A sunflower “smiles” in a field in Tokyo on August 7, 2014. Some 20,000 sunflowers were enjoyed by visitors to the area this week. (Photo by Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP Photo)

Laos, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south, and Thailand to the west. Its population was estimated to be around 6.5 million in 2012. A third (33%) of the country's population lives below the international poverty line which means living on less than U.S. $1.25 per day.

The love padlocks, called cadenas d’amour, multiplied until there were thousands of love tokens on the bridge, each engraved with a message of love. (Photo by Charles Platiau/Reuters)

Singer Dua Lipa and her fiancé, Callum Turner, soak up the sun and unwind together during their lively vacation in Ibiza, Spain on August 14, 2025. (Photo by Gtres/Backgrid UK)

Students of the General Yermolov Cadet School take part in combined military training with members of a local youth military patriotic club at a boot camp of the Russkiye Vityazi (Russian Knights) military patriotic club in the village of Sengileyevskoye outside Stavropol, Russia February 8, 2017. (Photo by Eduard Korniyenko/Reuters)

A neighborhood watch volunteer stands guard on her street on February 9, 2017 in Peronia, Guatemala. Residents of Peronia, south of Guatemala City organized block by block to secure their community after ten of their neighbors in January were killed, they say, for refusing to pay extortion money to gangs. Armed with machetes and sticks, residents take turns each night, baring strangers' entry into their neighborhoods. Violence and poverty continue to drive emigration from Central America to the United States, even as the Trump administration moves to tighten border security. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

Jyoti Amge, 25, who holds the Guinness World Records title for the “Shortest Living Woman”, shows her ink-marked finger after casting her vote at a polling station during the first phase of the general election in Nagpur, India, April 11, 2019. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)