Young women wearing facemasks and traditional costumes of Song dynasty and Tang dynasty are seated on a bench in a park next to the East Lake in Wuhan, in China’s central Hubei province on May 17, 2020. The Guardian picture desk has chosen on December 17, 2020, the AFP photojournalist Hector Retamal as “Agency Photographer of the Year 2020” for his coverage of the novel coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic in Wuhan, China. (Photo by Hector Retamal/AFP Photo)

Transgender woman Angeles Rojas enters a room at Banco Nación where she works in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Thursday, November 5, 2020. Rojas, 23, joined the most important public bank in Argentina this year as part of the trans labor quota that is part of the public policies in favor of the LGBT community that the South American country has implemented in the last decade. (Photo by Natacha Pisarenko/AP Photo)

Birds behaviour winner: Land of the Eagle by Audun Rikardsen, Norway. High on a ledge, on the coast near his home in northern Norway, Rikardsen carefully positioned an old tree branch that he hoped would make a perfect golden eagle lookout. To this, he bolted a tripod head with a camera, flashes and motion sensor attached, and built himself a hide a short distance away. From time to time, he left road‑kill carrion nearby. Very gradually – over the next three years – a golden eagle got used to the camera and started to use the branch regularly to survey the coast below. (Photo by Audun Rikardsen/2019 Wildlife Photographer of the Year)

A pair of black-necked stilts fight over their marshland territory in Orlando, Florida in the last decade of July 2024. (Photo by Jake Landing/Solent News)

The claws are out for North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and Russia's Vladimir Putin – as cats now able to use a model of him as a scratching post. And moggies can also maul at Russian president Vladimir Putin, whose face also features on the new cat toys which are 1.5ft tall and cost £4,500. They are made from hessian rope, and 3D-printed faces are then attached to the posts, before they are handpainted. The toys took a team of artists 200 hours to finish. (Photo by The Pussycat Riot)

Gifts for the homeless are handed out during Santa Bar Crawl, Oxford, England on December 5, 2017. Here: Oxford university students on a Santa-themed pub crawl. (Photo by Greg Blatchford/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Protesters practice using slings as they block a road in support of former President Evo Morales in the face of an investigation opened against him for the alleged abuse of a minor while in office, in Parotani, Bolivia, Thursday, October 31, 2024. (Photo by Juan Karita/AP Photo)

A Kazakh hunter walks with his tamed golden eagle during an annual hunting competition in Chengelsy Gorge, some 150 km (93 miles) east of Almaty February 22, 2013. (Photo by Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters)