Nature and wildlife at its most beautiful: Photographs from around the world reveal our planet at its very best

From wonderful waterfalls to figures trudging through the snow this stunning collection of pictures show the beauty and ferocity of nature.
They were all finalists in the Great Outdoors photography competition, which was won with a shot of a camel herder entitled Homebound by Indian Times photographer Sudipto Das, from West Bengal.
It shows a camel seller leaving a fairground with unsold camels after the world's biggest camel fair is over at Pushkar in Rajasthan. Camel sellers from remote villages in Rajasthan gather at the fairground yearly to trade camels which continues for seven day.
Second prize went to Brit mountain guide Andy Teasdale, from Gwynedd, north-west Wales, for his picture of four skiers battling through the snow on Gran Paradiso in the Italian Alps.

And third prize went to another Brit, model turned photographer Paul Reiffer from Dorset for his shot of Horse Shoe Bend in Page, Arizona.
The competition was organized by the The Society of Nature and Wildlife Photographers, an association for photographers worldwide, based in Wales.
Spokesman Phil Jones said: 'The theme of this competition was the ‘Great Outdoors’ and photographers were encouraged to let their creative juices flourish. 

Images that depict this vibrant topic were welcome to be submitted, and could include landscapes, seascapes, panoramas, underwater or whatever your creativity captures in this all-embracing photographic competition. 'In the end we had 802 images submitted and they were judged by a panel at the Society.'
Shots that made the final from the UK include a plane coming in to land at City Airport in London and a lighthouse at Whitley Bay on Tyneside.

Other finalist Andreas Ettl, from Germany, captured a rainbow next to Seljalandsfoss, a waterfall in southern Iceland.
Mr Jones added: 'The competition produced a load of quality images.
'We have been blown away by the variety and the fact that so many pictures came in from all over the planet.
'As an organisation it shows there is so much talent around the world and we look forward to building on that in the future.'

He's not famous... he's a real no body! Bizarre statues depicting 'invisible' men that play tricks on the eye

Sculptures pictured here are the work of French artist Bruno Catalano

The 53-year-old says the invisible bodies represent a world citizen

Ever feel like you've forgotten something? These people might.
The amazing sculptures pictured here look like they're missing vital organs. They are work of French artist Bruno Catalano who says the invisible bodies represent a world citizen.
Mr Catalano, 53, is originally from Morocco but a lifetime of travel as a sailor has inspired these quirky pieces of art, which often cause passers-by to do a double-take

Now living in Marseille, France, Mr Catalano and his daughter Emilie work to create masterpieces like these.
Made out of bronze, Mr Catalano starts the process by carving the characters from clay - and will then spend a further 15 days working on them.

Mr Catalano said: 'I have travelled a lot and I left Morocco when I was 12 years old. I felt that a part of me was gone and will never come back.
'From years of being a sailor, I was always leaving different countries and places each time and it's a process that we all go through.

'I feel like this occurs several times during life and of course everyone has missing pieces in his or her life that he wont find again.
'So the meaning can be different for everyone, but to me the sculptures represent a world citizen.
'I get inspiration mainly from people around me - familly, friends, neighbours, even colleagues or strangers. My other source of inspiration is the travel.'
Mr Catalano has been sculpting for 20 years and often works with others in an art foundry when making big sculptures.
An exhibition will take place in Marseille in September, to celebrate its status as the European Capital of Culture 2013 with ten life-size sculptures exhibited at the port of Marseille.

 Two of the sculptures at the waterfront in Marseille by French artist Bruno Catalano

Fisherman survives for 60 hours in an air pocket after boat capsizes off of Nigeria

Fisherman was trapped for two days in the pitch dark with no food or water

Harrison Okene could hear fish eating his dead colleagues in sunken ship

Divers found him in an air bubble in a cabin 30 metres underwater

A fisherman survived for two days trapped 30 metres underwater by managing to breathe from a tiny air bubble in his sunken tugboat in the Atlantic ocean.
Harrison Okene, a 29-year-old ship's cook, is the only known survivor from the boat of 12 men, which capsized on May 26, 20 miles off the coast of Nigeria.
Mr Okene was left fighting to breathe inside a four-foot high bubble of air in the adjoining toilet and bedroom where he was trapped, with the waters slowly rising around him.

