A traditional Masaai dance is seen through the eyes of photographer Antony Njuguna.

The rescue of French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt from FARC guerrillas after years in jungle captivity dominated headlines around the world this week. Accompanying these headlines were pictures of her arrival in Bogota. Despite the tough competition from many of the world's press, You Witness contributor Leonardo Suarez provided up close images of Betancourt that supplemented the existing images on the Reuters wire. Leonardo works as a contractor for Reuters in Colombia where he monitors stock trades and provides data support, a far cry from working out in the field as a photographer. Leonardo describes how he came to document this week's top story.

"I went to the airport to bring camera lenses to our photographers who needed to cover the story. I managed to get past security with their help. I brought my Canon 40D camera and 100:400mm 4.5-5.6 lens. I simply took pictures with the photographers as I saw fit. Once I returned to the office, I reviewed the pictures the photographers submitted and sent whatever pictures I had that were not duplicates to Reuters You Witness service. "

To view this week's You Witness slideshow click here.

When Ron Mayland's aerial photograph of the flooding in Iowa was sent to You Witness last Friday, I was impressed with the quality and the access, especially as we had seen very few pictures from the affected areas from any of the wires. The picture and Ron's contact details were passed along to our regional chief photographer, who negotiated an arrangement to secure this and additional images for use on the Reuters Pictures Wire service. Ron has continued to provide quality aerial images to Reuters throughout the week.

View this week's You Witness showcase here.

View the preparations of the Oscar red carpet from a remote time-lapse camera set up to fire every five minutes by entertainment editor Sam Mircovich.

The quote above is from an interview with Adam Baron, a You Witness contributor, whose powerful images form a part of citizen journalists’ documentation of the raging fires in Southern California and their aftermath. Reuters readers have provided pictures to You Witness News from when the fires began in Malibu to the ruins in Fallbrook. Here is a selection of the best images.

Baron, who works at Pepperdine University, Malibu, and is responsible for students who stay on campus, gives us an insight into what it was like living and working with the fires ravaging areas nearby.

Around the world there are certain places that awaken our imagination and serve as symbols of everything we associate with a particular region of our world. Southern California and particularly Malibu, California is that kind of place for many people. It is America’s paradise hub and the place where many of Western culture’s creative elite make their residence. Therefore when fires ran through “Shangri-La” this week and ran through greater Southern California, something of a sobering and sublime mood also laid claim on its people and pristine landscape.

The unbiased weather did not discriminate where the winds would blow or where burning embers would land. The result led to the spectacular reality and images of Mother Nature’s continuing reminder that wealth, power, beauty, and fame cannot protect us. Rather we have been humbled and are simply grateful to the brave men and women who fought these fires from land and air to preserve something of our way of life here. We now begin the task of counting our losses and rebuilding.

On the campus of Pepperdine University in Malibu, California students have returned to classes and the tasks of writing papers and preparing for exams. Here everyone is indebted to the university leadership and emergency contingency plans they prepared in advance for such an occasion. Many students chose to leave campus, but for those who heeded the council of administration to stay, they witnessed nature’s fury and humanity’s best instinct to preserve and protect.

There are many moving parts when something so daunting strikes at such a large area. No doubt there will be armchair editors ready to explain what and how things could have been handled better. In my view such questions miss the main point. If these questioned raised by the media or residence affected by the fires aim to get at improving response time and governmental engagement, those are fair questions.

However, we must also consider the human element and how ‘we the people’ use the land. I don’t mean to say that we caused the fires or get into a discussion about global warming. All I am saying is that paradise was here, along with the Santa Ana winds and the beautiful landscape, long before the people. We’ve learned how to split an atom and fly a man to the moon, but we haven’t learned how to manage the weather, and I am not sure we ever will or that we are supposed to.

I am confident that we must continue to explore our place on this small planet and our indebted relationship to it. It is a slippery task but the reason I taking photographs like these is to somehow grab hold of this relationship and honor it.

When I was first handed the task of co-ordinating user-generated images for Reuters, I was inundated with pictures of people and their pets and newborn babies. They werent exactly the pictures we were striving for when we launched You Witness News.

Now, I am pleased to say, I am seeing some high-quality images from major news events and global sports stories.

What I wasnt expecting was an insight into a secret society such as North Korea. Images by aspiring photographer Nora Stribrna raised the bar on user-generated content.

Nora, a Czech native and air stewardess on a private jet of a member of the Saudi royal family, tells the story behind the pictures:

North Korea opens its border twice a year to showcase its Arirang Mass Games, where it celebrates its military might and communist ideology. My ex-boyfriend is a photographer and he alerted me to this opportunity to visit the isolated nation. After applying for visas for us both at the North Korean embassy in Prague, he attended the mandatory How to behave in North Korea lessons that the embassy held for upcoming visitors. As I was not in the country, I missed hearing first hand all the useful tips, like what to wear (long sleeves and no shorts) and how not to be extravagant.

So we flew to China and were off: 23 foreigners on a 26-hour train ride into North Korea. The train was poor, devastated and dirty but we all expected it. When we reached the Chinese-Korean border, we all became scared. Nothing was allowed to be brought in, so we all left our mobile phones and computers in China, all books and weird items as well. Every person was searched properly, bag by bag, person by person, and many questions were asked by immigration officers. After being searched and questioned for six hours, we had some time to kill.

My first shock: everybody in green, gray and black uniforms, nobody spoke, heads down, silence, few bicycles, dark atmosphere, everywhere guards and police, barking dogs, fear. But there was revolutionary music playing, trying to make people happy.

We traveled with three official escorts, who were there to observe, control, listen to and ask us a lot of questions. One of them even spoke Czech to be sure they could understand what we said to each other.

Pyongyang, the capital, is made for the world to see how rich North Korea is. There are some buildings, airports and a few hotels. There are no shops or supermarkets. People are given vouchers for food, and are given few clothes a year. All uniforms. There are no other clothes.

We traveled to the north and south and saw indescribable poverty, peasants taking care of rice, guarded by police and military, just to make sure nobody would escape. Everything is black, gray, brown. People never put their head up.

One of our guides quizzed me on the members of our group: asking what is their occupation, their purpose for coming to North Korea and what the journalists in our group were planning to publish. I was asked to tell them to publish only good things about the regime.

After five full days, our initial laughter had passed. All except one of us had lived in communist states and we all remembered those similar days. Nobody really spoke on the plane back to Beijing. I only remember, we all got very drunk that night back to China. And we were very grateful for water and electricity. Very. We could speak! And we could say whatever we wanted.

You can see more of Nora’s pictures from North Korea here