“A Brazilian hotel was evacuated in the capital, Brasilia, on Monday after a man took hostage an employee who was held for hours before he was safely released to police. Firefighters and police cordoned off the area and about 300 guests and other employees left the hotel – some reportedly told to leave by the man who took the employee hostage”. – Associated Press. (Photo by Evaristo Sa/AFP Photo)

Sister Rebecca Leis pours low-gluten alter bread batter into a machine that bakes the thin bread at the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration monastery in Clyde, Missouri, December 18, 2014. The Sisters have made communion wafers since 1910 and began making a low-gluten version in 2003 and have gone from 143 customers in 2004 to more than 11,000 customers from around the world. (Photo by Dave Kaup/Reuters)

The shoemaker in Turkey, the potato seller in Vietnam, and the weaver in Bolivia are among the billions of low-income entrepreneurs who make the world go round. They are also the type of people who can benefit significantly from microfinance. Every year, the Consultative Group To Assist The Poor (or CGAP) hosts a photo contest asking entrants to submit photos based around the idea of microfinance.The purpose of the contest is to give amateur and professional photographers a chance to show the different ways that poor households manage their financial lives and make their lives better through financial inclusion. Photo: South Asia Regional Winner – “Bricks Worker”, Bangladesh. A private enterprise worker is working at a brick field. These small businesses are creating new job opportunities for many poor people. (Photo by Moksumul Haque)

“MS Herald of Free Enterprise was a roll-on roll-off (RORO) car and passenger ferry owned by Townsend Thoresen. She was one of three ships commissioned by the company to operate on the Dover–Calais route across the English Channel. The ferry capsized on the night of 6 March 1987, moments after leaving the Belgian port of Zeebrugge, killing 193 passengers and crew. This was the deadliest maritime disaster involving a British ship in peacetime since the sinking of the Iolaire in 1919”. – Wikipedia

Photo: The wreck of the Herald of Free Enterprise, which capsized near Zeebrugge on the 6th of March 1987. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images). 1987

“Harry Whittier Frees (1879–1953) was an American photographer who created novelty postcards and children's books based on his photographs of animals. He dressed the animals and posed them in human situations with props, often with captions; these can be seen as progenitors of modern lolcats”. – Wikipedia. Photo: “The nurse”. Photograph shows a puppy holding a kitten, 1914. (Photo by Harry Whittier Frees/Library of Congress)

P.S. All pictures are presented in high resolution. To see Hi-Res images – just TWICE click on any picture. In other words, click small picture – opens the BIG picture. Click BIG picture – opens VERY BIG picture (if available; this principle works anywhere on the site AvaxNews).

The hard-worked hands of Jacaba Coaquira, 80, holding the green beans she grew on her land. This year the production of her land was affected by lack of rain and early cold weather that froze the crops before they finished growing. Santiago de Okola, Bolivia. (Photo by Renée C. Byer/Living on a Dollar a Day)

Born with a rare condition, the artist has chronicled her life in portraits – capturing everything from her tattooed prosthetics to the tentacled creature she stitched together on the shores of Naoshima. Here: Ophelia (2013). From a series of photos of imagined women exhibited at the 2013 Aichi Triennale. Here, Katayama invokes Hamlet’s tragic heroine, after the painting by British pre-Raphaelite John Everett Millais. (Photo by Mari Katayama/The Guardian)

A boy runs next to a portrait of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej, placed in celebration of the King's 88th birthday, in Bangkok, Thailand, December 5, 2015. (Photo by Jorge Silva/Reuters)