Chief Phil Lane of the Yankton Dakota and Chickasaw First Nations marches with demonstrators to City Hall during the "Forward on Climate" rally to call on President Obama to take strong action on the climate crisis on February 17, 2013 in Los Angeles, California.—Photo by AFP

Demonstrators to City Hall during the "Forward on Climate" rally to call on President Obama to take strong action on the climate crisis on February 17, 2013 in Los Angeles, California. Organizers say the rally, which is led by Tar Sands Action Southern California and Sierra Club, is composed of a coalition of over 90 groups and coincides with similar rallies in Washington DC and other US cities.—Photo by AFP

Demonstrators carry a replica of a pipeline during a march against the Keystone XL pipeline in Washington.The TransCanada Corp pipeline would link the oil sands of northern Alberta, the world's third largest crude resource, to refineries and ports in Texas. Environmentalists say approval of the pipeline will encourage more development in the oil sands, where extraction is carbon intensive, leading to greater greenhouse gas emissions.—Photo by Reuters

A flock of blackbirds perch in trees in the town on Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Millions of birds have descended on the small Kentucky city this winter, fouling the landscape, scaring pets and raising the risk for disease.—Photo by Reuters

Burnt trucks and tractors stand at a mining facility of Hellas Gold, near the village of Skouries, located on the northern peninsula of Halkidiki Greece. About 40 masked attackers raided the facilities of a prospective gold mine in northern Greece overnight Sunday, setting machinery and offices alight, authorities said. There has long been opposition to the prospect of a gold mine and processing plant being built at Skouries in the Halkidiki peninsula, with some residents objecting to what they say will be the destruction of the environment and of pristine forest in the area, leading to the loss of tourism and other local activities such as farming, the rearing of livestock and fishing.—Photo by AP

Employees try to fix windows of a maternity ward at hopsital number 9, which was damaged by a shockwave from a meteorite, in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk. A meteorite streaked across the sky and exploded over central Russia on Friday, raining fireballs over a vast area and causing a shock wave that smashed windows, damaged buildings and injured 1,200 people. —Photo by Reuters

Joe Daskam, 4, of Miami checks out pants made from Burmese pythons' skin at the awards ceremony for the Python Challenge 2013, at Zoo Miami, Florida. Sixty-eight Burmese pythons were harvested by the nearly 1,600 registered participants in the month-long state sponsored event.—Photo by Reuters

An Iraqi Marsh Arab collects reeds at the Chebayesh marsh in Nassiriya, 300 km southeast of Baghdad. The Marsh Arabs who had farmed this area for thousands of years, were badly affected by a campaign mounted by the government of Saddam Hussein in the 1990s to destroy their lifestyle. The marshes were drained of water, and hundreds of thousands of Marsh Arabs were forced to flee to cities, where they live in poverty, the locals in this area said.—Photo by Reuters