A view of a Van Gogh-inspired hot air balloon being inflated during the Philippine International Hot Air Balloon Fiesta at Clark Freeport Zone in Pampanga province, north of Manila February 12, 2015. According to the organizer, a total of 32 hot air balloons are part of the four-day event. (Photo by Erik De Castro/Reuters)

Elephants spray villagers with water in celebration of the Songkran water festival in Thailand's Ayutthaya province, north of Bangkok, April 10, 2015. The annual elephant Songkran is held to promote the tourism industry prior the Songkran Festival which is celebrated with splashing water and putting powder on each others faces as a symbolic sign of cleansing and washing away the sins from the old year. (Photo by Chaiwat Subprasom/Reuters)

Revelers, covered in coloured powder, celebrate, during a Holi Run Festival in Madrid, Spain, Sunday, April 12, 2015. Thousands of revelers took part in the festival that includes a mini marathon. The festivals are fashioned after the Hindu spring festival Holi, which is mainly celebrated in the north and east of India. (Photo by Andres Kudacki/AP Photo)

Athletes vie for the ball during the Mud Olympics in Brunsbuettel, Germany, 30 July 2016. Since 2004, amateur athletes have been competing in various events at the mouth of the Elbe river on the North Sea. The proceeds are traditionally donated to the Schleswig-Holstein Cancer Society. (Photo by Daniel Bockwoldt/EPA)

A supercell that spawned a tornado earlier makes it was east north of McLean, Texas on April 16, 2015 in Texas, United States. Huge hail, terrifying lighting and giant supercells the size of buildings – these incredible images depict a year in the life of a storm chaser. Shot in 2015 by photographer Mike Olbinski, 40, this series of pictures show both the beautiful and the extreme nature of weather in the United States. (Photo by Mike Olbinski/Barcroft Media)

A ten-week-old North China leopard (Panthera pardus japonensis) is handled during a routine health check in the Zoo of Debrecen, northeastern Hungary, 30 January 2024. The female cub, which was born on 21 November 2023, belongs to a leopard subspecies that is endemic to the forest habitats of Northern China. (Photo by Zsolt Czegledi/EPA/EFE)

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has provided scientists the first close-up, visible-light views of a behemoth hurricane swirling around Saturn's north pole. In high-resolution pictures and video, scientists see the hurricane's eye is about 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide, 20 times larger than the average hurricane eye on Earth. Thin, bright clouds at the outer edge of the hurricane are traveling 330 mph(150 meters per second). The hurricane swirls inside a large, mysterious, six-sided weather pattern known as the hexagon. Photo: The spinning vortex of Saturn's north polar storm resembles a deep red rose of giant proportions surrounded by green foliage in this false-color image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. (Photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI)

The War in Abkhazia from 1992 to 1993 was fought between Georgian government forces for the most part, and Abkhaz separatist forces, Russian armed forces and North Caucasian militants. Ethnic Georgians who lived in Abkhazia fought largely on the side of Georgian government forces. Ethnic Armenians and Russians within Abkhazia's population largely supported the Abkhazians, and many fought on their side. The separatists received support from thousands of North Caucasus and Cossack militants and from the Russian Federation forces stationed in and near Abkhazia. Here: Abkhazia. Sukhumi, 1993. A house-to-house combat. (Photo by Andrei Solovyov/ITAR-TASS)