Anthony Suau © 2008

Chicago, Ill., March 28, 2008 — Chicago Mercantile Exchange traders in the open outcry S&P 500 pit as markets continue to swing erratically 100+ points a day up or down. The mortgage crisis is being played out on Wall Street and the world's financial markets.

© Lauri Lyons

Lauri Lyons with flag.

© Bernardo De Niz/WpN

Migrant workers who recently lost their jobs wait for compensation outside of factories in Canton, China, on Nov. 26, 2008. China is facing a difficult employment situation in 2009, as the global financial crisis impacts the country's economy.

© Ilker Gurer/WpN

A woman named Husniye (age 76), who is a Crimean Tartar, in a temporary house in Simferapol, Ukraine, on Oct. 6, 2008. Turkic-speaking Tartars, who are almost all Muslim in faith, have a history that dates back to the 8th and 9th centuries in the Crimea. They were exiled by Joseph Stalin by 1944, having been accused of collaboration with German Nazis in World War II. But they have been returning to Crimea since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

© Nick Moir

With firebombing aircraft, bulldozers and farm machinery, rural firefighters assault a blaze started by lightning north of Temora in western New South Wales.