Venezuela's food shortages, inflation and crumbling medical sector have become such a source of anguish that a growing number of young women are reluctantly opting for sterilizations rather than face the hardship of pregnancy and child-rearing. Traditional contraceptives like condoms or birth control pills have virtually vanished from store shelves, pushing women towards the hard-to-reverse surgery. While no recent national statistics on sterilizations are available, doctors and health workers say demand for the procedure is growing. (Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

A woman cries near the flowers, brought to the destroyed Amstor shopping mall in Kremenchuk, Ukraine, 28 June 2022. At least 18 people died following Russian airstrikes on the crowded shopping mall, the State Emergency Service (SES) of Ukraine said in a Telegram post. The Amstor shopping center one-story building was hit by Russian rockets on 27 June afternoon. (Photo by Oleg Petrasyuk/EPA/EFE)

North Korean children wave to people on a Chinese tourist boat on the banks of Yalu River near the Chongsong county of North Korea, opposite the Chinese border city of Dandong, May 8, 2011. (Photo by Jacky Chen/Reuters)

This picture taken on January 1, 2014 shows giant panda “Li Li” sleeping on a tree in Hangzhou Wild Animal World in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang province. Giant pandas, notorious for their low s*x drive, are among the world's most endangered animals. Fewer than 1,600 pandas remain in the wild, mainly in China's Sichuan province, with a further 300 in captivity around the world. (Photo by AFP Photo)

A relative of a victim of the Ukraine International Airlines PS 752 plane that crashed after taking off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini airport reacts at Boryspil International Airport, outside Kiev, Ukraine on January 8, 2020. (Photo by Serhii Nuzhnenko/Reuters)

A sculpture made by activists on Lambeth bridge during the Extinction Rebellion protest in London, England on October 7, 2019. (Photo by Henry Nicholls/Reuters)

A woman holds a disguised cuy or guinea pig (Cavia Porcellus), a popular source of meat in southern Colombia, at the Cuy Festival in La Laguna municipality, Nariño department, Colombia, on January 7, 2022. (Photo by JOaquin Sarmiento/AFP Photo)

A masquerade dances to drums along the streets during the kankurang Festival in Janjanbureh on January 27, 2024. Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2005, Kankurang, a combination of the Mandingo words “kango” and “Kurango”, literally translated as “voice” and “force”, ensures the transmission and teaching of the values and practices that form the basis of Mandingo cultural identity, a West African people whose historical home was the Mali empire. (Photo by Muhamadou Bittaye/AFP Photo)