Photos of the Week: August 29-Sept. 4, 2009

Michael Jackson fans dressed as zombies dancing to the song "Thriller" in Moscow on Saturday, Aug. 29, 2009, marking the the late King of Pop's birthday.

People admiring a model of St. Basil's Cathedral made from ears of wheat in the GUM department store Sunday, Aug. 30, 2009. Villagers in Campocavallo, Italy, spent six months building the cathedral under an EU-funded program, and the project aims to bolster ties between Italy's March and Russia's Lipetsk regions.

Schoolchildren leaving Rizhsky Market in northern Moscow on Monday, Aug. 31, 2009 with flowers to give to their teachers on the first day of classes on September 1. Bouquets of flowers cost 300 to 500 rubles ($10 to $15), and the back-to-school tradition requires each child to take at least one.

Oscar-winning film director Nikita Mikhalkov comforts his daughter Nadya as they grieve at a funeral ceremony for his father and her grandfather Sergei Mikhalkov in the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow, Russia, Saturday, Aug. 29, 2009. Sergei Mikhalkov, an author favored by Stalin who wrote the lyrics for the Soviet and Russian national anthems, persecuted dissident writers as part of the Soviet propaganda machine and fathered two noted film directors, died at age 96 on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2009.

A recovering drug user reading a book in the dormitory of the women's branch of "The City Without Drugs" rehabilitation center in the Urals city of Alapayevsk, some 180 kilometers (112 miles) from Yekaterinburg, Saturday, Aug. 29, 2009. The center was opened in 1999 to cure drug addicts who have voluntarily decided to fight narcotic dependency. An average medical course, mostly based on psychological treatment, stipulates a one-year confinement.

A woman selling mushrooms, which are very low in fat and contain no cholesterol, near Volokolamsk, about 120 kilometers west of Moscow on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2009.

Russia's Sergei Bykov, left, trying to score past Lithuania's Mantas Kalnietis during their friendly game in Panevezis on Monday, Aug. 31, 2009.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin shares a toast with the national ice hockey team in Moscow on Monday, Aug. 31, 2009, after he visited one of the team's practice sessions.

A prison inmate standing in front of a school outside Russia's Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, on the first day of lessons on Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2009. Sixteen illiterate prison inmates who had never been to school began their education on Tuesday. The words on the wall read, "Hello school."

Shadows of people are seen over the flowers laid on a floor in the gym in a ruined school, scene of the 2004 hostage crisis, in Beslan on Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2009. Wailing mothers and anguished relatives on Tuesday marked the fifth anniversary of Russia's worst terrorist attack, mourning the hundreds killed at Beslan's School No. 1 and haunted by questions over the botched rescue attempt.

The Netherlands' Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, left, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, center, and Canada's Minister of Veterans Affairs Greg Thompson carrying candles before laying them during an official ceremony at the Cemetery of Defenders of Westerplatte outside of Gdansk on Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2009. European leaders gathered on Poland's Baltic coast to mark the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War Two.

Workers erecting a stage Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2009, near the Yury Dolgoruky statue on Tverskaya Ulitsa in preparation for City Day festivities marking Moscow's 862nd birthday on Saturday, Sept. 5. City Day was introduced by Boris Yeltsin in 1986.

Indian President Pratibha Patil, left, and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev saying goodbye after a gala party honoring the Year of India in Russia, in Moscow on Thursday, Sept. 3, 2009. The presidents of Russia and India on Thursday pledged to increase the volume of trade between their huge nations to $10 billion next year.