Young artists perform at the presentation of clowns in a hall of the Arts Palace during the first clown festival in Belarus in Bobruisk, some 150 km from Minsk, Belarus, 01 April 2018. About 60 clowns from Belarus and Russia gathered to entertain spectators. For 1 day Bobruisk became a capital of Jokes and Humour. Theaters of clownery, mime-theaters, individual performers of humorous genre, stilts and hospital clowns performed on a stage of the Palace of Arts. (Photo by Tatyana Zenkovich/EPA/EFE)

Swiss police officers stand beside of mock gates of the NEAT Gotthard Base Tunnel inside the event hall for the upcoming opening ceremony near the town of Erstfeld, Switzerland May 31, 2016. The celebrations of the opening of the Gotthard Base Tunnel will start on June 1, 2016. With a length of 57 km (35 miles) crossing the Alps, the Gotthard Base tunnel is the world's longest train tunnel. (Photo by Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters)

Performers dressed as Pikachu, a character from Pokemon series game titles, march during the Pikachu Outbreak event hosted by The Pokemon Co. on August 10, 2018 in Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan. A total of 1, 500 Pikachus appear at the city's landmarks in the Minato Mirai area aiming to attract visitors and tourists to the city. The event will be held through until August 16. (Photo by Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images)

The National Geographic Photo Ark is a travelling exhibition of photographer Joel Sartore’s quest to create a photo archive of biodiversity around the world. So far, Sartore has captured studio portraits of more than 6,000 species – a number that he hopes to double. On 1 July, the ark will open at Melbourne zoo – the first time it has been exhibited in the southern hemisphere. More than 50 portraits will be on display, including many of Australian endangered animals being protected by programs at the zoo itself. These captions have been edited from text supplied by Melbourne zoo. Here: Barking owl. (Photo by Joel Sartore/National Geographic Photo Ark/The Guardian)

In this Thursday, December 1, 2016 photo, Cat Bigney, part of the Oglala Native American tribe, waits on the shore of the Cannonball river for travelers to arrive by canoe at the Oceti Sakowin camp where people have gathered to protest the Dakota Access oil pipeline in Cannon Ball, N.D. So far, those at the camp have shrugged off the heavy snow, icy winds and frigid temperatures. But if they defy next week's government deadline to abandon the camp, demonstrators know the real deep freeze lies ahead. Life-threatening wind chills and towering snow drifts could mean the greatest challenge is simple survival. (Photo by David Goldman/AP Photo)

A pregnant woman poses on June 19, 2018 in Vertou, western France. France had an estimated population of 68.4 million by January 1, 2024, representing a further year-on-year increase of 0.3 percent, limited by a marked drop in the birth rate, the INSEE national statistics bureau of France reported on January 16, 2024. In 2023, 678,000 babies were born in France, 6.6 percent fewer than the previous year, the lowest number of births in any year since 1946. Over the same period, there were 631,000 deaths, down 6.5 percent on 2022, a year marked by the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic and episodes of extreme heat. (Photo by Loic Venance/AFP Photo)