A man, wearing a protective mask following an outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), walks in Tokyo, Japan on March 17, 2020. (Photo by Edgard Garrido/Reuters)

Nature – first prize, stories. Pandemic Pigeons – A Love Story. The photographer’s daughter, Merel, cowers after Dollie flies past and perches on the balcony before entering the house in Vlaardingen in the Netherlands on 6 April 2020. “She’s still frightened when Dollie suddenly lands on the balcony railing. I hide my smile behind the camera, as I try to comfort her by saying they won’t hurt you. “I thought he was going to attack me”, she replies. As the nesting pigeons keep coming back to our place, slowly my girls have started to appreciate them – perhaps not as much as I do, but it’s a start”. (Photo by Jasper Doest/World Press Photo 2021)

A dog rests on a buffalo near Ravi River in Lahore, Pakistan, on Febuary 4, 2013. (Photo by Mohsin Raza/Reuters)

P.S. All pictures are presented in high resolution. To see Hi-Res images – just TWICE click on any picture. In other words, click small picture – opens the BIG picture. Click BIG picture – opens VERY BIG picture (if available; this principle works anywhere on the site AvaxNews).

In this Thursday, April 11, 2013 photo, North Korean female soldiers stand watch on the river bank of the North Korean town of Sinuiju, opposite to the Chinese border city of Dandong. (Photo by AP Photo)

A newborn baby giraffe shows its tongue at the Planckendael zoo in Mechelen, 25 kilometers North of Brussels, Tuesday, February 18, 2014. The calf was born on Valentines day, February 14, and has a heart shaped spot on the hip. (Photo by Yves Logghe/AP Photo)

U.S. soldiers from the 3rd Cavalry Regiment take part in an artillery exercise on forward operating base Gamberi in the Laghman province of Afghanistan December 24, 2014. (Photo by Lucas Jackson/Reuters)

An armed man herds his cattle close to the village of Nimini in northern South Sudan, February 8, 2017. In the chaos of South Sudan's civil war, it took three years for Nyagonga Machul to find her lost children. Machul had traveled from her village to the capital when President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, fired his deputy Riek Machar, a Nuer, in 2013. (Photo by Siegfried Modola/Reuters)

Police react to a suspicious vehicle near La Carillon restaurant following a series of deadly attacks in Paris, November 15, 2015. Thousands of French troops deployed around Paris on Sunday and tourist sites stood shuttered in one of the most visited cities on Earth while investigators questioned the relatives of a suspected suicide bomber involved in the country's deadliest violence since World War II. (Photo by Pascal Rossignol/Reuters)