A man crosses from a pirogue to another pirogue during the annual boat regatta in Yauri, Kebbi State, on February 15, 2025. The regatta festival started about 200 years ago as a display of naval strength of the Gungu people, where the Gungu warriors annually attacked dangerous hippopotamus that were destroying farmlands. Warriors would board various sizes of canoes with different types of weapons to attack the animal on the River Niger. This required expertise in canoe paddling and naval warfare. It also served as training exercise for upcoming Gungu warriors. (Photo by Toyin Adedokun/AFP Photo)

A woman walks depicting a scene from the Iranian national epic poem “Shahnameh” in Tehran on August 5, 2025. (Photo by Atta Kenare/AFP Photo)

A member of the Boi Bumba Garantido association performs during the Boi Bumba folklore festival at the Bumbodromo in Parintins, Amazonas State, Brazil, on June 28, 2024. Parintins is well-known internationally for its Boi Bumba folklore festival, which lasts for three days in late June and whose themes, costumes, and songs are based on indigenous cultures of the Amazon rainforest. (Photo by Michael Dantas/AFP Photo)

A model presents a creation by Japanese designer Yoshikazu Yamagata for his label writtenafterwards during the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in Tokyo, Japan, 16 March 2016. The presentation of the Autumn/Winter 2016 collections runs from 14 to 19 March. (Photo by Kiyoshi Ota/EPA)

Beautiful, strange and occasionally alarming pictures from the shortlist for this year’s Wellcome image awards – which celebrate the very best in science photography and imaging – from an x-ray of a bat to a micrograph of a kidney stone. The exhibition opens on 12 March at three science centres and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. Photo: Scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of an Arabidopsis thaliana flower, also commonly known as thale cress. Some of the anthers are open, revealing pollen grains ready for dispersal. Arabidopsis was the first plant to have its entire genome sequenced and is widely used as a model organism in molecular and plant biology. Horizontal width of image is 1200 microns. Magnification 100x. (Photo by Stefan Eberhard/Wellcome Images)

Tourists and journalists stand next to a newly displayed statue of pharaoh Amenhotep III and his wife Tiye (Down) in Egypt's temple city of Luxor on March 23, 2014. Two colossal statues of pharaoh Amenhotep III were unveiled by archaeologists today in their original sites in the funerary temple of the king, on the west bank of the Nile in Luxor, adding to the existing two famous ancient Memnon colossi. (Photo by Khaled Desouki/AFP Photo)

A young YPJ recruit (in pink) arrives to the training base for her first day in training near Derek City, Syria. The YPJ schedule is demanding and requires discipline – new soldiers in training get about 6 hours of sleep a night and wake up at 4 AM to begin exercising; afterwards, their day consists of a full schedule of drills and classroom lessons. Before joining the YPJ many of the girls had never participated in physical activity or sports before. (Photo by Erin Trieb/NBC News)