A tourist crosses flooded St. Mark's Square in Venice, Italy on November 11, 2012. Flooding is common this time of year and Sunday's level that reached a peak of 58.66 inches was below the 63 inches recorded four years ago in the worst flooding in decades. (Photo by Luigi Costantini/Associated Press)

Vendor Nyurgusun Starostina, 47, poses for a picture at an open-air market on a frosty day in Yakutsk, Russia, December 5, 2023. Temperatures in parts of the Sakha Republic, also known as Yakutia and located in the northeastern part of Siberia, went below minus 50 degrees Celsius (minus 58 degrees Fahrenheit) on December 5. (Photo by Roman Kutukov/Reuters)

A woman walks in a street in freezing weather of –24 degrees Celsius in Omsk, Russia on January 13, 2021. Daytime temperatures have been below –20 degrees Celsius in the Omsk Region since 25 December 2020. (Photo by Yevgeny Sofiychuk/TASS)

In this picture taken on December 13, 2017, a woman commutes on a street on a cold day in Baoding. As temperatures dipped below freezing in a northern Chinese village, a group of parka-clad women tried to stay warm as they played mahjong around a small gas stove in a grocery store. (Photo by Fred Dufour/AFP Photo)

A Catholic faithful holds a figurine of baby Jesus during a religious procession on Holy Innocents Day in Antiguo Cuscatlan, on the outskirts of San Salvador, December 28, 2014. Festivities are held every December 28 in honor of children, termed the Holy Innocents, below the age of two who were ordered to be killed by King Herod, according to biblical passages. (Photo by Jose Cabezas/Reuters)

Indian onlookers stand near the collapsed portion of the flyover in Kolkata on March 3, 2013. A huge portion of a flyover on the eastern side of the Indian metropolis collapsed leaving three persons injured, the flyover connects the airport with Eastern Metropolitan Bypass and the eastern and southern suburbs. As the debris fell into a canal running below the flyover, it took down a truck the driver and two others were rescued from the canal by fire-brigade personnel and locals. (Photo by Dibyangshu Sarkar/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.

Window washers from the American National Skyline company (from left to right in the image below: Jordan Emerson, Steve Oszaniec and Danny Oszaniec) suit up as Marvel Comics superheroes to pleasantly surprise the children (who are patients) and their families inside as the dressed up crew cleans the outside of the windows at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis