Venezuela's food shortages, inflation and crumbling medical sector have become such a source of anguish that a growing number of young women are reluctantly opting for sterilizations rather than face the hardship of pregnancy and child-rearing. Traditional contraceptives like condoms or birth control pills have virtually vanished from store shelves, pushing women towards the hard-to-reverse surgery. While no recent national statistics on sterilizations are available, doctors and health workers say demand for the procedure is growing. (Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

A child dressed as a New York Fire Department member watches the Veterans Day parade behind a New York Police Department officer on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, New York City on November 11, 2025. (Photo by Kylie Cooper/Reuters)

In more “raccoons are getting more like us” news, a drunk raccoon was found in a liquor store in Virginia, US in the first decade of December 2025. The animal had got into the shop via some loose ceiling tiles, knocked bottles of spirits off the shelves, lapped up the contents and passed out in the toilets. Once it had sobered up, it was released back into the wild – no doubt with a crashing hangover. (Photo by AP Photo)

People perform during the Archstoyanie 2023 festival in the village of Nikola-Lenivets, Kaluga region, Russia on July 29, 2023. (Photo by Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt takes questions during her first daily briefing at the White House in Washington on January 28, 2025. (Photo by Carlos Barria/Reuters)

Russian Communist Party supporters take part in a memorial ceremony to mark the 96th anniversary of the death of Russian communist revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, also known as Lenin, at Red Square in downtown Moscow on January 21, 2020. (Photo by Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP Photo)

A statue of Vladimir Lenin in 1905 Goda Square in Yekaterinburg, Russia on October 14, 2020, with a face mask put on and signed “Protect Yourself and the Ones You Love”. A group of medical volunteers has put face masks on local statues with consent from the authorities. (Photo by Donat Sorokin/TASS)

Before sunrise there is a “Turneresque” sky over the abbey at the picturesque Wiltshire, England market town of Malmesbury on June 11, 2023. (Photo by Terry Mathews/Alamy Live News)