A protester clashes with a police officer in Athens' central Syntagma (Constitution) Square in this June 15, 2011 file photo. Greece triggered the regional financial crisis in 2009 when a far higher budget deficit than previously calculated emerged. The collapse of talks with creditors in Paris last November set off a month-long sequence of events leading to elections this week and proving Greece is still the region's weak link. The vote is expected to be won by Syriza, a far-left party opposed to the bailout, worrying investors and creditors alike. (Photo by Yannis Behrakis/Reuters)

Special Merit Award. Mallory Franklin (2019). The British slalom canoeist has competed internationally since 2009 and won nine medals in total at the ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships with four golds, four silvers and a bronze. She has also won eleven medals at the European Championships. (Photo by Richard Pelham/World Sports Photography Awards 2021)

Wirittorn Narapatarapimol (Belle) a Miss Tiffany Universe contestant tries on earrings in a private dressing room on May 15, 2009 in Pattaya, Thailand. The Miss Tiffany Universe contest has been running for 12 years, with all contestants transexuals or transvestites, aiming to promote human rights for the transgender population in Thailand. In Thailand transexuals are considered a third gender given the Thai name “Katoey”. (Photo Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

Korean artist Seung Mo Park continues to amaze with his astonishingly crafted figurative sculptures made with tightly wrapped layers of aluminum wire based on fiberglass forms. The works shown here are part of the Brooklyn-based artist’s Human series where he recreates the delicate wrinkles and folds of clothing as well as the sinuous musculature of the human body in metallic layers remeniscent of tree rings. He’s also sculpted bicycles, musical insturments and other forms as part of his Object series.

These pictures reveal the crumbling ruins of the famed Grand Orient Express, now hollowed-out and almost reduced to rubble. There are only a couple of the trains, launched in 1883, left in the world. This example stands dormant in Belgium, untouched from its last voyage in the winter of 2009. Rusty ceilings, moth-eaten seats and tattered floors capture its level of decay. A Rotterdam-based urban photographer Brian Romeijn managed to snap these pictures while exploring the area. (Photo by Brian Romeijn/IMP Features)

In this photo taken June 3, 2009, a female North Korean soldier looks out from behind a barbed-wire fence around a camp on the North Korean river banks across from Hekou, northeastern China's Liaoning province. North Korea's top court has convicted two U.S. journalists, and sentenced them to 12 years in labor prison, the country's state news agency reported Monday. (Photo by Ng Han Guan/AP Photo)

Growing cities, overuse of fertilizers and factory wastewater have degraded China's water supplies to the extent that half the nation's rivers and lakes are severely polluted. China aims to spend $850 billion to improve filthy water supplies over the next decade, but even such huge outlays may do little to reverse damage caused by decades of pollution and overuse in Beijing's push for rapid economic growth. Photo: Fishermen row a boat in the algae-filled Chaohu Lake in Hefei, Anhui province, June 19, 2009. (Photo by Jianan Yu/Reuters)

Faces adorn crosses placed in the Garden of Remembrance of some of Britain's armed forces members who have died in Afghanistan in the Garden of Remembrance outside Westminster Abbey at the official opening of the Royal British Legion's Field of Remembrance on November 5, 2009 in London, England. (Photo by Alastair Grant-Pool/Getty Images)