Reflected in the rearview mirror, Jose Collantes gets a hug from daughter Kehity while they're stopped at a red light, as Jose drives his five-year-old home from a playdate in Santiago, Chile, Sunday, September 6, 2020, three months after they lost his wife, her mother, to COVID-19. Their case highlights how COVID-19 deaths the world over are often the beginning of a new personal journey for those affected. (Photo by Esteban Felix/AP Photo)

Elephants forage for food at a rubbish dump encroaching on their jungle habitat in Oluvil, Sri Lanka in September 2020. Examination of dead elephants has revealed undigested polythene and other plastic waste. (Photo by Tharmaplan Tilaxan/Cover Images)

Participants compete in the High-Heels Race as part of the Pride celebrations, in the Chueca neighbourhood in Madrid on July 4 29, 2024. MADO (Madrid Pride) is a series of street celebrations that take place during the city´s LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bisеxual, transgender, intersеx and queer) Pride week. (Photo by Óscar del Pozo/AFP Photo)

Despite any political differences between the United States and Russia, the space agencies of the two countries continue their cooperative work in Earth's orbit, aboard the International Space Station. Apart from the research being done in microgravity, ISS crew members continue to send back amazing images of our home world, photographed from low Earth orbit. Gathered here are recent images of Earth from aboard the ISS, and from a handful of other NASA satellites.

Volunteers use flour to clean birds following an oil spill caused by an incident involving two tankers damaged in a storm in the Kerch Strait, in the village of Vityazevo near the Black Sea resort of Anapa, Russia on December 20, 2024. (Photo by Sergey Pivovarov/Reuters)

“Snowflake (c. 1964 – November 24, 2003) was an albino gorilla. He was the only known albino gorilla so far, and the most popular resident of the Barcelona Zoo in Catalonia, Spain. Originally named Nfumu Ngui in Fang language ("white gorilla") by his captor, he was then nicknamed Floquet de Neu (Catalan for little snowflake) by his keeper Jordi Sabater Pi. On his arrival to Barcelona where he was given an official reception by the then Mayor of Barcelona, Josep Maria de Porcioles, in November 1966, he was called Blancanieves (“Snow White”) in the newspaper Tele/Exprés. But he became famous with the name given to him by Sabater when National Geographic Magazine featured him on the main page in March 1967, with the English name Snowflake. This name spread among the press (Stern, Life, Paris-Match) and was later translated to Spanish as Copito de Nieve. Sabater himself called the gorilla Floquet or Copi, and in the later years Nfumu. The asteroid 95962 Copito, discovered by Catalan astronomer J. Manteca, is named in his honour”.

This undated photograph shows one of the 14 new species of so-called dancing frogs discovered by a team headed by University of Delhi professor Sathyabhama Das Biju in the jungle mountains of southern India. The study listing the new species brings the number of known Indian dancing frogs to 24 and attempts the first near-complete taxonomic sampling of the single-genus family found exclusively in southern India's lush mountain range called the Western Ghats, which stretches 1,600 kilometers (990 miles) from the west state of Maharashtra down to the country's southern tip. (Photo by Satyabhama Das Biju/AP Photo)

The London Eye is a giant Ferris wheel on the South Bank of the River Thames in London. Also known as the Millennium Wheel, its official name was originally the British Airways London Eye, then the Merlin Entertainments London Eye, and since January 2011, the EDF Energy London Eye.