“Rescuers were digging through mud and debris Friday to retrieve more bodies strewn across a farming valley in the southern Philippines by a powerful typhoon. The death toll from the storm has surpassed 500, with more than 400 people missing”. – Bullit Marquez via Associated Press

Photo: Children look at the a damaged road destroyed by flash floods at the height of Typhoon Bopha in the village of Andap, New Bataan town, Compostela Valley province, December 5, 2012. (Photo by Ted Aljibe)

Japan Self-Defense Force members pay their respect to unidentified earthquake victims in vehicles during a mess funeral on April 8, 2011 in Yamamoto, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. The 9.0 magnitude strong earthquake struck offshore on March 11 at 2:46pm local time, triggering a tsunami wave of up to ten metres which engulfed large parts of north-eastern Japan, and also damaging the Fukushima nuclear plant and threatening a nuclear catastrophe. The death toll continues to rise with numbers of dead and missing exceeding 20,000 in a tragedy not seen since World War II in Japan. (Photo by Athit Perawongmetha/Getty Images)

The number of soldiers on both sides of WWII that were killed or went missing is just staggering. Now, the mystery surrounding one RAF pilot and what happened to him and his plane has been solved after 70 years. RAF flight Sergeant Dennis Copping climbed into his Kittyhawk P-40 aircraft in June 1942 to fly the plane to another airbase for repairs. He was never seen or heard from again.

Freida Pinto as Jas Mitra in Showtime's “Guerrilla”, 2016. (Photo by Sky UK Limited/SHOWTIME)

Commended. In late May, about a quarter of a million snow geese arrive from North America to nest on Wrangel Island, in northeastern Russia. They form the world's largest breeding colony of snow geese. Photographer Sergey Gorshkov spent two months on the remote island photographing the unfolding dramas. Arctic foxes take advantage of the abundance of eggs, caching surplus eggs for leaner times. But a goose (here the gander) is easily a match for a fox, which must rely on speed and guile to steal eggs. “The battles were fairly equal”, notes Sergey, “and I only saw a fox succeed in grabbing an egg on a couple of occasions, despite many attempts”. Surprisingly, “the geese lacked any sense of community spirit”, he adds, “and never reacted when a fox harassed a neighboring pair nesting close by”. (Photo by Sergey Gorshkov/Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer)

Aerial view of the “Viracocha III”, a boat made only from the totora reed, as it is being prepared to cross the Pacific from Chile to Australia on an expected six-month journey, La Paz, Bolivia, October 19, 2016. An expedition in a boat made only of reeds crafted by indigenous Bolivians is getting ready to cross the Pacific from South America to Australia, in a fresh attempt to prove that ancient mariners were capable of making the journey. (Photo by David Mercado/Reuters)

A couple sunbath on the beach in Ostrowo, northern Poland, July 20, 2015. Picture taken July 20, 2015. (Photo by Kacper Pempel/Reuters)

Casket of Leibby Kletzky, a murdered eight-year-old boy who went missing from the Hasidic neighborhood of Borough Park, Brooklyn is carried during a procession on July 13, 2011 in New York City. After a two day search Kletzky's dismembered body was found partially in a suitcase inside a dumpster and partially in a refrigerator in a nearby apartment. Police detectives have taken Levi Aron, 35, into custody in connection to the killing. (Photo by Ramin Talaie/Getty Images)