Children carrying guns and flags or wearing Soviet-style uniforms have become a common sight at Victory Day parades and other events in Russian-controlled Crimea. Russian and Ukrainian human rights activists have warned that such displays point to a growing trend of promoting Russian patriotism among kids on the Crimean peninsula, annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Here: A young Crimean girl wears military-type clothes during a Victory Day celebration in Sevastopol on May 9, 2018. (Photo by Oleksandra Surgan/Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)

An Indian woman reacts while performing yoga at a railway station on International Women's Day, organised by Heal-Station in association with Western Railway, in Mumbai, India, 08 March 2023. (Photo by Divyakant Solanki/EPA/EFE/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Thoughts. They fly through the broad expenses of our mind, floating gracefully in midair, going into the clouds, and then reemerging once again. Some are quick and furtive, others are grand and majestic. We reflect upon them as they enter our minds, and once they leave, they are usually gone for good. However, some thoughts are different. These thoughts resemble a flock of angry birds or a swarm of hungry moths that invade your mind, slowly eating away at your sanity, strength, and desire to live. Such thoughts often plague that minds of people with Obsessive Compulsive disorder. They completely occupy their time; constantly there; ever-present. With his book sculpture, Thomas Wightman was able to accurately convey the way these thoughts consume the mind, slowly building a nest within it, resisting all attempts to drive them away.

A gory fight to the death between snarling dogs and captured wild boars. Gathered around a bamboo-walled arena, Indonesians in this remote part of Java island seem eager to watch the blood-curdling contests, known locally as “adu bagong” (boar fighting). Not surprisingly, animal rights activists are up in arms against the regular spectacle, which began in the 1960s when wild pig numbers in this area in West Java soared and they were hunted to protect crops. Here: Women share a joke as they walk to a paddy field in Cikawao village of Majalaya, West Java province, Indonesia, October 12, 2017. (Photo by Reuters/Beawiharta)

Runner-up. “The heavens opened and the streets around Shibuya, Tokyo, were suddenly drenched in even more colour and movement. I was taking photos (my friend was holding the umbrella) when I noticed this woman at the crossing. I’m pleased with the futuristic feel of the image”. (Photo by Katherine Bridgestock/The Guardian)

Peasants in the re-taken Somme District work in the fields, circa 1916- 1917, in this Library of Congress handout photo. For women 100 years ago, opportunities to work beyond the home and take part in political life were very limited. As the 20th century progressed, hard-won progress included gradually improved voting rights, while the upheaval of war pushed doors ajar as women worked as part of the war effort. U.S. Library of Congress archive photos show women's workplaces ranging from a flour mill in England to a coal mine in Belgium or Lincoln Motor Co.'s welding department in Detroit. International Women's Day is celebrated on March 8. (Photo by Reuters/Bain Collection/Library of Congress)

“Josephine Baker (June 3, 1906 – April 12, 1975) was an American-born French dancer, singer, and actress. Nicknamed the “Bronze Venus”, the “Black Pearl”, and even the “Créole Goddess” in anglophone nations.

Baker was the first African American female to star in a major motion picture and to integrate an American concert hall, and to become a world-famous entertainer. She is also noted for her contributions to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States (she was offered the unofficial leadership of the movement by Coretta Scott King in 1968 following Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, but turned it down), for assisting the French Resistance during World War II and for being the first American-born woman to receive the French military honor, the Croix de guerre”.

Photo: American entertainer Josephine Baker in costume for her famous “banana dance”. Baker was an overnight sensation when she arrived in Paris in the mid-1920s. (Photo by Walery/Getty Images)