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)

Gothic rock music enthusiasts walk the streets between venues during the annual Wave Gotik music festival on June 11, 2011 in Leipzig, Germany. The festival began in the 1990s and has since grown into one of the biggest gatherings of Goth scene followers in Europe with around 20,000 participants. Many of those attending wear elaborate outfits and make-up for which they require hours of painstaking preparation and that also show a departure from the traditional black of the Goth scene. Punk remains a strong influence in today's Goth style as witnessed in Leipzig, but newer trends, with names like Cybergoth and Steampunk, have emerged that blend bold colors, Victorian fashion elegance and 19th and 20th century factory accessories into a look reminiscent of a mutated Venetian carnival. The five-day festival includes performances by around 200 bands. (Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images)

Workers hang thousands of different colorful fabrics on iron wires tied between a bamboo framework and constantly turn them so that they dry perfectly in a flooded field in Narayanganj, Bangladesh on March 16, 2022. (Photo by Joy Saha/ZUMA Press Wire/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Children play on an abandoned car near a protest, which is against the dissolution of Yemen's parliament and the Shi'ite Muslim Houthi militia's tightening grip on power, in the southwestern city of Taiz, February 13, 2015. (Photo by Mohamed al-Sayaghi/Reuters)

A doctor performs surgery on an injured man with a part of an aluminium alloy fence through his chest after a car accident in Zhumadian, Henan province, China, September 15, 2014. The doctor managed to surgically remove the piece. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

A super flexible schoolboy has become a limbo legend - by roller-skating under 39 cars in a row. It took six-year-old Gagan Satish just 29 seconds to cover a distance of nearly 70 metres with his face just five inches from the ground. (Photo by Arkaprava Ghosh/Barcroft Media India)

Collided passenger train cars are seen in Taebaek, South Korea, Tuesday, July 22, 2014. Two passenger trains collided head-on in eastern South Korea on Tuesday afternoon, killing one passenger and injuring dozens, fire officials said. (Photo by AFP Photo/Yonhap)