Johnny Simon

Britain’s Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition has released the shortlist for their 2018 competition. The pictures include stunning depictions of the cosmos glowing from above the Earth. Twinkling above a desert or from the vantage point of an icy cave, clusters of stars juxtaposed against the geography of Earth, or even a single human, gives some perspective on the enormity of the universe.

A protest by farmers briefly halted the 16th stage of the Tour de France today (July 24), leaving cyclists idling in the middle of the French countryside and braving a cloud of tear gas.

The first human set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong emerged from the Apollo 11 lander.

Geometric fields of flowers, vertigo-inducing glass-bottom bridges and an illuminated ice festival. China has a way with spectacles that sometimes, like a solar-panel field in the shape of a panda, serve no purpose other than to be playful photo ops. Other attractions that have popped up in recent years have tested tourists’ constitutions, like the multitude of see-through walkways that have popped up in mountainous regions.

A hot, dry summer has made parts of Sweden and other Arctic Circle locations ripe for widespread wildfires.

The weirdest, least flattering image of Donald Trump with Vladimir Putin didn’t come from a rogue member of the media. It came from Trump’s own press secretary.

It only took a millennium, but a formerly secret Slavic martial art has received a new appreciation outside of Russia and throughout the West.

Humans have always dug into the earth for new resources. But while millennia-old techniques like crystalizing salt in evaporating pools still exist all over the world, cavernous open pit mines like Chile’s Escondida copper mine (nearly four kilometers wide) are far more representative of what modern resource extraction looks like. Below, images taken from airplanes, satellites and even astronauts on the International Space Station reveal how insatiable mining has irreversibly altered the face of the earth.

During Croatia’s World Cup semi-final game against England yesterday, one photographer found himself with a slightly closer vantage point than expected. Yuri Cortez, a photojournalist with Agence France-Press was taking photos when the celebration for Croatia’s second goal of the game bled from the pitch to the sidelines, and quickly took him along with it.

At today’s NATO summit in Brussels, the west’s gathered leaders turned their head in unison to watch a military flyover. But for a brief moment, US president Donald Trump’s attention drifted elsewhere.

Hot weather across Britain, it turns out, is a great time for archeologists to take to the sky.

Floods and landslides triggered by days of rain in Japan have killed at least 114 people, Reuters reports. The floods are considered the worst the country has seen in 35 years.

The Mars Opportunity Rover mission launched 15 years ago this week, on July 7, 2003. Since then, it has sent back to Earth a diverse collection of images, ranging from multi-image panoramas of the vast Martian landscape to selfies of itself.

Photos from a meeting between US members of Congress and Russian officials are offering a bleak vision of US politics.

Mount Agung, the volcano on the tourist-packed Indonesian island of Bali that sprung back to life last year, has demonstrated its destructive power again. Over the past week it has spewed more ash lava, forcing at least 700 residents to evacuate from nearby towns, Australia’s ABC News reports.

In the early part of the second half of Japan’s World Cup round-of-16 match against Belgium, they were riding high with a comfortable 2-0 lead. That all came crashing down in the 69th minute as Belgium scored, then scored again five minutes later, and then scored one last time in the final seconds of play. Belgium will continue on to the quarterfinals after winning 3-2.

After weeks of stunning upsets in group play, the World Cup begins its knockout rounds today, when 16 teams will begin play for a position in the quarterfinals.

The winning photo in National Geographic’s 2018 Travel Photographer of the Year is a quiet shot of a humpback whale calf, swimming in the deep blue waters of Japan’s Kumejima island.

At the World Cup, there’s national pride, and then there’s national pride.

After the sun sets, the familiar blue, green and brown landforms we recognize as Earth transform into dramatic glowing networks. The photos below, taken by astronauts aboard the International Space Station using conventional digital cameras, show some of the world’s most iconic cities after dark—can you recognize them by their lights alone?

Reigning World Cup champion Germany has been knocked out of the tournament in its earliest stage.

Zsa Zsa, an English Bulldog with an exceptionally droopy tongue, was named the World’s Ugliest Dog this weekend.

Melania Trump flew to Texas today to tour a child detention facility. Photos from the Upbring New Hope Children’s Center suggest that the first lady is touring a newly renovated school—a far cry from recent images of children sleeping under mylar blankets, being led through tent cities and screaming for their separately detained parents.

In the name of religion, nation, trade and progress, mankind has molded the surface of the earth into all kinds of shapes, from the pyramids at Giza to artificial islands. This week, Saudi Arabia even threatened to turn its neighbor Qatar, which is currently a peninsula, into an island by digging a canal along the border.