldest living person in the world. In her long life, she has witnessed two world wars, revolutions in her native Bolivia and the transformation of her rural town of Sacaba from 3,000 people to a bustling city of more than 175,000 in five decades.



All the buzz
A man photographs bees as a swarm gathers in Times Square in New York on Aug. 28. A swarm of bees caused a brief commotion in the city after they made their home atop a hot dog stand. The NYPD's bee keepers unit responded to the scene and safely removed the bees.


Queen of Soul
Aretha Franklin's casket is displayed at her viewing at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit on Aug. 28. The late Queen of Soul was in a gold-plated casket dressed completely in red, including high-heeled pumps, proving, as one person put it, that she was a "diva to the end."
Mourners poured into the museum to pay their final respects to Franklin, who died Aug. 16 of pancreatic cancer at the age of 76. The two-day viewing was part of a week of commemorations for the legend, who will be laid to rest on Friday.
Photos: Aretha Franklin fans gather in Detroit to pay R-E-S-P-E-C-T to late singer


Family ties
North and South Korean separated family members bid farewell to each other on the last day of a reunion at Mount Kumgang resort, North Korea, on Aug. 26. The reunions are the latest gesture of reconciliation between North and South Korea, as Kim Jong Un and President Moon Jae-in work to decrease tensions on the Korean Peninsula over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.


Drug bust
Mexican soldiers destroy a marijuana plantation in Tecate, Baja California state, Mexico, on Aug. 28. During the operation, the army destroyed two plantations with a total surface area of 19,000 square meters and seized a clandestine laboratory of crystal meth.

Tree planting
First lady Melania Trump participates in a tree planting ceremony on the south grounds of the White House in Washington on Aug. 27. Joined by descendants of past presidents, Trump helped plant a sapling from an Eisenhower-era tree.
The White House says the 12- to 14-foot sapling came from the original Eisenhower oak that still stands, towering over an East Wing garden created by former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy. It replaces a tree that groundskeepers removed after it was felled during a violent windstorm in March.

End of summer
Women lie in the sun in Brooklyn's Domino Park as high temperatures hit the region in New York on Aug. 29. Scorching temperatures stretched from Virginia to New England.