Children play in front of a brick factory on the outskirts of the northern Myanmar city of Mandalay on December 14, 2015. (Photo by Phyo Hein Kyaw/AFP Photo)

Children play on a flooded street after heavy rain in Minsk, Belarus July 13, 2016. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)

Palestinian children practise parkour along a beach in Gaza City at sunset on January 27, 2021. (Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP Photo)

Children play in the Crown Fountain at Millennium Park in Chicago, Wednesday, June 29, 2022. (Photo by Nam Y. Huh/AP Photo)

Growing cities, overuse of fertilizers and factory wastewater have degraded China's water supplies to the extent that half the nation's rivers and lakes are severely polluted. China aims to spend $850 billion to improve filthy water supplies over the next decade, but even such huge outlays may do little to reverse damage caused by decades of pollution and overuse in Beijing's push for rapid economic growth. Photo: Fishermen row a boat in the algae-filled Chaohu Lake in Hefei, Anhui province, June 19, 2009. (Photo by Jianan Yu/Reuters)

In this photo taken June 3, 2009, a female North Korean soldier looks out from behind a barbed-wire fence around a camp on the North Korean river banks across from Hekou, northeastern China's Liaoning province. North Korea's top court has convicted two U.S. journalists, and sentenced them to 12 years in labor prison, the country's state news agency reported Monday. (Photo by Ng Han Guan/AP Photo)

These pictures reveal the crumbling ruins of the famed Grand Orient Express, now hollowed-out and almost reduced to rubble. There are only a couple of the trains, launched in 1883, left in the world. This example stands dormant in Belgium, untouched from its last voyage in the winter of 2009. Rusty ceilings, moth-eaten seats and tattered floors capture its level of decay. A Rotterdam-based urban photographer Brian Romeijn managed to snap these pictures while exploring the area. (Photo by Brian Romeijn/IMP Features)

Afghan children buy breads from a bakery in Fayzabad of Badakhshan province on February 7, 2024. (Photo by Omer Abrar/AFP Photo)