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)

Residents carry their belongings during a fire at Tondo in Manila on November 24, 2024. Raging orange flames and thick black smoke billowed into the sky, as fire ripped through hundreds of houses in a closely built slum area of the Philippine capital Manila. (Photo by Jam Sta Rosa/AFP Photo)

A nun checks her mobile phone as she lies near a victim laid on a ladder following an earthquake in Amatrice Italy, Wednesday, August 24, 2016. The magnitude 6 quake struck at 3:36 a.m. (01:36 GMT) and was felt across a broad swath of central Italy, including Rome where residents of the capital felt a long swaying followed by aftershocks. (Photo by Massimo Percossi/ANSA via AP Photo)

An Zi, is squashed amongst other commuters in a subway train on his way to work in Beijing, China, November 12, 2015. An, a movie producer, moved to Dongsanqi village in Changping this year. His commute to work can take about 2 hours, with transportation costs topping 200 yuan a month, or about a fifth of his monthly rent. (Photo by Jason Lee/Reuters)

Girls sits on a bench during summer at the Central Park in New York, United States, 2011. (Photo by An Rong Xu)

A man wades through flood waters carrying his grand daughter on his back following rains and floods during the monsoon season in Charsadda, Pakistan on August 28, 2022. (Photo by Fayaz AzizAziz/Reuters)

An affected boy walks along a muddy street after heavy rain in Nowshera district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, Friday, September 2, 2022. Planes carrying fresh supplies are surging across a humanitarian air bridge to flood-ravaged Pakistan as the death toll surged past 1,200, officials said Friday, with families and children at special risk of disease and homelessness. (Photo by Mohammad Sajjad/AP Photo)

National Geographic photographer Steve Winter has spent most of his adult life shooting wild cats. Photo: A 14-month-old cub, cooling off in a pond, is riveted by a deer that appeared near the shore. Tigers are powerful swimmers; they can easily cross rivers four to five miles wide and have been known to swim distances of up to 18 miles. (Photo by Steve Winter/National Geographic)