Women wearing 2025 headbands attend New Year's Eve celebrations in Jakarta, Indonesia, on December 31, 2024. (Photo by Willy Kurniawan/Reuters)

A timber truck driver (L) dressed as Father Frost is saluted by a soldier at the Kremlin's Spasskiye (Saviour) Gate in Moscow, Russian Federation, on December 24, 2013. (Photo by Vyacheslav Prokofyev/ITAR-TASS/ZUMA Press)

A tree stands in a lake in Usingen near Frankfurt, Germany, Wednesday, March 22, 2023, the World Water Day. World Water Day was established in 1992 by the United Nations to spread awareness about the water condition all over the world. (Photo by Michael Probst/AP Photo)

A local helps a reveler with his costume made from beer and soda cans during the “Bloco da Latinha” street party Carnival parade in Madre de Deus, Brazil, Sunday, February 11, 2024. (Photo by Eraldo Peres/AP Photo)

“The Tibetan Mastiff also known as Do-khyi (variously translated as “home guard”, “door guard”, “dog which may be tied”, “dog which may be kept”), reflects its use as a guardian of herds, flocks, tents, villages, monasteries, and palaces, much as the old English ban-dog (also meaning tied dog) was a dog tied outside the home as a guardian. However, in nomad camps and in villages, the Do-khyi is traditionally allowed to run loose at night and woe be unto the stranger who walks abroad after dark”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A man displays a Tibetan Mastiff he raised during the Tibetan Mastiff exposition on April 7, 2007 in Langfang of Hebei Province, China. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)

Sümi women gesture as they line up to perform a traditional Sümi rice pounding folk song called “Thishole” during Western Sumi Torimi Hoho Silver Jubilee at Thilixü Village in Chumoukedima district, India north eastern state of Nagaland on June 7, 2023. Altogether 1400 Sülimis perform their traditional rice pounding folk song to mark their 25th Anniversary. (Photo by Caisii Mao/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Beautiful, strange and occasionally alarming pictures from the shortlist for this year’s Wellcome image awards – which celebrate the very best in science photography and imaging – from an x-ray of a bat to a micrograph of a kidney stone. The exhibition opens on 12 March at three science centres and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. Photo: Scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of an Arabidopsis thaliana flower, also commonly known as thale cress. Some of the anthers are open, revealing pollen grains ready for dispersal. Arabidopsis was the first plant to have its entire genome sequenced and is widely used as a model organism in molecular and plant biology. Horizontal width of image is 1200 microns. Magnification 100x. (Photo by Stefan Eberhard/Wellcome Images)

A wounded Afghan policeman is carried away from the site of an explosion in Kabul May 24, 2013. Several large explosions rocked a busy area in the centre of the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Friday with Reuters witnesses describing shooting in the area. (Photo by Omar Sobhani/Reuters)

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