Glastonbury, a festival held at Worthy Farm in England, has become Europe's largest such gathering for music fans. Its five-day run ended Sunday, after entertaining nearly 175,000 fans. Heavy rain and mud greeted the attendees, who paid 195 pounds (about $310) for a basic ticket compared to the 1 pound when the show began in 1970. The next festival will take place in 2013. - Lloyd Young (35 photos total)

In the Mixteca, one of the most impoverished regions in Mexico, migration to the United States has arrived like a storm. In a place so insular that pre-columbian languages like Mixteco, Trique, and Asmuzgos are still spoken more widely than Spanish, and where cars, electricity and indoor plumbing are recent introductions, if they exist at all, northern migration has emptied communities and transformed the lives of those left behind. Some villages have lost as much as 80% of their population to the north and have become little more than ghost towns, home to just a handful of old men, women and the left-behind children of migrants.

In San Miguel Cuevas -- or Nuyuco, Face of the Mountain, in Mixteco -- just 500 people out of 3000 remain. Its streets are largely empty, its fields stand deserted, its century-old way of life lies in shambles as families dissolve to the north, rending the social fabric of this traditional agrarian society. Old women raise grandchildren left behind by their mothers, teenage girls do the work of absent fathers, and old men sit alone, abandoned by their children. "I only think about dying," one 70 year old said, "my only worry is how my funeral will be."

Photographer Matt Black first photographed the mixteca in 2000. He has since made 12 trips to the region, and plans more. To contribute to the project, visit his Kickstarter project site. -- Lane Turner (32 photos total)

President Barack Obama told war-weary Americans in a 15 minute address from the East Room of the White House that the United States had largely achieved its goals in Afghanistan and that a withdrawal of American troops would be set in motion. He said Afghanistan no longer represented a terrorist threat to the United States and that the "tide of war is receding." He announced plans to withdraw 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year. The remaining 20,000 troops from the 2009 "surge" would leave by next summer. He added that the drawdown would continue "at a steady pace" until the US handed over security to the Afghan authorities in 2014. President Sarkozy, of France, said he would also begin drawing down the 4,000-strong French contingent in Afghanistan. In keeping with 5,000 years of Afghan history, President Hamid Karzai said, “Afghans would take responsibility for the preservation of their soil, the security of their people and educating their children by the end of 2014.” In this post, we offer more glimpses of the troops and the Afghan people as they coexist, for now. - Paula Nelson (45 photos total)

June 21 marked both the summer and winter solstice, the longest or shortest day of the year for sunlight depending on which hemisphere you reside. Here are some glimpses of the power, beauty, and transforming presence of the sun, taken since the beginning of June. -- Lloyd Young(27 photos total)

Extreme weather events have always been with us, and always will be. One can't point to a single severe storm, or even an entire harsh winter, as evidence of climate change. But a trend of weather intensity, and oddity, grows. Droughts linger longer. Hurricanes hit harder. Snowstorms strike long after winter should have ended. World record hailstones fall. China endures a crippling drought, and then punishing floods. Millions are displaced in a flood of historic proportion in Pakistan. The U.S. sees the Mississippi River reach historic flood crests, and then sees the largest wildfire in Arizona history. None of these events on their own mean anything. Collectively, do they mean we're seeing the earth's climate change before our eyes? -- Lane Turner (47 photos total)

Over the last decade, Greece went on a debt binge that came crashing to an end in late 2009, provoking an economic crisis. Over the next two years, Greece relied on bailout money from its richer neighbors and implemented austerity measures meant to cut its bloated deficit and restore investor confidence. But by June 2011 it found itself deep in a second recession, near the end of its cash and facing a political crisis, as anti-austerity demonstrations grew. Violence broke out this week during one of those demonstrations, injuring 11, as the frustration continued to grow and no quick fixes emerged. Today, Greece's Prime Minister George Papandreou, in a broad cabinet reshuffle, appointed a new Finance Minister, Evangelos Venizelos, in hopes of turning his country around. - Paula Nelson (43 photos total)

Japan continues to deal with the enormous task of cleaning up and moving forward three months after the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the northeast coast. Local authorities are still dealing with the damaged Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, and now the rainy season, which could increase the risk of disease as workers clear away the debris, is approaching. Collected here are images from this past weekend marking the three-month point, as well then-and-now images of the destruction shot by Kyodo News via the Associated Press. -- Lloyd Young (29 photos total)

Their homelands are torn by war, economic distress, political strife, or environmental collapse. They choose to leave, or have no choice. They're called migrants, refugees, or internally displaced people. The labels are inadequate as often circumstances could allow all three descriptions, or some combination of them. Once in their new countries, they face difficult transitions, discrimination, or outright hostility. Host countries are burdened with the economic and political repercussions of the arrivals, while home nations are sometimes saddled with a "brain drain" of their most important human resources. Immigration is a hot-button issue in the American presidential race, and a wave of new arrivals from Libya to Italy has left the European Union struggling with decisions over the Schengen policy of borderless travel between member nations. Gathered here are images of some of the estimated 214 million people worldwide in the process of redefining what "home" means to them. -- Lane Turner (47 photos total)

A vast wildfire, measuring half the size of the state of Rhode Island and described as the second worst fire in Arizona history, continues to surge across eastern Arizona. The fire has jumped past firefighter's containment lines to reach the edges of residential areas, prompting more evacuation orders. Winds carrying burning embers continue to ignite smaller fires, causing new concerns about the prospect of extinguishing the 13-day-old fire. The Wallow Fire has destroyed approximately 337,000 acres and threatens main electrical lines that supply power as far away as west Texas. Thousands have evacuated. Paula Nelson (35 photos total)

The eruption of the Puyehue volcano in the Andes mountains of southern Chile last weekend provided some spectacular images of the force of nature. Ash covers the landscape and thousands of people were evacuated from the surrounding rural communities. The volcano, which hasn't been active since 1960 when it erupted after an earthquake, sent its plume of ash 6 miles high across Argentina and toward the Atlantic Ocean. -- Lloyd Young (33 photos total)

The source of an E. coli outbreak in Europe that has killed 22 people and sickened more than 2,200 is still not known. German authorities at first blamed it on cucumbers grown in Spain, causing outrage among Spanish farmers. They are claiming they lost tens of millions of dollars due to a slump in demand. Tests showed that Spanish cucumbers did not contain the dangerous strain. Bean sprouts from a farm in Germany are now being tested, though the first tests did not find the contamination. Cases have shown up in at least 10 countries and have left more than 600 in intensive care.(30 photos total)

On May 26, 2011, notorious war fugitive Ratko Mladic was arrested in a village in northern Serbia. The former Bosnian Serb general is accused of overseeing the worst massacre in Europe since the end of World War II. He was indicted 16 years ago for his role in the 1995 slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebenica and for war crimes in the four-year siege of Sarajevo that killed 10,000, including 1,500 children. He will face genocide charges in The Hague. The arrest is a reminder of the atrocities that occurred during the Balkan conflict. --Leanne Burden Seidel(41 photos total)

The month of May in Afghanistan opened with news of US Navy SEALs killing Osama bin Laden. Suicide bombings claimed lives throughout the country, one injuring the top German commander. Another outside the Italian military base in Herat west of Kabul killed at least five. As the month closed, President Hamid Karzai issued vague warnings against Western airstrikes that cause civilian casualties. Gathered here in our monthly collection from Afghanistan are images of the US military mission and daily life in the country of just under 30 million people. -- Lloyd Young (45 photos total)