A Thai performer puts his head inside a crocodile's mouth during a media preview performance as part of preparation to reopen Samutprakarn Crocodile Farm and Zoo in Samut Prakan province, Thailand, 19 March 2024. (Photo by Rungroj Yongrit/EPA)

Some are in it just for the money, others to help buy a meal. Then there are those who trade for fun or to spend time among friends. Millions of investors – pensioners, security guards, high-school students – dominate China's stock markets, conducting about 80 percent of all trades. Retirees gather in brokerage houses dotted around China also to enjoy some company and savour the air conditioning on hot days. Some start as young as 13, trading from home with an eye on future careers in finance. Winning isn't guaranteed. This year, among the most turbulent in China's financial history, its stock markets more than doubled in the six months to May, only to crash amid concerns that growth in the country, which makes everything from cars to steel, is slowing faster than previously thought. (Photo by Aly Song/Reuters)

An aerial view shows a sinkhole 3.5 km (2 miles) to the east of Solikamsk-2 mine in Perm region, November 20, 2014. Shares in Russia's Uralkali, the world's top potash producer, fell sharply for a second day on Wednesday after a mine accident that could reduce global supplies and push up prices of the crop nutrient worldwide. Uralkali shares have fallen 28 percent since Tuesday when it suspended work at its Solikamsk-2 mine, which accounts for a fifth of the company's output and 3.5 percent of global capacity, following an inflow of water. A sinkhole, stretching 30 by 40 metres (yards), found at an abandoned mine 3.5 km (2 miles) to the east, increased concern about the future of the mine because an inflow of water and the resulting sinkhole in 2006 forced another Uralkali operation to shut permanently. (Photo by Reuters/Press service of Uralkali company)

In the spring of 1965, within weeks of 3,500 American Marines arriving in Vietnam, a 39-year-old Briton named Larry Burrows began work on a feature for LIFE magazine, chronicling the day-to-day experience of U.S. troops on the ground – and in the air – in the midst of the rapidly widening war. The photographs in this gallery focus on a calamitous March 31, 1965, helicopter mission; Burrows’ “report from Da Nang”, featuring his pictures and his personal account of the harrowing operation, was published two weeks later as a now-famous cover story in the April 16, 1965, issue of LIFE.

Photo: Man your battle stations: The crew chief of helicopter Yankee Papa 13, lance corporal James C. Farley, mans an M-60 machine gun during a mission near Da Nang, Vietnam on March 31, 1965. (Photo by Larry Burrows/Time & Life Pictures)

Costumed revelers walk through a street prior to the carnival parade in the village of Vevcani, in the southwestern part of North Macedonia, on Wednesday, January 13, 2021. The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted the usual carnival celebrations which have been taken place for centuries in the tiny North Macedonian town of Vevcani. A few hundred locals gathered at the small town square to celebrate the carnival, but police dispersed the gathering after a brief scuffle with a small group. No arrests or injuries were reported. (Photo by Boris Grdanoski/AP Photo)

One of the most significant challenges related to cancer in Nepal is the lack of awareness around the prognosis of the disease, as many patients, their families and even healthcare professionals consider cancer to be an incurable disease at any stage. This results in significant delays in bringing patients to hospitals, and high rates of advanced stage cancers and mortality. (Photo by Omar Havana)

A bank employee exits the bank through a window broken by attackers, in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, September 14, 2022. (Photo by Hussein Malla/AP Photo)

Photos of Edward Snowden, a contractor at the National Security Agency (NSA), and U.S. President Barack Obama are printed on the front pages of local English and Chinese newspapers in Hong Kong in this illustration photo June 11, 2013. Snowden, who leaked details of top-secret U.S. surveillance programs, dropped out of sight in Hong Kong on Monday ahead of a likely push by the U.S. government to have him sent back to the United States to face charges. (Photo by Bobby Yip/Reuters)