The civilised world lies on its knees, a sickness wracking its body. The affliction causes a necrotising of tissues so perfectly uniform in distribution that victims take on the appearance of corpses long before death occurs due to organ failure or secondary infections. ...

A girl competes during a Hobby horsing competition in St. Petersburg, Russia, on Sunday, April 21, 2024. Several dozen kids, 48 girls and one boy, from first-graders to teenagers gathered in a gymnasium in northern St. Petersburg, Russia's second largest city, for a hobby horsing competition. (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo)

The Northern Lights glow green in a spectacular light show above a field of trees frozen solid with snow. (Photo by Jaak Sarv/Solent News & Photo Agency)

People fight for the ball as they take part in a mud football match during a festival for celebrating harvest in a village in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province, China September 24, 2017. (Photo by Reuters/China Stringer Network)

A model prepares backstage before during the Heaven Gaia collection show by Chinese designer Xiong Ying on day two of China Fashion Week A/W 2021/2022 at 751D.PARK on March 25, 2021 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Zhe Ji/Getty Images)

A traffic police officer directs traffic in Mohe City, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, December 29, 2019. Temperatures in Mohe, “north pole” of China, often stand at below minus 40 degrees Celsius in winter mornings. Photo by Yang Siqi/Xinhua News Agency/Alamy Live News)

A little girl wearing a face mask dances in front of a toy panda at a shopping area in Shanghai, following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, China on June 16, 2020. (Photo by Aly Song/Reuters)

North Koreans perform during a mass game of “The Land of the People” at the May Day Stadium in Pyongyang, North Korea, Tuesday, June 25, 2019. (Photo by Jon Chol Jin/AP Photo)