A girl wears a face mask to curb the spread of the coronavirus as she attends a prayer ceremony to mark the holiday of “Enkutatash”, the first day of the new year in the Ethiopian calendar, which is traditionally associated with the return of the Queen of Sheba to Ethiopia some 3,000 years ago, at Bole Medhane Alem Ethiopian Orthodox Cathedral in the capital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Friday, September 11, 2020. (Photo by Mulugeta Ayene/AP Photo)

A woman holds a picture as people pray during a funeral, following a mass shooting at a day care centre, at Wat Rat Samakee, in the town of Uthai Sawan, in the province of Nong Bua Lam Phu, Thailand on October 9, 2022. (Photo by Jorge Silva/Reuters)

People enjoying the second day of the Greenman Festival in South Wales, Crickhowell, United Kingdom on August 20, 2021. (Photo by Chris Fairweather/Huw Evans/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A stray cat is checked on the eve of International Cat Day in Banda Aceh on August 7, 2023. (Photo by Chaideer Mahyuddin/AFP 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 traffic police officer directs vehicles at a street junction during sunset in Pyongyang, North Korea, Thursday, August 25, 2016. (Photo by Dita Alangkara/AP Photo)

A Muslim boy takes part in Friday prayers on a street outside a mosque in Mumbai, India, June 24, 2016. (Photo by Shailesh Andrade/Reuters)

A child plays with a cat next to a makeshift animal shelter at Cihangir neighbourhood in Istanbul, Turkey, Thursday, March 23, 2023. Turan comes every single day with cat food in his hand to the makeshift shelter he helped build with the other volunteers in the area and takes care of the needs of the cats that reside their every single day. (Photo by Francisco Seco/AP Photo)