Hayao Miyazaki is a Japanese film director, animator, manga artist, producer, and screenwriter. Through a career that has spanned over fifty years, Miyazaki has attained international acclaim as a maker of anime feature films and, along with Isao Takahata, co-founded Studio Ghibli, a film and animation studio. The success of Miyazaki's films has invited comparisons with American animator Walt Disney, British animator Nick Park and American director Robert Zemeckis.

American sculptor Michael Alfano has been sculpting for over fifteen years. A native of New York, he now lives and works in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. His major influences are Salvador Dali, Jo Davidson, and Jean-Antoine Houdon, as well as Buddhist, Taoist, Sufi and other eastern philosophy and literature. He first studied at the Art Students League of New York, with an emphasis on life-size sculpture from the model. His formal education continued at Boston University and was augmented by internships with several prominent sculptors.

Greyhounds compete during a race at Santiago city, March 8, 2014. With over 100 years of history, greyhound racing attracts people mainly from rural areas of Santiago every weekend. Some dogs come from Argentina, the United States and Ireland and can develop a speed of up to 80 kilometers per hour on a straight running track of about 200 meters, according to organisers. Bets range from $2 to $1,000 per race, offering a livelihood for breeders and gamblers. (Photo by Ivan Alvarado/Reuters)

Japan is a country full of art. Much of this is housed in museums and galleries, but others are right under our feet. We speak, of Japan’s peculiar obsession with manhole covers. Almost anywhere in the country you can find manhole covers with spectacular grounds, each more beautiful and complex than the previous. In recent years, S. Morita photographer has traveled around Japan and leave us this great gathering on the beautiful and artistic Japanese manhole covers.

German pensioner Volker Kraft decorates an apple tree with Easter eggs in the garden of his summerhouse, in the eastern German town of Saalfeld, March 19, 2014. Each year since 1965 Volker and his wife Christa spend up to two weeks decorating the tree with their collection of 10,000 colourful hand-painted Easter eggs in time for Easter celebrations. (Photo by Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters)

Throughout the course of the long war in Afghanistan, Coalition troops have relied on thousands of military working dogs to help keep them safe, and make their jobs easier. The dogs are trained to detect explosives, to find illegal drugs, to search for missing comrades, or target enemy combatants. Not only are they active on the front lines, but behind the lines they serve as therapy dogs, service dogs, and loyal companions. They also share the same risks as the ground troops, suffering injuries and sometimes death on the battlefields. Gathered here are images of these dogs and their handlers in Afghanistan and back home, from over the past several years, part of the ongoing series here on Afghanistan.

People enjoy the fine weather on the coast at Wembury during the first ever nationwide survey to map the location of the threatened and creatures on March 24, 2011 in near Plymouth, England. Often found on the coast, and particularly in the south west of England, the number of oil beetle species found in the UK has halved in the last 100 years and the survey will help establish the whereabouts of the remaining four species and boost efforts to secure their future. The survey is being launched today by Buglife: The Invertebrate Trust and the National Trust in partnership with Natural England and Oxford University Museum of Natural History. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

Supporters of Ratko Mladic wave flags with his picture and reading in Serbian “Serbian hero” during a rally organized by the ultra nationalist Serbian Radical Party in front of the Parliament building on May 29, 2011 in Belgrade, Serbia. Some 7,000 supporters of the former Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic, who was arrested on Thursday in a village in Serbia after 16 years on the run, took to the streets of Belgrade, to hear speeches and protest Mladic's arrest. Mladic, who is facing extradition to the The Hague, is accused of war crimes, including the 1995 massacre of 7,500 Muslin men and boys in Srebrenica. (Photo by Srdjan Stevanovic/Getty Images)