“What did I know about Chechnya before last week? For someone who grew up in the 1990s the very word Chechnya meant a string of grainy images on TV showing people in battered camouflage outfits, shooting at each other amid destruction and ruin. Fear, wahhabis, Shamil Basayev, terrorism, mountains: these were the words that used to spring to my mind when someone mentioned Chechnya”. – Maxim Shemetov. Photo: Special forces officers stand guard during a government-organised event marking Chechen language day in the centre of the Chechen capital Grozny April 25, 2013. (Photo by Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)

To most of us, hand-feeding crocodiles might sound like a one-way ticket to a watery grave. But for Jose Eduardo Chaves Salas, 32, coming within inches of the fearsome creatures’ razor-sharp teeth is all in a day’s work. He runs Jose's Crocodile River Tour on the Tarcoles River in Costa Rica, where tourists can watch him feed crocs up to 17 feet long. Photo: A tour guide shows a thumbs up as he sits on top of a crocodile on the Tarcoles river in Tarcoles, Costa Rica. (Photo and caption by Barcroft Media)

Performers take part in a rain soaked Notting Hill Carnival on August 25th, 2014 in London, England. Despite the bad weather over 1 million visitors are expected to attend the two-day event which is the largest of its kind in Europe. The event has taken place on the West London streets every August Bank Holiday weekend since 1964. (Photo by Mary Turner/Getty Images)

Men ride a motorcycle carrying a fan in Havana, Cuba, Thursday, April 6, 2023. As Cuban citizens deal with the country´s many problems like electricity blackouts, empty stores and long lines for almost any service, they also have to manage with the lack of public transportation as there is a shortage of working buses and few privately owned vehicles. (Photo by Ramon Espinosa/AP Photo)

“«The Red Detachment of Women» (simplified Chinese: 红色娘子军) is a Chinese ballet which premiered in 1964. It is perhaps best known in the West as the ballet performed for U.S. President Richard Nixon on his visit to China in February 1972. Adapted from the earlier film of the same title under the personal direction of Zhou Enlai, which in turn adapted from the novel by Liang Xin, it depicts the liberation of a peasant girl in Hainan Island and her rise in the Chinese Communist Party”.

“My goal was to capture the image of a storm that emulated an atomic explosion”, Dobrowner says of this picture. Here: “Monsoon”, Lordsburg, N.M., 2010. (Photo by Roger Hill)

Two women jump into a frozen pond as they compete in the Polar Plunge at Frozen Dead Guy Days in Nederland, Colorado March 14, 2015. The winter festival in the small mountain town commemorates the 1994 discovery of the corpse of Bredo Morstol, which is now housed in a shed on dry ice above the town. (Photo by Rick Wilking/Reuters)

Ballroom dancers Andrei Toader and Mia Linnik-Holden compete in the “North of England Amateur Ballroom Dancing” competition at the 49th British National Dance Championships, in the Empress Ballroom of Blackpool's Winter Gardens, in Blackpool, north-west England, on November 21, 2024. The four-day British National Dance Championships have been taking place since 1975 with dancers competing in Ballroom and Latin dancing disciplines. (Photo by Oli Scarff/AFP Photo)