A boy looks for sellable materials close to the burning garbage in the permanent waste land under Sylhet City Corporation for a living, on January 15, 2015. (Photo by Md. Akhlas Uddin/Pacific Press)

A reef shell lies on a beach as the sun sets on Lady Elliot Island located north-east of the town of Bundaberg in Queensland, Australia, June 10, 2015. UNESCO World Heritage delegates recently snorkelled on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, thousands of coral reefs, which stretch over 2,000 km off the northeast coast. Surrounded by manta rays, dolphins and reef sharks, their mission was to check the health of the world's largest living ecosystem, which brings in billions of dollars a year in tourism. Some coral has been badly damaged and animal species, including dugong and large green turtles, are threatened. UNESCO will say on Wednesday whether it will place the reef on a list of endangered World Heritage sites, a move the Australian government wants to avoid at all costs, having lobbied hard overseas. Earlier this year, UNESCO said the reef's outlook was “poor”. (Photo by David Gray/Reuters)

Beautiful, strange and occasionally alarming pictures from the shortlist for this year’s Wellcome image awards – which celebrate the very best in science photography and imaging – from an x-ray of a bat to a micrograph of a kidney stone. The exhibition opens on 12 March at three science centres and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. Photo: Scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of an Arabidopsis thaliana flower, also commonly known as thale cress. Some of the anthers are open, revealing pollen grains ready for dispersal. Arabidopsis was the first plant to have its entire genome sequenced and is widely used as a model organism in molecular and plant biology. Horizontal width of image is 1200 microns. Magnification 100x. (Photo by Stefan Eberhard/Wellcome Images)

Ireland's Philip Mulpeter, left, is kicked by Brazilian Vitor Nobrega during their welterweight mixed martial arts bout of International Pro Combat at the Estoril Casino in Estoril, near Lisbon, Portugal, Monday, January 26, 2015. Nobrega defeated Mulpeter. (Photo by Francisco Seco/AP Photo)

A Pakistani scavenger girl writes on a notebook she collected from a garbage, while another girl sits next to her in Lahore, Pakistan, Wednesday, April 1, 2015. Thousands of children pick recyclable items from waste dumping points to earn living for their poor families. (Photo by K. M. Chaudary/AP Photo)

An Indian girl dressed in traditional attire reacts to camera as she watches a cultural performance during Lohri festival in Jammu, India, Monday, January 13, 2014. Lohri is a celebration of the winter solstice observed by Hindus and Sikhs in northern India. (Photo by Channi Anand/AP Photo)

In this Tuesday, March 31, 2015 photo, Indian women walk carrying firewood they collected from a forest at Gobhali village on the outskirts of Gauhati, India. Every evening, hundreds of millions of Indian women hover over crude stoves making dinner for their families. They feed the flames with polluting fuels like kerosene or cow dung, and breathe the acrid smoke wafting from the fires. (Photo by Anupam Nath/AP Photo)

Disguised revellers parade on the occasion of the Cortege during the Carnival in Basel, Switzerland, February 17, 2016. (Photo by Georgios Kefalas/EPA)