Voting nuns, viewing a solar eclipse, “Pay as you wish” hotel rooms, playing with giant Playmobil figures | April 30
Voting nuns, viewing a solar eclipse, “Pay as you wish” hotel rooms, playing with giant Playmobil figures, and more in today’s daily brief.
- Unknown ultra-nationalists activists march towards the Independence Square to commemorate “Maidan heroes” in Kiev. Sergei Supinsky/Getty Images)
- Members of Ukraine’s State Security Administration (top) clash with members of the Euromaidan movement’s self-defence units during a rally outside the cabinet of ministers building in Kiev. (Andrew Kravchenko/Reuters photo)
- Soldiers of the 1st Foreign Cavalry Regiment of the French Foreign Legion stand guard during the rehearsal of the ceremony marking the commemoration of the battle of Camaron, which occurred on 30 April 1863 between the French Foreign Legion and the Mexican army, on April 29, 2014 in the ancient theatre of Orange. The ceremony will mark the regiment’s last public appearance in Orange before its move to its new base in Carpiagne. (Boris Horvat/Getty Images)
- A staff member at the Australian Antarctic Division’s Casey Station wears a protective mask to watch a solar eclipse at Vincennes Bay in Antarctica. The annular eclipse was visible from Antarctica and some areas in the southern Indian Ocean, with just a partial eclipse visible in Australia. It was one of just two solar eclipses in 2014. (Australian Antarctic Division/Handout via Reuters)
- Great white pelicans swim on a pond at the zoo in Krefeld, western Germany. (Roland Weihrauch/Getty Images)
- Children play with giant Playmobil figures during a photocall on the canalside at Camden in north London as the toy company celebrates its 40th anniversary. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)
- A Playmobil figure is assembled on the assembly line at the Playmobil Malta factory in the Hal Far Industrial Estate outside Valletta. Playmobil is celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2014 and is produced by the German company Geobra Brandstaetter GmbH. (Darrin Zammit Lupi/Reuters photo)
- A competitor performs in the FMX Course competition during the World Extreme Games in Shanghai. The games will be held in Shanghai until May 3. (Carlos Barria/Reuters photo)
- An Indian Muslim devotee, who is on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti for Urs, performs a stunt during a procession at Ajmer in the desert Indian state of Rajasthan. Urs is an annual festival which is held for over six days at Ajmer, commemorating the death anniversary of Sufi saint Chishti. (Himanshu Sharma/Reuters photo)
- A worker walks through a salt pan on the eve of May Day or Labour Day on the outskirts of the southern Indian city of Chennai. India is the third largest salt producing country in the world after China and U.S. with global annual production about 230 million tonnes, according to government data. (Babu/Reuters photo)
- A Pakistani labourer empties a wheelbarrow loaded with clay to make bricks at a factory on the eve of International Labour Day in Peshawar. Pakistan has a workforce of around 56 million people in a population of 186 million, according to Pakistan’s official figures compiled by the Federal Bureau of Statistics. (A Majeed/Getty Images)
- A gust of wind blows off Pope Francis’ cap during his weekly general audience at St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. (Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters photo)
- A Palestinian sits on top of the rubble of a house under construction after it was demolished by Israeli bulldozers at Al-Aroub refugee camp, near the West Bank City of Hebron. Israeli military said that “security forces carried out the demolition of two construction sites that were built illegally in Al-Aroub. The sites were demolished after the residents’ requests for building permits were refused due to non-compliance with the required (construction) regulations.” (Ammar Awad/Reuters photo)
- Workers install a demilitarized Soviet-made T-62M1 tank at a memorial in a park in Russia’s Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk. (Ilya Naymushin/Reuters photo)
- A painting is seen around the site where a shell landed during the 2010 North Korean attack on the island of Yeonpyeong which lies on the South Korean side of the Northern Limit Line (NLL), in the Yellow Sea. In 2010 North Korea fired multiple shells onto the island killing four people, including two civilians in a first such attack since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. The two sides are still technically at war as the conflict ended in a mere truce, not a treaty. (Damir Sagolj/Reuters photo)
- Children play in front of a tank on the island of Baengnyeong, which lies on the South Korean side of the Northern Limit Line (NLL), in the Yellow Sea. Baengnyeong, closer to Pyongyang than Seoul, is an isolated and heavily militarized island whose resident live in constant fear of possible clashes between two armies. The beaches of Baengnyeong are often walled with barbed wire fences straddling the sand dunes with intermittent holes for machine gun positions. The Northern Limit Line, a disputed maritime border that wraps itself round a part of the North’s coastline, has been the scene of frequent clashes between South and North Korea. The line was drawn up at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War and North Korea does not recognize it. The two sides are still technically at war as the conflict ended in a mere truce, not a treaty. (Damir Sagolj/Reuters photo)
- A masked pro-Russian protester sits on a chair as he poses for a picture inside a regional government building in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine. (Marko Djurica/Reuters photo)
- “Dasparkhotel” hotel rooms are pictured in a public park in the Upper Austrian town of Ottensheim. The rooms are constructed from repurposed concrete drain pipes and can be booked anonymously on the internet. Owner Andreas Strauss says the hotel is a hospitality project on a “pay as you wish” basis, a system where customers pay what they can afford. The hotel is open from May 1 till October 1. (Heinz-Peter Bader/Reuters photo)
- Indian catholic nuns checks their names with election commission officials as they wait to cast their votes at a polling booth in Hyderabad. India’s 814-million-strong electorate is voting in the world’s biggest election which is set to sweep the Hindu nationalist opposition to power at a time of low growth, anger about corruption and warnings about religious unrest. (Noah Seelam/Getty Images)