Boys pan for gold on a riverside at Iga Barriere, 25 km (15 miles) from Bunia, in the resource-rich Ituri region of eastern Congo February 16, 2009. Ituri is one of many areas of the country to have experienced bitter ethnic conflict between rival tribes in recent years. Massacres have left tens of thousands dead. It is this fighting that led U.S. authorities to take the unprecedented step of naming Congo in section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank financial regulation act, which says U.S.-listed companies that source gold, tungsten, tantalum and tin from Congo or its neighbours must assure the U.S. stock exchange regulator that their business is not helping fund conflict. (Photo by Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters)

A policeman controls traffic at 42nd Street and 7th Avenue as New York City remains without electricity caused by a blackout that affected the entire city and most of the eastern part of the nation August 15, 2003 in New York, New York. More than 50 million people were affected by the outage, in Toronto, Detroit, Cleveland and New York City. (Photo by Jose Jimenez/Primera Hora/Getty Images)

Aerial view of CRH bullet trains setting out ahead of Spring Festival travel rush on January 31, 2018 in Hefei, Anhui Province of China. About 2.98 billion trips will be made during the 40-day Spring Festival travel rush. China will take multiple measures to ensure a smooth Spring Festival travel rush. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

In this Saturday, March 3, 2018, photo, a contestant gets ready to throw a hatchet at a wooden bull's-eye at the Kick Axe Throwing venue in the Brooklyn borough of New York. Kick Axe Throwing is the first bar in New York City to pick up on a nationwide trend of ax throwing, a growing sport that some enthusiasts hope will take off the way bowling did in the last century. (Photo by Mary Altaffer/AP Photo)

Crew members work to secure a hot air balloon after landing during the 2015 Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, New Mexico, October 4, 2015. (Photo by Lucas Jackson/Reuters)

Using digital editing, designer Anton Repponen places Manhattan buildings in desolate landscapes, “inviting viewers to see them as if for the first time”. Here: 8 Spruce Street/New York By Gehry. Photo by Anton Repponen/The Guardian)

Some of the best entries so far in the 2016 Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. There are two weeks left to enter, and the winners will be announced in September. Here: Aurora over Laksvatn Fjord, Laksvatn, Norway. The aurora borealis dances in the skies over the town of Laksvatn, with the Milky Way to the left. The image is a single shot with no compositing, only post-processing to bring out the aurora, and some colour corrections. The photographer Matt Walford said: “I love the way the northern lights look like they are just wistfully dancing over the fjord, framed by the mountains on either side”. (Photo by Matt Walford/National Maritime Museum)