“The popularity of the Internet in China has driven the explosive growth of profitable Web companies and made fortunes for some Chinese entrepreneurs despite government controls on what the public can see online. The number of mainland Internet users rose to 513 million in December, up 12 percent from a year earlier, the government-sanctioned China Internet Network Information Center said”. – AP Business Writer

Photo: Shi Yongxin, abbot of the Shaolin Temple, works on the computer April 8, 2005 in Dengfeng, Henan Province, China. (Photo by Cancan Chu/Getty Images)

Rohingya refugee sisters Nur Kaida (R) and Ruhana hug each other at their shelter at the Palongkhali refugee camp near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh December 21, 2017. (Photo by Marko Djurica/Reuters)

Sultan, a famous captive fennec that is displayed tied on a rope in front of a tourist shop, is the main attraction in the souk of Douz, a desert town in Tunisia. By the display of such a charismatic animal, tourists are often lured to buy things or pay for pictures. On inquiry, although Sultan has been caught as a pup in the wild, the owners of the shop reassure the foreigners stating that the animal is ‘domestic’. (Photo by Bruno D’Amicis/Fritz Pölking Prize/GDT EWPY 2015)

Jeremy Davis (L) demonstrates the operation of the safe room shelter door lock to homeowner Rob Hamlin on June 18, 2011 in Neosho, Missouri. Once thought of as a luxury item there has been a surge of interest from homeowners in purchasing shelters to ride out damaging storms ever since a F5 tornado tore through the town of Joplin, Missouri. Ranging in price from $3,000 to $5,000 homeowners can supplement the cost with a mortgage insurance program offered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for installing a safe room built to FEMA specifications. Lawmakers in Alabama have even considered requiring construction of storm shelters in mobile home parks after forty people died in April. (Photo by Julie Denesha/Getty Images)

People visit an installation by the American sculptor, Carole Feuerman, during the exhibition of her hyperrealistic sculptures at Pier 17 in the trendy neighbourhood of Seaport in New York City on June 1, 2024. (Photo by Milo Hess/ZUMA Press Wire/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

The erupting Litli-Hrútur volcano on the Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland captured with a drone in the last decade of July 2023. (Photo by Elliot McGucken/Animal News Agency)

A worker covers mounds of rice with a giant hat-shaped bamboo cone in a field in Brahmanbaria, Bangladesh on September 21, 2023 after they have been dried in the scoring sun. (Photo by Joy Saha/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Tourists visit the water forest by boat at a wetland park in Yangzhou City, east China's Jiangsu Province, 30 July, 2023. (Photo by Meng Delong/ImagineChina/Imaginechina via AFP Photo)