News World Amazing pictures with incredible stories behind them
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Amazing pictures with incredible stories behind them

Andrea and Magda/Italy
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All photos courtesy of the 2016 Sony World Photography Awards.

Eagle Hunting festival in a mountainous region of western China.
"BLOCK" is an urban exploration into new residential areas of megacities in the People's Republic of China. In transforming cities, these impressive sites are built in sometimes very distant suburbs where their vastness contrasts with the surrounding rural landscapes. Their dizzying redundancy offers a surreal and sinister scenery where it is difficult to imagine any human activity.
Since September 5, 2014, pro Russia rebels used the relative lull of a ceasefire deal in Minsk with the UA army to build up their forces. For months the rebels tried to seize Donetsk airport, a strategic and symbolic asset, from government forces. With the start of 2015, a new rebel push began and by January 22 the airport was in their hands. On February 12, 2015, a new ceasefire deal was reached through international mediation, in an attempt to stop the fighting spiraling out of control. The important logistic raliway hub city of Debaltseve fell into rebels hands a few days after the deal was struck.
The Roma are a distinct ethnic minority originating from Northwestern India and living all over Europe and America. Their total population has recently been estimated to be more than 14 million. They usually form a separate social group, only partially integrated into the societies and countries where they live. A history of discrimination, persecution and killings culminating with the Nazi holocaust has pushed the Roma and other related minorities (Sinti etc.) to the margins of society, making them one of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged minorities in Europe. Many Roma continue to face widespread racism and discrimination and to get limited access to basic rights and services and are almost unrepresented in public and political life. As a result, poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, lack of formal education, substandard housing are commonplace among them.
There are more than 300 people that travel with the Ringling Bros.and Barnum & Bailey circus blue unit, representing 25 different countries and speaking everything from Russian to Arabic to Guarani. A few travel in cars and trailers but a majority, 270, live on the trains. Most come from multigeneration circus families to the extent that, collectively, the circus staff represent thousands of years of circus history. The men and women all say that only circus people like them can understand the lifestyle. They spend 44 weeks of the year travelling an average of more than 32,000 kilometres from coast to coast on a train that is 61 cars, nearly two kilometres long. It is a life of close quarters and rigorous training, a life that many of the performers began in childhood. Their job is to convince the world that the circus still matters.
Acid throwing is a kind of violence that has, according to the official statistics and local news, increased in Iran in recent years. This kind of violence is mostly against women and children. These attacks have been done with intent to disfigure, maim, torture and destroy the social life and the future of the victim. The motivation to commit this type of violence is cultural destitution and intolerance and it happens in situations such as family conflict, rejected marriage proposals, revenge and divorce requests. In addition to the physical and psychological damage, victims are faced with the experience of social stigma, blame and socially unpleasant tags. The victims are in dire need of medical and financial support and counselling services. Unfortunately there are no governmental and non-governmental organizations to follow these issues in the country and they have to treat themselves only by public aid and donations.
asylum seekers Australia Europe
Migration to Europe has increased over the past years, mainly because of political and social turmoil in the Middle East. During the recent years, Greece has been the path for thousands refugees and migrants for their crossing from Turkey to Greece and other European countries. The main places of entrance are the islands of Kos and Lesbos by sea. The Greek government, in an effort to minimize the wave of refugees entering the country, has built an 12km-long and 2.5m-high barbed-wire wall at the main entrance point at its northeastern borderline with Turkey. This has caused a huge wave of refugees and migrants trying to enter the country by the Aegean Sea. For many, it is their first encounter with the sea. Hundreds have lost their lives in their attempt to reach the European Union, many hoping to reunite with long-lost friends and family.
Local family Oksana and her two kids. Over 50 per cent of their small salary is spent on utilities. They own this little room in an old house. The girl with ginger hair, Sothia, was born with heart disease. The government paid for her operation in Bakulev clinic, Moscow, which saved her life.
According to UNHCR, approximately 850,000 refugees and migrants, including children, arrived in Greece by sea in 2015. Of these, just over 500,000 landed on Lesbos, a Greek island around eight nautical miles from the Turkish coast. Although at the centre of migration flows, Lesbos had nothing to offer the mainly Syrian, Afghan and Iraqi refugees, asylum seekers and migrants who arrived there. Once they reached Europe’s beaches, they were welcomed with a long trek across the islands mountainous interior, followed by days and nights spent in crowded refugee camps, where not even a place in a tent was guaranteed and where basic amenities such as toilets and showers were lacking. But it was in those under-serviced and poorly managed camps that they had to stay, in order to obtain the required registration to allow them to travel legally through Greece and continue their journey of hope towards other European countries, such as Germany and Sweden.
Refugees arriving on the island of Lesbos in Greece.
Since protests in Kyiv drove President Viktor Yanukovych from power in February 2014, Eastern Ukraine has been convulsed by a separatist insurgency that has evolved into a full-fledged civil war centered in the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, an industrial region known as Donbass. At heart is a desire among the rebels for greater autonomy, out of widespread fear - justified or not - that Russian-speaking Ukrainians are at risk of political repression by the government in Kyiv. Russian propaganda has carried this storyline further, implying that the Ukrainian government is comprised of fascists and backed by neo-Nazi Ukrainian nationalists. Russia itself has been widely accused of backing the rebels with weapons, cash, training, and fighters, prompting the deepest divide between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War.
I had been taking pictures of wrestling for a while before getting the opportunity to assist a Hardcore Wrestling Match. This type of wrestling is currently forbidden in Mexico City, because of numerous accidents, but still allowed outside the capital. The organization DTU organizes almost every month a wrestling spectacle in the village where El Santo, Mexico's most famous wrestler, was born. The students receive professional wrestling training before being allowed to do the extreme style and they get paid a bit more for their bravery. A local carwash is turned into a real arena for this ultraviolent wrestling match. The public, old and young, receive the wrestlers as their local heroes.
Parkour jumpers in Solvychegodsk, Russia, on their daily training. In the background is one of the main Solvychegodsk sights, Blagoveshchensky Cathedral. This church is among three churches that survived Soviet times. At the begining of 20th century there were 13 churches in Solvichegodsk.
This year, tourism in Sinai, Egypt, has suffered once again from the effects of troubles in the region: a Russian plane crashing from a bomb explosion on the October 31, 2015, killing 224 people. Up until then, Russian tourists had become an essential part of the total visitors to Sinai. Egypt has largely bet on the tourism industry (around 15 per cent of the GDP) and for the Sinai region nearly all of its economy is based on tourism. A risky bet, since as soon as political tensions occur, it is the entire region that is deeply affected.
'Toxic Trespass' was commissioned in 2015 by The Bhopal Medical Appeal in London as part of an awareness campaign designed to raise funds for The Chingari Children Rehabilitation Clinic located in Bhopal, India. The specialized therapy and rehabilitation clinic has just over 750 children registered - most of whom are severely disabled having been born to parents contaminated by a carcinogenic and mutagenic water supply. December 2, 2015 marked the 31st anniversary of the 1984 Union Carbide gas tragedy that killed up to 10,000 of the citizens of Bhopal within 72 hours and has gone on to claim, in total, over 25,000 lives to date. The original site of the heavily-polluted pesticide plant was never cleared up and remains, as referred to by Greenpeace, one of the world's 'toxic hotspots'. The photographer has returned and documented the aftermath in Bhopal for the past 7 years with The Bhopal Medical Appeal.
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