Shortlisted: Pooyan Shadpoor, Houcheraghi. While walking along the shore of Larak, Iran – an island in the Persian Gulf – Shadpoor came across this luminous scene. The “magical lights of (the) plankton ... enchanted me so that I snapped the shot”, he writes. (Photo by Pooyan Shadpoor/2016 EPOTY)

Chocolate is the greatest gift the Earth has given us. The dessert table would be a sad sight without it. It’s so beloved, so appreciated, that the Swedish scientist who named the cocoa plant that gives us chocolate called it Theobroma cacao, which means “food of the gods”. Here: Farmer holding a freshly cut cocoa bean pod, revealing the pulp and seed inside on a rainforest farm. (Photo by Doug McKinlay/Getty Images)

Scores of internally displaced Muslims are at the heart of the humanitarian crisis in Central African Republic, where violence between Christians and Muslims has threatened to spiral into genocide. Photo: An internally displaced woman carries her child in a camp for internally displaced people (IDPs), located at Bangui International Airport, April 10, 2014. (Photo by Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)

A Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) female fighter adjusts a mortar in northern Deir al-Zor province ahead of an offensive against Islamic State militants, Syria February 21, 2017. (Photo by Rodi Said/Reuters)

Masked Guggen music bands parade through the streets on the occasion of the beginning of the Fasnacht Carnival of Lucerne, Switzerland, early 23 February 2017. (Photo by Urs Flueeler/EPA)

A traditional Russian nesting doll painted with the likeness of President of Donald Trump and his family is displayed for sale at a Moscow store on March 5, 2017 in Moscow, Russia. Relations between the United States and Russia are at their lowest point in years as evidence mounts about the complex relationship between President Donald Trump's administration and the Russian government. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

An Israeli soldier looks through her cell phone as she enjoys the Ranunculus flowers in a field in the southern Israeli Kibbutz of Nir Yitzhak, located along the Israeli- Gaza Strip border, during the Jewish holiday of Pesach (Passover) on April 12, 2017. (Photo by Menahem Kahana/AFP Photo)

In this October 18, 2015 photo, contestant Carlos Angevil, Miss Gay Vargas, competes in the swimsuit category of the ninth annual Miss Gay Venezuela beauty pageant in Caracas, Venezuela. Miss Gay Venezuela requires contestants be younger than 37 and be at least 1.7 meters (5' 6" feet) tall. (Photo by Ariana Cubillos/AP Photo)