In the tiny village of Nagoro, deep in the mountains of western Japan, the wind howls down a deserted street with not a living soul to be seen.

As farmer Li Bingcai opened the door to his cockroach farm in southwest China, an insect the size of a dart flew into his face.

People dressed as legendary ancestors Pou Nyer and Nyar Nyer along with their guardian lion Singkheo Singkham to mark the Laos New Year or Pi Mai at Wat Xiengthong, Luang Prabang.

Seals waddling along the waterfront were once a common sight in Baku Bay, the Caspian Sea home of Azerbaijan's capital.

Productive and driven, he was a model army officer, but he had a secret: he was in a gay sexual relationship with a fellow soldier -- a crime under South Korea's military law.

The two men in the motorised wooden canoe look around warily as they leave a towering shipwreck in the Lagos lagoon, with the barrels of oil on board barely concealed under rags.

Sumo wrestlers taking part in the "honozumo" ceremonial sumo exhibition on the grounds of Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo.

Revelers and elephants splashing water at one another during a ceremony to celebrate the Songkran Buddhist New Year in Ayutthaya, Thailand.

Standing nearly 20 feet tall, 43 US presidential busts from George Washington to George W Bush are seen at the bankrupted Presidents Park in Croaker, Virginia.

The avocado growers of Tochimilco, a small village in central Mexico at the foot of the Popocatepetl volcano, are used to it threatening them with spurts of molten rock and ash.