A 69-meter-tall giant Buddha statue stands at the Wat Paknam Phasi Charoen temple on the outskirts of Bangkok on October 12, 2021. (Photo by Jack Taylor/AFP Photo)

Iraqi Kurds carry fire torches as they celebrate Nowruz Day, a festival marking the first day of spring, Kurdish and Persian New Year in Akre, Iraq on March 20, 2024. Newroz or Nowruz means “new day” in Persian, and is celebrated to mark the arrival of spring and the first day of the Iranian calendar. It is widely celebrated in Persian and neighboring regions and is recognized on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage of Human List. (Photo by Ismael Adnan/SOPA Images/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Japanese macaques, also known as snow monkeys, play as they soak in a hot spring in Jigokudani valley in Nagano Prefecture, northwest of Tokyo Saturday, March 6, 2021. (Photo by Kiichiro Sato/AP Photo)

Among the fish populations that could be harmed by the Xayaburi dam in Laos is the critically endangered Mekong giant catfish, considered by the Guinness Book of World Records to be the world’s largest freshwater fish. The fish, which grows to 650 pounds and about 10 feet long, is only found in the Mekong River. It is migratory, moving between downstream habitats in Cambodia upstream to northern Thailand and Laos each year to spawn. Some experts fear the Xayaburi dam could block the migration and drive the giant catfish to extinction. (Photo by Courtesy of Zeb Hogan/University of Nevada, Reno)

A boy sleds through snow as he enjoys the snow in Bahcesaray district called as planet nine because of roads blocked by snow in winter, in Van province of Turkey on January 22, 2020. (Photo by Ozkan Bilgin/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

A general view shows a column of steam emerging from Popocatepetl volcano, after an increase in volcanic activity with steam and ash eruptions have been registered recently, according to local media, as seen from San Andres Cholula municipality, in the state of Puebla, Mexico on February 1, 2023. (Photo by Henry Romero/Reuters)

Some of the best entries so far in the 2016 Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. There are two weeks left to enter, and the winners will be announced in September. Here: Aurora over Laksvatn Fjord, Laksvatn, Norway. The aurora borealis dances in the skies over the town of Laksvatn, with the Milky Way to the left. The image is a single shot with no compositing, only post-processing to bring out the aurora, and some colour corrections. The photographer Matt Walford said: “I love the way the northern lights look like they are just wistfully dancing over the fjord, framed by the mountains on either side”. (Photo by Matt Walford/National Maritime Museum)

In this undated handout photograph from the “Inside Out Project”, a poster bearing the image of a Pakistani girl whose parents, lawyers say, were killed in a drone strike, lies in a field at an undisclosed location in the northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. A group of artists in Pakistan are hoping to generate “empathy” among US drone operators by placing giant posters of children in the country's troubled tribal regions. (Photo by AFP Photo)