Before closing the cabin door to stop the water coming in, he had seen three dead colleagues in the water.
Quick-thinking Mr Okene took two mattresses from the beds and sat on top of them, hoping to stay afloat.
'I was there in the water in total darkness just thinking it's the end,' Mr Okene told Reuters.

Although he could not see anything he said: 'I could perceive the dead bodies of my crew were nearby. I could smell them. The fish came in and began eating the bodies. I could hear the sound.'
After days soaking in the salt water parts of his skin began peeling away and he was gasping for water as he could not drink the seawater that he was trapped in.
South African divers came down to search for any survivors on May 28 and they were stunned to find Mr Okene still alive.

Paul McDonald, a member of the rescue crew, said: 'All on board could not believe how cool he was when being rescued.
'The divers put a diving helmet and harness onto him. It was amazing to be part of this rescue.'
Mr Okene said: 'I hammered the side of the vessel hoping someone would hear me'.
He spent another 60 hours in a decompression chamber where his body pressure was returned to normal.
If he had been exposed immediately to the outside air he would have died.
Divers have recovered 10 dead bodies and one remaining crew member has not been found.
Kurt Glaubitz, a Chevron spokesman, said the boat overturned while towing a Chevron oil tanker in the Gulf of Guinea.

Beach is turned into a giant salad by mysterious ‘sea lettuce’ algae that has swamped the shoreline

A seashore looked more like a meadow after huge piles of seaweed was washed up onto the shoreline.
A beach in Rizhao, Shandong, has been given a whole new look after the lush green mess lay tangled on the beach.
The pile of seaweed – also known as sea lettuce – arrived on Saturday, and shows no sign of disappearing as the sea waves are constantly pushing them on to the land.
Enteromorpha prolifera is edible, and rich in magnesium and many other nutrients, the Shanghaiist reported.
But clean up teams will have to work quickly to clean up the green stuff, before it decomposes and begins to rot.
Tidal currents are predicted to move the seaweed to Qingdao next.
In 2008, when Qingdao was inundated with the sea lettuce, the government had to step in, theAtlantic reported.

Because it was the site of many sailing events for the Summer Olympics, soldiers were  sent to speedily remove the mess right away.
Seaweed has been praised as being a vitamin-rich food source that can help improve skin and lower blood pressure.
This particular type of seaweed can grow up to 50cm in length, typically growing near the shore, on rocks or other algae, on open coasts or in estuaries and harbours.
The Shangdong province lays in the east of China, and borders on the Bohai and Huanghai seas in the east.
It overlooks the Korean Peninsula and the Japan Archipelago and is frequently affected by marine monsoons.

Wild, unregulated hacker currency gains following

With $600 stuffed in one pocket and a smartphone tucked in the other, Patricio Fink recently struck the kind of deal that's feeding the rise of a new kind of money — a virtual currency whose oscillations have pulled geeks and speculators alike through stomach-churning highs and lows.

The Argentine software developer was dealing in bitcoins — getting an injection of the cybercurrency in exchange for a wad of real greenbacks he handed to a pair of Australian tourists in a Buenos Aires Starbucks. The visitors wanted spending money at black market rates without the risk of getting roughed up in one of the Argentine capital's black market exchanges. Fink wanted to pad his electronic wallet.
In the safety of the coffee shop, the tourists transferred Fink their bitcoins through an app on their smartphone and walked away with the cash. "It's something that is new," said Fink, 24, who described the deal to The Associated Press over Skype. "And it's working."
It's transactions like these — up to 70,000 of them each day over the past month — that have propelled bitcoins from the world of Internet oddities to the cusp of mainstream use, a remarkable breakthrough for a currency that made its online debut only four years ago.
When they first began pinging across the Internet, bitcoins could buy you almost nothing. Now, there's almost nothing that bitcoins can't buy. From hard drugs to hard currency, songs to survival gear, cars to consumer goods, retailers are rushing to welcome the virtual currency whose unofficial symbol is a dollar-like, double-barred B.

