“The Nine Emperor Gods Festival is a nine-day Taoist celebration beginning on the eve of 9th lunar month of the Chinese calendar, which is observed primarily in Southeast Asian countries like Myanmar, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and also the Riau Islands. In Thailand, this festival is called Tesagan Gin Je, the Vegetarian Festival. It is celebrated throughout the entire country, but the festivities are at their height in Phuket, where about 35% of the population is Chinese. It attracts crowds of spectators because of many of the unusual religious rituals that are performed”. – Wikipedia. Photo: A devotee gest pierced at the Bang Neow shrine in Phuket. (Photo by Paula Bronstein)

From house breaking in Johannesburg to hippos on the loose in Tbilisi to rioters attacking a policewoman in Burundi, Reuters photographers tell the story behind some of the most iconic pictures of the year. Here: Protesters drag a female police officer accused of shooting a protester in the Buterere neighbourhood of Bujumbura, Burundi, May 12, 2015. Goran Tomasevic: Protesters started throwing stones at a group of police, who then started to run away. The policewoman in the photo, Medikintos Inabeza, 33, got left behind and then some protesters started to push her, saying that she had shot a female protestor in the stomach with an AK47 rifle. I didn't see anything of that. There were 5 or 10 protesters pushing the policewoman at first, then others came and joined in. Up to 20 or 30 protesters were surrounding her at one point. The protesters kicked and beat her very badly; I also saw a couple of knives. I thought they were going to kill her... (Photo by Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)

Women practice yoga at a lotus pond in Tiande Lake on the International Yoga Day on June 21, 2017 in Taizhou, Jiangsu Province of China. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

A fisherman throws a net for catching fish with his wife in Yanhu fisherman village near Yangzhou, Jiangsu province, China, 18 October 2018. (Photo by Aleksandar Plavevski/EPA/EFE)

A photo taken from the International Space Station shows Hurricane Lane in the early morning hours near Hawaii, August 22, 2018. (Photo by Courtesy @astro_ricky/NASA/Handout via Reuters)

A pedestrian carries an umbrella as they stroll past an advertisment as a rainstorm moves through Sacramento, Calif., Wednesday, February 13, 2019. Rain is falling widely in Northern California and is expected to spread south. (Photo by Rich Pedroncelli/AP Photo)

In this Wednesday, April 3, 2019, photo, children play in the water on a beach as a mosque collapsed during the Sept. 28, 2018, earthquake is seen in the background in Palu, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. The earthquake spawned a large localized tsunami that wiped out coastal areas, while liquefaction caused by the shaking turned entire neighborhoods into rivers of sludge. The disaster killed thousands of people, making it the world’s deadliest seismic event in 2018. (Photo by Tatan Syuflana/AP Photo)

Traffic lights feature illustrations of a homosexual couple in downtown Frankfurt Main, Germany, 18 July 2019. An annual gay pride parade will take place on 20 July 2019 in Frankfurt to commemorate Christopher Street Day (CSD). The event commemorates the riots that erupted following a police raid in 1969 at a gay bar on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, New York City. (Photo by Armando Babani/EPA/EFE)