“When I was 8 years old, my parents paid a smuggler to take me across the Himalayas, a weekslong walk over the mountains from Tibet to India. It was a trek that tens of thousands of other Tibetans have taken since the Dalai Lama fled a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule. My parents must have had their reasons to send me here; they must have had the best of intentions. But 18 years later, I still don't know why they did it. They are not political people. They are small farmers who raise barley and a few yak in a rural area not far from Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. I have not seen them since I left...”. – Tsering Topgyal via The Associated Press. (Photo by Tsering Topgyal/AP Photo)

“At her job, Maria Torero cares for sick human beings. At home, she lavishes love on slowly dying cats – 175 of them at last count. The 45-year-old nurse has turned her two-story, eight-room apartment into a hospice for cats with feline leukemia, scattering it with scores of feeding dishes and at least two dozen boxes litter boxes. Some have suggested she shelter healthy cats instead. “That's not my role”, she told The Associated Press. “I'm a nurse. My duty is to the cats that nobody cares about”. She said that “people don't adopt adult cats, especially if they are terminally ill”. – Franklin Briceno via Associated Press. (Photo by Martin Mejia/AP Photo)

Meet Barbie Thomas the incredible armless female body builder who is inspiring America. The 37-year-old lost both her arms during a horrific electrical accident as a toddler – but that hasn't stopped her from pursuing her bodybuilding dream.Barbie says she can do anything an average person can do – except she uses her feet. That includes brushing her teeth, making dinner, taking milk out of the fridge, texting, shopping, putting on makeup and even driving. Photo: Barbie Thomas cooks up meals with her feet. (Photo by Incredible Features/Barcroft Media)

Merit: A Night at Deadvlei. The night before returning to Windhoek, we spent several hours at Deadveli. The moon was bright enough to illuminate the sand dunes in the distance, but the skies were still dark enough to clearly see the milky way and magellanic clouds. Deadveli means “dead marsh. The camelthorn trees are believed to be about 900 years old, but have not decomposed because the environment is so dry. (Photo and caption by Beth McCarley/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)

Journalists (L) walk along the new Caminito del Rey (The King's Little Pathway) in El Chorro-Alora, near Malaga, southern Spain March 15, 2015. Dubbed by many media outlets as the world's scariest pathway, the three-kilometre long pathway, which was built at about 100 metres (330 ft) above the gorge of Los Gaitanes between the years of 1901 and 1905, was closed in 2001 after five people died. A new walkway has then been built over the old walkway and will open to the public on March 28, 2015. (Photo by Jon Nazca/Reuters)

Some companies in Taiwan spend months building temples with bricks and cement, but Lin Fu-Chun's firm simply pours concrete into a giant mould and waits for it to dry. The 78-year-old Lin said his temple factory, Chuanso, needed just over six weeks to finish a building that normally took six months with conventional methods – and moulding was 40 percent cheaper. Here: An employee paints a ready-made Chinese traditional temple at the Chuanso factory that manufactures religious objects in Pingtung, Taiwan July 5, 2016. (Photo by Tyrone Siu/Reuters)

Participants take part in the world's first “Pokemon Go” competition in Hong Kong, China, August 6, 2016. The competition began around 2 in the afternoon local time when organizers began announcing the rules on their Facebook page. Contestants had to take screenshots of 12 specific Pokémon in three different districts. Apart from the 12 key Pokémon, participants could also catch designated rare Pokemons which would take off some minutes from their total time. The winner was 21 year old Frankie Chu. The champ took home roughly three hundred and eighty six dollars that he says he will use to pay his school fees. (Photo by Tyrone Siu/Reuters)

Larissa Neto, a muse of the Unidos da Tijuca Samba School, poses as she wears a carnival dress in Sao Goncalo near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, February 3, 2016. Rio de Janeiro's carnival parades are known the world over for the glitz and glamour, high-tech allegorical floats and shimmering bodies, which battle it out each year for the championship title. Each school is fronted by the Queen of the Drums, who dances alongside the raging percussion, and her court of sparkling, sculpted dancers known as “muses”. (Photo by Ricardo Moraes/Reuters)