Laos, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south, and Thailand to the west. Its population was estimated to be around 6.5 million in 2012. A third (33%) of the country's population lives below the international poverty line which means living on less than U.S. $1.25 per day.

Indigenous Sahrawi girls play on an improvised see-saw at a refugee camp of Boudjdour in Tindouf, southern Algeria March 3, 2016. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is scheduled to visit the Sahrawi refugees in south-west Algeria's Tindouf region. (Photo by Zohra Bensemra/Reuters)

Vintage Newton, a pop-up exhibition of Helmut Newton prints from 1974-1984, opens in west London at the ONGallery. These prints, which feature Charlotte Rampling and Elsa Peretti, were produced from a series of transparencies that he considered his most provocative and important. Here: Saddle II. (Photo by Helmut Newton)

Labourers load a three-wheeled vehicle onto the back of a van at the Mercato market in Addis Ababa October 9, 2015. Addis Ababa's “Mercato” – Italian for “market” – is reputedly the biggest open-air market in Africa, lying in the west of the capital. (Photo by Tiksa Negeri/Reuters)

A photographer in Somerset, South West England captured the mating rituals of toads as several males attempt to mate with one female all at once. (Photo by John Waters/NPL)

“The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, which circumscribed a wide area (later known as the “death strip”) that contained anti-vehicle trenches, “fakir beds” and other defenses. The Soviet-dominated Eastern Bloc officially claimed that the wall was erected to protect its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the “will of the people” in building a socialist state in East Germany. However, in practice, the Wall served to prevent the massive emigration and defection that marked Germany and the communist Eastern Bloc during the post-World War II period”. – Wikipedia

Photo: West Berlin policemen and East German Volkspolizei face each other across the border in Berlin, circa 1955. (Photo by Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A helicopter flies close to a volcanic eruption which has begun in Fagradalsfjall near the capital Reykjavik on March 20, 2021 in Fagradalsfjall, Iceland. On Friday the Icelandic meteorological office announced a volcano, referring to a mountain located south-west of the Capital Reykjavik has erupted after thousands of small earthquakes in the area over the recent weeks. A no-fly zone has been established in the area. (Photo by Vilhelm Gunnarsson/Getty Images)