Advocates describe Bitcoin as the foundation stone of a Utopian economy: no borders, no change fees, no closing hours, and no one to tell you what you can and can't do with your money. Just days ago the total value of bitcoins in circulation hit $2 billion, up from a tiny fraction of that last year. But late Wednesday, Bitcoin crashed, shedding more than 60 percent of its value in the space of a few hours before recouping some of its losses. Critics say the roller coaster currency movements are just another sign that Bitcoin is a bubble waiting to burst.
Amid all the hype, Bitcoin's origins are a question mark. The mechanics of the virtual currency were first outlined in a research paper signed by Satoshi Nakamoto — likely a pseudonym — and the coins made their online debut in 2009. How the coins are created, how the transactions are authenticated and how the whole system manages to power forward with no central bank, no financial regulator and a user base of wily hackers all comes down to computing power and savoir faire.
Or, as Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist for the ConvergEx Group, describes it: "genius on so many levels." The linchpin of the system is a network of "miners" — high-end computer users who supply the Bitcoin network with the processing power needed to maintain a transparent, running tally of all transactions. The tally is one of the most important ways in which the system prevents fraud, and the miners are rewarded for supporting the system with an occasional helping of brand-new bitcoins.
Those bitcoins have become a dangerously hot commodity in the past few days. Rising from roughly $13 at the beginning of the year, the price of a single bitcoin blasted through the $100 barrier last week, according to Mt. Gox, a site where users can swap bitcoins for more traditional currencies.
On Tuesday, the price of a single bitcoin had topped $200. On Wednesday, it hit $266 before a flash crash dragged it back down to just over $100. By Thursday, bitcoins were trading for around $150. The rebel currency may seem unstable, but then so do some of its more traditional counterparts. Some say Bitcoin got new momentum after the banking crisis in Cyprus pushed depositors there to find creative ways to move money. Fink, the Argentine, favors bitcoins because he believes they will insulate him from his country's high inflation. Others — from Iranian musicians to American auto dealers — use the currency to dodge international sanctions or reach new markets.
But the anything-goes nature of Bitcoin has also made it attractive to denizens of the Internet's dark side. One of the most prominent destinations for bitcoins remains Silk Road, a black market website where drug dealers advertise their wares in a consumer-friendly atmosphere redolent of Amazon or eBay — complete with a shopping cart icon, a five-point rating system and voluminous user reviews. The site uses Tor, an online anonymity network, to mask the location of its servers, while bitcoin payments ensure there's no paper trail.
One British user told the AP he first got interested in Silk Road while he was working in China, where he used the site to order banned books. After moving to Japan, he turned to the site for an occasional high.
"Buying recreational drugs in Japan is difficult, especially if you don't know people from growing up there," said the user, who asked for anonymity because he did not want his connection to Silk Road to be publicly known.
He warned that one of the site's drawbacks is that the drugs can take weeks to arrive "so there's no spontaneity." Drug dealers aren't the only ones cashing in on Bitcoin. The hackers behind Lulz Security, whose campaign of online havoc drew worldwide attention back in 2011, received thousands of dollars' worth of bitcoins after promising followers that the money would go toward launching attacks against the FBI.
A report apparently drawn up by the bureau and leaked to the Internet last year said that "since Bitcoin does not have a centralized authority, detecting suspicious activity, identifying users and obtaining transaction records is problematic for law enforcement."
It went on to warn that bitcoins might become "an increasingly useful tool for various illegal activities beyond the cyber realm" — including child pornography, trafficking and terrorism. The FBI did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Late last month, the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCen, announced it was extending its money-laundering rules to U.S. bitcoin dealers and transfer services, meaning that companies that trade in the cybercurrency would have to keep more detailed records and report high-value transactions.
Many in the Bitcoin community are frustrated at the attention paid to the shadier side of the virtual economy. Atlanta-based entrepreneur Anthony Gallippi said the focus on drugs and hacking misses the "much bigger e-commerce use for this that's growing and that's growing rapidly."
Very few businesses set their prices in bitcoins — the currency swings would be too jarring — but an increasing number are accepting it for payment. Gallippi's company, BitPay, handles Bitcoin transactions for some 4,500 companies, taking payments in bitcoins and forwarding the cash equivalent to the vendor involved, which means that his clients are insulated from the cybercurrency's volatility.
Gallippi said many of the businesses are e-commerce websites, but he said an increasing number of traditional retailers were looking to get into the game as well. "We just had an auto dealership in Kansas City apply," he said.
In March, BitPay said its vendors had done a record $5.2 million in bitcoin sales — well ahead of the $1.2 million's worth of monthly revenue estimated to have coursed through Silk Road last year. Even artists accept bitcoins. Tehran-based music producer Mohammad Rafigh said the currency had allowed him to sell his albums "all over the world and not only in Iran."
Gallippi said the cybercurrency's ease of access was its biggest selling point. With Bitcoin, "I can access my money from any computing device at any time and do whatever the heck I want with it," he said. "Once you move your money into the cloud why would you ever go back to putting your money in the bank?"
Many Wall Street veterans are skeptical — and they may feel vindicated after Bitcoin's latest tumble. "Trading tulips in real time," is how longtime UBS stockbroker Art Cashin described Bitcoin's vertiginous rise, comparing it to the now-unfathomable craze that saw 17th-century Dutch speculators trade spectacular sums of money for a single flower bulb.
"It is rare that we get to see a bubble-like phenomenon trade tick for tick in real time," he said in a note to clients. One Bitcoin supporter with a unique perspective on the boom might be Mike Caldwell, a 35-year-old software engineer based in suburban Utah. Caldwell is unusual insofar as he mints physical versions of bitcoins at his residence, cranking out thousands of homemade tokens with codes protected by tamper-proof holographic seals — a retro-futuristic kind of prepaid cash.

