A dancer performs a fire breathing act during a procession to mark the 669th anniversary of the birth of Hindu Guru Bawa Lal Dayal in Amritsar on February 9, 2024. (Photo by Narinder Nanu/AFP Photo)

A Palestinian child receives food cooked by a charity kitchen amid shortages of food supplies in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip on February 20, 2024. (Photo by Mohammed Salem/Reuters)

Pausing for a selfie as plum blossoms burst into bloom in Dujiangyan City, in southwest China’s Sichuan province on February 20, 2024. (Photo by Splash News and Pictures)

Jensen a two-year-old False Map turtle, from the Mississippi River, gets used to his new home at Blackpool Sea Life Centre on February 13, 2012 in Blackpool, England. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

The brave boy, called Belal and in his early teens, held the young fawn in one hand above his head as he plunged through the surging river to save it. Onlookers watched as the boy waded through the raging river to get to the other side safely. (Photo by Hasib Wahab/Caters News)

Balal, who killed Iranian youth Abdolah Hosseinzadeh in a street fight with a knife in 2007, is brought to the gallows during his execution ceremony in the northern city of Nowshahr on April 15, 2014. The mother of Abdolah Hosseinzadeh spared the life of the her son's convicted murderer, with an emotional slap in the face as he awaited execution prior to removing the noose around his neck. (Photo by Araash Khamooshi/AFP Photo/ISNA)

Beautiful, strange and occasionally alarming pictures from the shortlist for this year’s Wellcome image awards – which celebrate the very best in science photography and imaging – from an x-ray of a bat to a micrograph of a kidney stone. The exhibition opens on 12 March at three science centres and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. Photo: Scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of an Arabidopsis thaliana flower, also commonly known as thale cress. Some of the anthers are open, revealing pollen grains ready for dispersal. Arabidopsis was the first plant to have its entire genome sequenced and is widely used as a model organism in molecular and plant biology. Horizontal width of image is 1200 microns. Magnification 100x. (Photo by Stefan Eberhard/Wellcome Images)

Ivan Shamyanok, 90, shaves in his house in the village of Tulgovichi, near the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, Belarus March 15, 2016. “My sister lived here with her husband. They decided to leave and soon enough they were in the ground ... They died from anxiety. I'm not anxious. I sing a little, take a turn in the yard, take things slowly like this and I live”, he said. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)