People walk on the street before the opening ceremony of the Witches and Wizards Convention, in the Paranapiacaba village, in Santo Andre, Brazil on May 16, 2025. (Photo by Jean Carniel/Reuters)

China has sent its first woman into space on a mission to dock with an orbiting station, the latest step in an ambitious programme to go to the moon and on to Mars.

Photo: China's first female astronaut Liu Yang, waves during a sending off ceremony before she departs for the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft rocket launch pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, China, Saturday, June 16, 2012. China will send its first woman and two other astronauts into space Saturday to work on a temporary space station for about a week, in a key step toward becoming only the third nation to set up a permanent base in orbit. (Photo by Ng Han Guan/AP Photo)

Growing cities, overuse of fertilizers and factory wastewater have degraded China's water supplies to the extent that half the nation's rivers and lakes are severely polluted. China aims to spend $850 billion to improve filthy water supplies over the next decade, but even such huge outlays may do little to reverse damage caused by decades of pollution and overuse in Beijing's push for rapid economic growth. Photo: Fishermen row a boat in the algae-filled Chaohu Lake in Hefei, Anhui province, June 19, 2009. (Photo by Jianan Yu/Reuters)

People celebrate France' s victory in the Russia 2018 World Cup final football match between France and Croatia, on July 15, 2018 in Toulouse' s city centre. (Photo by Eric Cabanis/AFP Photo)

A young boy scoops water from a hand-dug well in the dry riverbed near Matinyani, in the semi-arid Kitui County in southeastern Kenya, 22 March 2015, the World Water Day. Residents of Kitui County and other arid and semi-arid areas of the country have been hard-hit by extremely poor rainfall this year while the government said in previous month that some 1.6 million people countrywide are facing acute starvation due to the drought and will need relief food over the next six months. Residents of Matinyani say they haven't seen a drop of rain in nearly four months. Thousands of Kenyans in rural areas walk tens of kilometers just to fetch water to drink and to be used in their homes. According to an estimate by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), 17 million people lack access to safe water in Kenya, where the drought is a perennial problem. (Photo by Dai Kurokawa/EPA)

Street musicians with their faces covered with animal masks play to earn some money in central Vienna, Austria, November 8, 2015. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)

Sudanese fishermen check their boats and nets before they row through the waters of Nile River near Jebel Aulia, Sudan, May 3, 2019. (Photo by Umit Bektas/Reuters)

A boy carries sugar cane through a farm on the outskirt of Zaria in Nigeria's northern state of Kaduna November 15, 2016. (Photo by Akintunde Akinleye/Reuters)