Paul Poirier of Canada and Marjorie Lajoie of Canada after training before the Figure Skating Ice Dance – Rhythm Dance at Capital Indoor Stadium in Beijing, China on February 12, 2022. (Photo by Aleksandra Szmigiel/Reuters)

A woman poses for a souvenir photo with a cat statue on display at the Shenzhen Bay commercial district, in Shenzhen, China's Guangdong province, Monday, September 15, 2025. (Photo by Andy Wong/AP Photo)

Tourists visit the water forest by boat at a wetland park in Yangzhou City, east China's Jiangsu Province, 30 July, 2023. (Photo by Meng Delong/ImagineChina/Imaginechina via AFP Photo)

China's Qinwen Zheng celebrates with fans after winning their second round match against Britain's Katie Boulter at the Australian Open in Melbourne on January 18, 2024. (Photo by Edgar Su/Reuters)

The Rio de Janeiro Olympics kick off on August 5 for some two weeks of competitive games drawing athletes as well as audiences from around the world. As they prepare to cover the event, Reuters photographers look back on their favourite pictures from past Olympics where they captured the action on the ground as well as the participants' tears and joy that followed. (Photo by Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

From Britain to China to Mali, new maps showing travel times to the nearest urban centre reveal huge differences between countries. Using Open Street Map and Google, a University of Oxford team have created a visual breakdown that suggests major inequalities when it comes to commuting. Here: China. The dataset used for China was unique as it relied solely on Open Street Map, due to restrictions on accessing Google data. The population is densely concentrated in the east and accessibility is increased, whereas rural provinces in the west remain remote. (Photo by Daniel Weiss/Jennifer Rozier/Malaria Atlas Project/University of Oxford)

A People's Liberation Army (PLA) commando jumps through a fire hoop part of an exercise during an open day event at the Ngong Shuen Chau Barracks, the PLA navy base in the territory, in Hong Kong, China, 01 July 2015. Thousands of visitors attended the PLA open day yesterday and today to mark the 16th anniversary of the handover from British rule. (Photo by Jerome Favre/EPA)

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)