A man applies coats of glass powder to kite strings ahead of the Hindu festival “Uttarayan” in Ahmedabad on December 21, 2023. (Photo by Sam Panthaky/AFP Photo)

Battersea Power Station Ice Rink in London, United Kingdom on November 13, 2022. Running until 8th Jan. 2023, a large outdoor ice-rink outside the power station and next to the riverside brings in festive Christmas fun with vivid illumination. (Photo by Guy Corbishley/Alamy Live News)

Children dressed as Hindu deities take part in an event to mark the consecration of Ayodhya Ram temple, in Bhopal on January 22, 2024. (Photo by Gagan Nayar/AFP Photo)

Commended. In late May, about a quarter of a million snow geese arrive from North America to nest on Wrangel Island, in northeastern Russia. They form the world's largest breeding colony of snow geese. Photographer Sergey Gorshkov spent two months on the remote island photographing the unfolding dramas. Arctic foxes take advantage of the abundance of eggs, caching surplus eggs for leaner times. But a goose (here the gander) is easily a match for a fox, which must rely on speed and guile to steal eggs. “The battles were fairly equal”, notes Sergey, “and I only saw a fox succeed in grabbing an egg on a couple of occasions, despite many attempts”. Surprisingly, “the geese lacked any sense of community spirit”, he adds, “and never reacted when a fox harassed a neighboring pair nesting close by”. (Photo by Sergey Gorshkov/Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer)

Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station experiences months of darkness. The sun dips below the horizon on March 21, after which follows several weeks of twilight before complete darkness results. Photo taken on June 25, 2009. (National Science Foundation/Jeremy Johnson)

A radiation monitor indicates 114.00 microsieverts per hour near the building housing the plant's No. 4 reactor, center, and an under construction foundation, right, which will store the reactor's melted fuel rods at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s tsunami-crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima prefecture, Wednesday, March 6, 2013, ahead of the second anniversary of the March 11, 2011 tsunami and earthquake. Some 110,000 people living around the nuclear plant were evacuated after the massive March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami knocked out the plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water. (Photo by Issei Kato/AP Photo/Pool)

The New World porcupine, family Erethizontidae, 1280 Gram born at 11 April 2015 Inventory in Zoo. Counting trade Fairs Weighing the Zoo is at 7 May 2015 too the 108 Birthday Zoo Hagenbeck Hamburg, Germany. (Photo by Imago/ZUMA Wire)

Traffic police stand at the side of a road in Pyongyang on November 25, 2016. (Photo by Ed Jones/AFP Photo)