Caitlin Hu

Devastation at Europe’s borders is nothing new. In May, Spanish immigration authorities released x-ray images of an eight-year-old Ivoirian boy found huddled inside a suitcase. In June, a man fell from the sky onto a rooftop in London, having stowed away in the undercarriage of an airplane all the way from South Africa. In August alone, more than 600 people drowned trying to reach Europe.

Several newspapers, including the Independent, the Guardian, and the Times, will run variations of the same picture on this morning’s front pages. It’s the image of a Syrian child, lying face-down on a beach. He reportedly drowned, and so did his five-year-old brother, when the boat carrying him to Europe sank in the waters between Turkey and Greece.

“The city of Palmyra, noble for its situation, the riches of its soil and its pleasant streams, encloses its fields with a vast compass of sands,” wrote Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder in Natural History (in 77 AD). “And as if shut out by nature from all other lands, it is by a peculiar lot between two mighty empires, the Romans and the Parthians, wherein discord is ever the first object on both sides.”

As Syria endures its fourth year of turmoil, Europe is just beginning to grasp the true scale of desperation of refugees overwhelming its borders.

Days after a devastating explosion at a chemical warehouse in the port of Tianjin, China, aerial photos reveal the stunning extent of the damage. A steaming black crater marks ground zero, while the apocalyptic surrounding landscape is charred and flattened. Rows of burnt-out cars and twisted shipping containers stretch into the distance on all sides.

Drifting is no longer the most extreme sport to go viral out of the Arabian Gulf. In this striking series by Reuters photographer Mohamed Al Hwaity, Saudi men on an excursion to the city of Taif fire guns dangerously close to their own feet, just for fun.

“Strange” and “new” are relative terms, as a fascinating series of Japanese woodcuts unearthed by the Public Domain Review handily reminds us.

Barack Obama arrives in Kenya today, July 24, before making his way on to Ethiopia. It is his first trip to his father’s homeland as president of the United States, and the first visit to either country by a sitting American president.

Tattooed skater Nasir Sobhani looks too hip to be a sincere do-gooder, but every week he works miracles on the streets of Melbourne, Australia. A professional barber, the 26-year-old spends his off days offering free haircuts and shaves to homeless clients.

The robot revolution is probably closer than you think. No longer just helpers or servers, today’s robots are practice dental patients, hitchhikers, translators, PR reps and dancers. Some even have the ability to wink. While several scientists have expressed fear that artificial intelligence could one day go too far, the new generation of robots includes equally disturbing aesthetic advances—softer skin-like coverings, tongue-waggling, and eerily human attitudes.

Pyramids, obelisks and sarcophagi may embody Egypt in the Western imagination, but the heart of Egypt’s heritage is its base material: rock. Used to construct everything from ancient wonders to today’s homes, blocks of local limestone, basalt, and granite are so indispensable to Egyptian architecture that a few ancient quarries been declared historic cultural sites.

An incongruous scene has become increasingly common on Europe’s beaches: tourists sunbathing, fishing and playing as bedraggled migrants make their way ashore.

The leaked draft of Pope Francis’s encyclical letter focuses largely on climate change, and it includes a radical call to action on that front. But the 192-page letter also contains some stark criticism of the role played by the media, and the digital world, in the breakdown of “the human environment.”

Pope Francis makes a fiery call to action on climate change in a leaked draft of his encyclical letter published on June 15 by Italian magazine l’Espresso.

Art can be alienating. From the white gloves to the white walls (to the global proliferation of White Cubes) nearly everything about the art world conspires to make art—especially contemporary art—as pristine and coolly distant from greasy-fingered admirers as possible.

Egyptian writer and feminist Mona Eltahawy was brutally attacked by police forces in 2011 while protesting Egypt’s post-Mubarak military regime. Her subsequent essay Why do they hate us? published in Foreign Policy in April 2012, considers brutality against women across the Arab world and calls for a new revolution. “Amina Filali — the 16-year-old Moroccan girl who drank poison after she was forced to marry, and beaten by, her rapist — is our Bouazizi,”  wrote Eltahawy, referring to the Tunisian fruit vendor whose self-immolation catalyzed early anti-government protests in North Africa. That essay, tellingly retitled as an answer instead of a question (“Why they hate us”) is the first chapter of Eltahawy’s new book, Headscarves and Hymens.

A myth of the West holds that women are too delicate to do manual labor, everything from frontline military service to opening a door. Men who believe it should try kneading bread dough for 15 minutes and see how their arms feel.

Heralds of summer, fresh strawberries, raspberries and blackberries are now abundant in US supermarkets. But perfect fruit comes at a heavy price: Reuters reports that since March, the culinary world’s underclass of agricultural workers has been protesting in Baja California, Mexico, complaining of pay rates as low as $1 per hour.

In 2009, Saudi Arabia was named the most dangerous place in the world to drive by the World Health Organization. And even though there’s a ban on women driving in the country, a disproportionate number of the road fatalities are female teachers.

This post has been updated.

With over 23 million Instagram posts already hashtagged #vacation, competition is increasingly fierce for most photogenic holiday background. Those looking for a little inspiration might consider checking out the latest batch of travel photo submissions from National Geographic’s 2015 Traveler Photo Contest.

After 50 years in a sealed room, the intimate belongings of Mexico’s most iconic artist have finally come to light.

Today, May 8, is the 70th anniversary of VE Day (victory in Europe)—the day Germany surrendered to the Allied Forces, effectively ending World War II in the European theater.

For photography amateurs everywhere, it’s that time of year again: the National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest, now in its 27th year.