Caldwell acknowledges that the physical coins were intended as novelty items, minted for the benefit of people "who had a hard time grasping a virtual coin." But that hasn't held back business. Caldwell said he'd minted between 16,000 and 17,000 coins in the year and a half that he's been in business. Demand is so intense he recently announced he was accepting clients by invitation only.
Some may wonder whether Caldwell's coins will one day be among the few physical reminders of an expensive fad that evaporated into the ether — perhaps the result of a breakdown in its electronic architecture, or maybe after a crackdown by government regulators.
When asked, Caldwell acknowledged that bitcoin might be in for a bumpy ride. But he drew the analogy between the peer-to-peer currency enthusiasts who hope to shake the finance world in the 2010s with the generation of peer-to-peer movie swappers who challenged the entertainment industry's business model in the 2000s.
"Movie pirates always win the long game against Hollywood," he said. "Bitcoin works the same way."

That's one to get to the top of the class… The terrifying climb of Chinese schoolchildren as young as five forced to scale sheer cliffs to get to school

Mountain-top village of only 100 residents is cut off from the outside world, apart from ladders leading to valley below

Brave schoolchildren use the wooden ladders with no safety precautions to get to school every day

Five-year-old Liu Dan explained: 'It's quite high but I try not to look down'

These schoolchildren in southern China are so keen to get to school that they make the perilous journey on narrow wooden ladders every day, with no safety precautions.

Their village in the remote Badagong mountains in Sangzhi county is surrounded by sheer drops on every side, making the school run a daily struggle.

