Serbian police officers of the Special Anti-Terrorist Unit pose for a picture in their base outside Belgrade October 8, 2014. When the killing of an unarmed black teenager by a white policeman in Ferguson, Missouri, in August sparked sometimes violent protests, the response of police in camouflage gear and armoured vehicles wielding stun grenades and assault rifles seemed more like a combat operation than a public order measure. Some U.S. police departments have recently acquired U.S. military-surplus hardware from wars abroad, but there are many law enforcers around the world whose rules of engagement also allow the use of lethal force with relatively few restrictions. But for every regulation that gives police wide scope to use firearms, there is another code that sharply limits their use. In Serbia, police may use measures ranging from batons to special vehicles, water cannon and tear gas on groups of people who have gathered illegally and are behaving in a way that is violent or could cause violence, but they may use firearms only when life is endangered. (Photo by Marko Djurica/Reuters)

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)

Natalie Dormer attends the mtvU Fandom Awards at MTV Fan Fest at Comic-Con, July 24, 2014, in San Diego. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision for MTV/AP Images)

People take photos as an Ariane 5 space rocket with a payload of four Galileo satellites lifts off from ESA's European Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on November 17, 2016. Ariane 5 successfully launched on November 17 four satellites which will be part of the Galileo global satellite navigation system. (Photo by Jody Amiet/AFP Photo)

A grey-bellied Night Monkey (Aotus Lemurinus) plays with a teddy bear at the veterinary clinic of the Cali Zoo in Cali, Colombia on January 27, 2020. They monkey is being raised by personnel of the Cali Zoo after a worker found it near the complex. Apparently it fall from a tree with his father who had health problems. (Photo by Luis Robayo/AFP Photo)

Students attend the first day of in-person classes, at a flooded school due to high tide, in Macabebe, Pampanga province, Philippines on August 22, 2022. (Photo by Lisa Marie David/Reuters)

A woman villager cleans garbage in front of her house as flood hits Tanjungsari village in Tasikmalaya, Indonesia, February 23, 2018. (Photo by Adeng Bustomi/Reuters/Antara Foto)

A clown plays the violin during the XXI Convention of Clowns, at the Jimenez Rueda Theatre, in Mexico City, Mexico, October 19, 2016. In the wake of the creepy clown sightings in several states of North and South Americas and Europe that caused widespread panic, professional clowns from across Latin America came together at an annual convention in Mexico to give a serious message: “We are clowns, not killers!”. Around 200 clowns took part in the 21st International Clown Convention, dressed in bright coloured clothes and makeup, and chanted the word as they clicked group pictures to counter the “creepy clown” craze. (Photo by Carlos Jasso/Reuters)