An owl curiously peeks out from a tree hollow. The pictures of the spotted owlet were taken by Anuj Jain in Chandigarh, India in the second decade of November 2025. (Photo by Anuj Jain/Solent News & Photo Agency)

Journalists practice social distancing outside a meeting to wrap up work on coronavirus economic aid legislation to prevent the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Washington, U.S., March 21, 2020. (Photo by Mary F. Calvert/Reuters)

Volunteers wait before taking part in the 66th National Day celebrations in Malaysia's administrative capital Putrajaya, on August 31, 2023. The country commemorates the independence of the Federation of Malaya from British rule in 1957. (Photo by Mohd Rasfan/AFP Photo)

A woman travels on a train stopping at a subway station visited by foreign reporters in central Pyongyang, North Korea on April 14, 2017. (Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

First place, The Beauty of Plants. “There are many stages of lotus growth on display at the Aquatic Gardens, but to come across twotwisted dancing stems of nelumbo nucifera was unexpected and quite magical”. (Photo by Kathleen Furey/The Guardian)

Shiite Muslims gather, albeit in fewer numbers due to the COVID-19 pandemic, at the Imam Ali shrine in the central Iraqi holy city of Najaf late on May 16, 2020, to mark Lailat al-Qadr, a night in the holy month of Ramadan during which the Koran was first revealed to the Prophet Mohammed in the seventh century. Worshippers placed copies of the Koran on their heads to convey veneration during the overnight prayers in a centuries-old ritual, as they pleaded to God to rid them of the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic. (Photo by Haidar Hamdani/AFP Photo)

Participants carry a portable shrine, or mikoshi, into the sea during a purification rite at the annual Kurihama Sumiyoshi Shrine Festival at Kurihama, Yokosuka city, south of Tokyo Sunday, July 27, 2025. (Photo by Eugene Hoshiko/AP Photo)

A changing of the honor guard ceremony by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Alexander Garden by the Kremlin Wall in Moscow, Russia on May 29, 2020. (Photo by Vladimir Gerdo/TASS)