Nick Bull captured the Geminid meteor shower above Stonehenge in Wiltshire, UK on December 14, 2023. (Photo by Nick Bull/Picture Eexclusive)

Noriaki Iwashima gestures as he lies in a coffin to try it out during an end-of-life seminar held by Japan's largest retailer Aeon Co in Tokyo October 24, 2014. Funeral arrangements are normally left to those who have been left behind but the latest trend in Japan, which literally translates to “End of life” preparations, is for the ageing to prepare their own funerals and graves before they set off on their journey to the great beyond. With a population that is expected to shrink by nearly 30 million people over the next 50 years, the market for funerals, graves and anything related to the afterlife is still very much alive. (Photo by Toru Hanai/Reuters)

Covered in prayer shawls, Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men participate in a blessing during the holiday of Sukkot, in front of the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray in Jerusalem's Old City, Wednesday, September 30, 2015. The Cohanim, believed to be descendants of priests who served God in the Jewish Temple before it was destroyed, perform a blessing ceremony of the Jewish people three times a year during the festivals of Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot. (Photo by Oded Balilty/AP Photo)

Without mincing words we would like to present a feature: Self-Publishing, let's call it Samizdat. :-) Sure we aren't Flickr, StumbleUpon or add_whatever_you_like, we're really small in comparison with these giants but we have constant, very attentive and grateful audience. All we can offer you is a place on the main page and attention of all our visitors to your posts, the things that are hard to achieve on numerous social services. Who knows, maybe tiny and humble indie project like AvaxNews will be much more helpful in searching of your audience than facebook for example. %-)

British Waters Wide Angle category runner-up. Grass snake swimming along a garden pond by Jack Perks (UK)in Nottinghamshire, UK. “I’m always on the lookout for unusual freshwater subjects and grass snakes are a species I’ve been after for years. I was told about a pond where the odd grass snake hangs around the lilly pads for frogs. I put my drysuit on and got into the water and could see one slithering along the surface. Slowly making my way towards it with my head only just poking above I got the spilt shot”. (Photo by Jack Perks/Underwater Photographer of the Year 2019)

A train drives along a field at a salt production site at the Sasyk-Sivash lake near the city of Yevpatoria, Crimea, November 14, 2017. A saltwater lagoon known as Lake Sasyk-Sivash on Ukraine's Crimea peninsula is the source of a rare resource: pink salt. The mineral is tinted by tiny algae that produce the pigment beta-carotene. Each autumn, seasonal workers collect thousands of tons of pink salt for processing and export. (Photo by Pavel Rebrov/Reuters)

A man washes his horse as a woman bathes her son at concrete water pens under a flyover in a slum area in Kolkata, India October 21, 2016. (Photo by Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters)

Passengers from a passing train watch as rescue workers search a train which crashed in Karachi, Pakistan, November 3, 2016. At least 17 people have been killed and dozens more injured after two trains carrying hundreds of passengers collided in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi, officials said. (Photo by Akhtar Soomro/Reuters)