People sit near a fully loaded in Madama near the border with Lybia on January 1, 2015. French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian paid a surprise visit to northern Niger on January 1, to visit a base being built to combat the growing flow of weapons and jihadists from neighbouring Libya. Le Drian travelled from Chad to Madama, a desert outpost about 100 kilometres from Libya, where he saw in the New Year with troops at a French base. Madama is situated on the route used by jihadists and arms smugglers in southern Libya to reach northern Mali and Niger. (Photo by Dominique Faget/AFP Photo)

Peter Ver Ploeg carries Virginia Petrovek through the mud pit during the North American Wife Carrying Championship, Saturday, October 8, 2016, at the Sunday River Ski Resort in Newry, Maine. (Photo by Robert F. Bukaty/AP Photo)

This August 28, 2017 photo shows eight-year-old Indian girl Bharti performing a balancing act on a rope during a street show in Batala, India. Travelling Indian performers, who earn a meagre income from putting on shows on the streets, often scout areas to gather a large street audience who then give money on a collection plate at the end of the show. (Photo by Narinder Nanu/AFP Photo)

In this September 16, 2017 photo, a music fan poses for the photo against an angel wings' mural at the Rock in Rio music festival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (Photo by Leo Correa/AP Photo)

A woman holds her veil as she takes part in Huranga, a game played between men and women a day after Holi, at Dauji temple near Mathura, March 3, 2018. (Photo by Adnan Abidi/Reuters)

American actress Nicola Peltz poses on the red carpet as she arrives for the world premiere of the movie “Transformers 4: Age of Extinction” in Hong Kong Thursday, June 19, 2014. The latest installment in the blockbuster series of “Transformers” films is making its world premier not in the usual entertainment hubs of Los Angeles or New York but in the wealthy Chinese metropolis of Hong Kong, the latest sign of Hollywood's increasing focus on China's booming film market. (Photo by Kin Cheung/AP Photo)

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)

A groundskeeper uses a bamboo broom at Kasumigaike Pond at Kenrokuen Garden in Kanazawa, Japan on January 12, 2016. The japanese garden, located next to Kanazawa Castle, encompasses over 28 acres in downtown Kanazawa. With two ponds, rolling hills with streams and bridges, is considered a strolling-style landscape garden. It's regarded as one of the top three most beautiful gardens in Japan. (Photo by Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)