A knife is seen beside a bowl containing blood after a ram was killed as a sacrifice in front of a shrine at the annual voodoo festival in Ouidah, Benin, January 10, 2016. In Ouidah, a small town and former slave port in the West African country of Benin, the annual voodoo festival gathers visitors from far and wide. It's a week that brings together priests and dignitaries, rich and poor, locals and visitors from as far afield as the Caribbean and France. The festival commemorates the estimated 60 million people who lost their homelands and their freedom during the African slave trade. (Photo by Akintunde Akinleye/Reuters)

Mystical Forest. Tracey Jennings photographed this seven-gill shark in a kelp forest just off the shore of Simon's Town near Cape Town, South Africa. You don't need to travel far from cities to visit Narnia. This 7 gill shark was photographed in a kelp forest just off the shore of Simonstown near Cape Town, South Africa. (Photo by Tracey Jennings/National Geographic Travel Photographer of the Year Contest)

People carry lychee for sale on a motorbike on a street in Luc Ngan, Bac Giang province, Vietnam, 22 June 2016. Lychee output in Bac Giang province is expected to reach 130,000 tonnes this year. China is still Vietnam's main lychee export market so far, buying around 60 percent of the annual crop, according to official reports. (Photo by Luong Thai Linh/EPA)

A scuba diver during an ice diving class at the Sea Frogs scuba diving center in the Russian Far Eastern city of Vladivostok, Russia on January 30, 2022. The air temperature is –11°C (12.2°F), the water temperature is –2°C (28.4°F). Scuba divers undergo theoretical and practical training in ice diving and perform dives in the open water during the day and the night time as part of the Ice Diver NDL special program. (Photo by Yuri Smityuk/TASS)

A worker of the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) collects data for the digital census, in Karachi, Pakistan, 01 March 2023. PBS has launched a digital census and portal to allow citizens to submit their data. The census that began on 01 March, will be used for the upcoming general elections. So far, 4.3 million people have registered. (Photo by Shahzaib Akber/EPA/EFE)

Vietnamese business students at Northampton University (L to R) Anh Nguyen, Phuong Nguyen, Tam Nguyen and Oanh Cao visit Hitchin Lavender farm in Arlesey, UK on July 9, 2017, to view and pick lavender. Currently in full bloom, the lavender attracts visitors from far and wide to this popular family run farm. (Photo by Stephen Chung/Alamy Live News)

A rescued otter cub named Mingo is receiving specialist care after being found in July 2025 in the flamingo habitat at Colchester Zoo, far from where he should have been. He is being raised with two other cubs at the UK Wild Otter Trust’s centre in Devon, UK. (Photo by UK Wild Otter Trust/Cover Images)

Paintings by Iris Grace, a 5 year old with an extraordinary talent to express herself through painting. She is Autistic and is only just starting to talk but is able to paint in a style far beyond her years. We wanted to share her art to raise awareness of her condition and inspire other families in similar situations to ours.