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)

An armed man gestures in front of the police headquarters in Slaviansk, April 12, 2014. At least 20 armed militants wearing mismatched camouflage outfits took over the police and security services headquarters in the eastern city of Slaviansk seizing hundreds of handguns. (Photo by Gleb Garanich/Reuters)

A sculpture of Don Quixote shows him wearing the basin he mistook for the enchanted helmet of the fictional Moorish king Mambrino in Alcazar de San Juan, Spain, April 5, 2016. The arid central Spanish region of La Mancha is the setting for “Don Quixote”, the seventeenth-century novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Four hundred years after his death, references to the characters of Don Quixote, his loyal squire Sancho Panza and his beautiful lady Dulcinea abound in the surrounding villages from sweet treats to theatre productions involving livestock. Cervantes did not give away the name of the birthplace of Don Quixote, a middle-aged gentleman who becomes obsessed with chivalrous ideals. But many identify the village of Argamasilla de Alba as his hometown. The anniversary of Cervantes’ death is marked on the 23 April. (Photo by Susana Vera/Reuters)

An inmate (L) tends to a fellow prisoner while performing ear candling during an alternative therapy session as part of the ACUDA programme, at a complex of ten prisons in Porto Velho, Rondonia State, Brazil, August 27, 2015. Ear candling, which involves inserting a hollow cone-shaped device into the ear canal and lighting the exposed end, is believed by practitioners to draw out earwax. According to ACUDA the therapy is beneficial for the inmates' emotional health. (Photo by Nacho Doce/Reuters)

Nur Elita, an Acehnese woman, screams during caning as part of her sentence in the courtyard of Baiturrahman mosque in Banda Aceh, Indonesia's Aceh province December 28, 2015. Nur Elita received five strokes of the cane for having pre-marital s*x with her boyfriend, according to local media. Aceh is the only province in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, where Islamic law is implemented, according to local media. (Photo by Junaidi Hanafiah/Reuters)

Actress Kerry Washington, Harvard University's Hasty Pudding Theatricals' Woman of the Year, throws wine in the face of an actor playing Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Thursday, January 28, 2016, as she is roasted in Cambridge, Mass. (Photo by Elise Amendola/AP Photo)

The eruption of Cordon Caulle began on June 4, 2011, located in the Region of Los Rios in Chile. For about 12 months, people and animals became accustomed to living with the daily fall of ash, which also caused problems in the air traffic in South America. The explosions and lightning during first days of the eruption could be seen from hundreds of miles around. This photograph was taken on the second night of eruption from the town of Lago Ranco. (Photo and caption by Francisco Negroni/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)

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