The only way out of Zhang Jiawan village, unless the children have time for a four-hour cross country detour, is via a series of rickety-looking ladders leading down to the valley below.

Their anxious parents have no choice but to let them use the ladders if they want to get an education.

So when youngsters like five-year-old Liu Dan start school at the nearest town, the first thing they have to learn is how to climb.

'In centuries past these mountains were a fortress for the villagers. The land is good and the farms thrive but it is hard to get in and out,' said one local.

Liu admitted: 'It's quite high but I try not to look down.'

'My parents showed me how to do it safely and now I don't think too much about how high it is,' she added.

Villagers have asked local officials to supply a road down to the valley so that these children do not have to risk their lilves.

However, the road over the difficult terrain would cost nearly £10 million so residents are not getting their hopes up that it will happen any time soon.

'There are fewer than 100 people living there. It would be cheaper to buy them all helicopters,' said one.

Swedish photographer wins World Press Photo award

AMSTERDAM Swedish photographer Paul Hansen won the 2012 World Press Photo award Friday for newspaper Dagens Nyheter with a picture of two Palestinian children killed in an Israeli missile strike being carried to their funeral.

The picture shows a group of men marching the dead bodies through a narrow street in Gaza City. The victims, a brother and sister, are wrapped in white cloth with only their faces showing. "The strength of the pictures lies in the way it contrasts the anger and sorrow of the adults with the innocence of the children," said jury member Mayu Mohanna of Peru. "It's a picture I will not forget."
World Press Photo, one of photojournalism's most prestigious contests, issued awards in nine categories to 54 photographers of 32 nationalities. Hansen's Nov. 20 shot won top prize in both the spot news single photograph category and the overall competition. It portrays 2-year-old Suhaib Hijazi and her 3-year-old brother Muhammad, who were killed when their house was destroyed by the Israeli attack. They are being carried by grieving uncles, as their father Fouad was also killed, and his body can be seen in the background of the picture.
The children's mother, whose name was not provided, was in intensive care. "This prize is the highest honor you can get in the profession," Hansen told The Associated Press. "I'm very happy, but also very sad. The family lost two children and the mother is unconscious in a hospital."
"These situations are so visually complex," he added. "It's difficult to convey the emotions, to translate what is happening. The light is harsh and there are a lot of people. "But in the alley the light bounced off the walls, so I thought this is a place where you can see that it's a procession. ... You get the depth in the image, and the bouncing light."
Violence in the Middle East, and its effect upon civilians, was the dominant theme in the hard news categories. The Associated Press won eight awards in all, including top prizes for a spot news series for Bernat Armangue of Spain for photos he took in Gaza during November; and for Rodrigo Abd of Argentina for general news single photograph, with a picture of a woman with a bloodstained face weeping in Idib, Syria, on March 10.
She was identified as Aida, and her photo of silent grief is in some ways a reverse image of Hansen's winning shot. She received severe injuries when her house was shelled by the Syrian Army, killing her husband and two children.
In other categories, Wei Seng Chen of Malaysia won in the sports singles category with a shot of what might be considered a local "extreme sport": a man clutching the tails of two bulls as they pull him through a watery rice field in Batu Sangkar, Indonesia.
The competition also includes portrait series, scenes from everyday life, and nature photography, among others. The contest drew entries from professional press photographers, photojournalists and documentary photographers across the world. In all, 103,481 images were submitted by 5,666 photographers from 124 countries.
The photos were submitted anonymously to a panel of 19 jury members, chaired by AP Director of Photography Santiago Lyon, and judged in multiple rounds. The winners were all "stellar examples of first-rate photojournalism," Lyon said.
Other judges came from Germany, Iraq, Peru, France, Sweden, China, Britain, Spain, Azerbaijan, South Africa, The Netherlands, Switzerland and the U.S. Hansen will receive a €10,000 prize at ceremonies and the opening of the year's exhibition April 25-27 in Amsterdam.