“Very small forest-dwelling wallabies are known as pademelons (genus Thylogale) and dorcopsises (genera Dorcopsis and Dorcopsulus). The name wallaby comes from the Eora Aboriginal tribe who were the original inhabitants of the Sydney area. Wallabies are herbivores whose diet consists of a wide range of grasses, vegetables, leaves, and other types of foliage”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A baby wallaby sits in a zoo attendant's lap at Edogawa Natural Zoo on August 4, 2009 in Tokyo, Japan. The staff of the zoo have raised the young wallaby after her mother neglected her. (Photo by Junko Kimura/Getty Images)

Members of the federal police carry a Nazi statue at the Interpol headquarters in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Friday, June 16, 2017. In a hidden room in a house near Argentina's capital, police discovered on June 8th the biggest collection of Nazi artifacts in the country's history. Authorities say they suspect they are originals that belonged to high-ranking Nazis in Germany during World War II. (Photo by Natacha Pisarenko/AP Photo)

Vendors warm themselves as they light a bonfire at a market during a nationwide power outage, in Muzaffarabad on January 23, 2023. A massive power breakdown in Pakistan on January 23 affected most of the country's more than 220 million people, including in the mega cities of Karachi and Lahore. (Photo by Sajjad Qayyum/AFP Photo)

“Sperm whale opening it's huge mouth, Ogasawara Islands, Japan. Sperm whales are the biggest carnivorous animals on the planet. Each teeth in the mouth of adult specimen weights more than 1 kilogram. Interestingly enough that modern marine biologists believe that these teeth despite being fearsome play little role in capturing and eating giant squid – with their main function being mainly ritual aggression between males!”. (Photo by Alexander Safonov)

Throughout the course of the long war in Afghanistan, Coalition troops have relied on thousands of military working dogs to help keep them safe, and make their jobs easier. The dogs are trained to detect explosives, to find illegal drugs, to search for missing comrades, or target enemy combatants. Not only are they active on the front lines, but behind the lines they serve as therapy dogs, service dogs, and loyal companions. They also share the same risks as the ground troops, suffering injuries and sometimes death on the battlefields. Gathered here are images of these dogs and their handlers in Afghanistan and back home, from over the past several years, part of the ongoing series here on Afghanistan.

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. %-)

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)

Artist Vik Muniz is known for his gigantic composite installations and sculptures created from thousands of individual objects. In this new collaboration with artist and MIT researcher Marcelo Coelho, Muniz takes the opposite approach and explores the microscopic with a new series of sandcastles etched onto individual grains of sand.