A tear rolls down the cheek of Karima el-Mahroug, also known as Ruby, a Moroccan woman at the center of ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconi's s*x-for-hire trial, as she reads a statement to reporters during a protest outside the court house, in Milan, Italy, Thursday, April 4, 2013. The Moroccan woman at the center of ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconi's s*x-for-hire trial has denounced what she says is psychological warfare being waged against her by Italian prosecutors. Ruby, read out a lengthy statement Thursday to a gaggle of reporters in front of Milan's courthouse denying she was a prostitute and insisting that prosecutors hear her side of the story. (Photo by Luca Bruno/AP Photo)

The main church in the town of San Damian Texoloc, Mexico stands in front of the Popocatepetl volcano as is spews ash and vapor early Tuesday, July 9, 2013. Last Saturday, Mexico's National Center for Disaster Prevention raised the volcano alert from Stage 2 Yellow to Stage 3 Yellow, the final step before a Red alert, when possible evacuations could be ordered after the Popocatepetl volcano spit out a cloud of ash and vapor 2 miles (3 kilometers) high over several days of eruptions. (Photo by J. Guadalupe Perez/AP Photo)

Eight year-old Maya Mohammad Ali Merhi walks using prosthetic legs made by her father from tin cans in a camp for displaced people, in the northern Syrian province of Idlib on June 20, 2018. Maya and her father were both born without lower limbs. Unable to afford real prosthetic limbs, her father made her a pair out of tin cans filled with cotton and scrap pieces of cloth. Maya's family had to leave their home in the Aleppo province to flee battles. (Photo by Aaref Watad/AFP Photo)

Houses near Taal Volcano's crater are seen buried in volcanic ash from the volcano's eruption on January 14, 2020 in Taal Volcano Island, Batangas province, Philippines. The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology raised the alert level to four out of five, warning that a hazardous eruption could take place anytime, as authorities have evacuated tens of thousands of people from the area. An estimated $10 million worth of crops and livestock have been damaged by the on-going eruption, according to the country's agriculture department. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)

In this March 7, 1991 file photo, a U.S. Marine patrol walks across the charred oil landscape near a burning well during perimeter security patrol near Kuwait City. Twenty five years after the first U.S. Marines swept across the border into Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War, American forces find themselves battling the extremist Islamic State group, born out of al-Qaida, in the splintered territories of Iraq and Syria. The Arab allies that joined the 1991 coalition are fighting their own conflicts both at home and abroad, as Iran vies for greater regional power following a nuclear deal with world powers. (Photo by John Gaps III/AP Photo)

An employe of Russian Space Training Center hangs out to dry space suits of Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin, NASA's U.S. flight engineer Kathleen Rubins, and Japanese space agency's flight engineer Takuya Onishi, right, after their undergoing training near in Noginsk, 60 km (38 miles) east of Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, July 2, 2014. The training was intended to simulate the capsule landing on water. Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin, Japanese space agency's flight engineer Takuya Onishi, and NASA's U.S. flight engineer Kathleen Rubins are being trained for a future mission to the International Space Station. (Photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Photo)

Aurorae category runner-up: Lone Tree under a Scandinavian Aurora by Tom Archer (UK). The photographer decided to explore the area around the hotel on a very crisp -35C evening in Finnish Lapland. When he found this tree, he decided to wait for the misty conditions to change and could not believe his luck when the sky cleared and the aurora came out in the perfect spot. Archer spent about an hour photographing it before his camera started to lock up because of the harsh conditions, but by then he was happy to call it a night. (Photo by Tom Archer/2020 Astronomy Photographer of the Year)

Nine years ago, Tom Carter traveled from San Francisco to China, responding to a job posting that turned out to be a scam. He managed to find another job as a teacher, and saved enough money to embark on a 56,000 km trip through all of China's 33 provinces that lasted two years. Carrying a camera – just a a 4-megapixel point-and-shoot – Carter captured some amazing images of the widely varying landscape, people, and architecture across the nation. Photo: Buddhist pilgrim family from Sichuan. (Photo by Tom Carter via The Atlantic)