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Firefighters cut and estinguish the fire in a tree on the road as the Bridge Fire burns in the Big Pines hills near Wrightwood, California, on September 12, 2024. A wildfire in the hills near Los Angeles exploded overnight, torching dozens of homes as its footprint swelled 1,000 percent by September 11, 2024. The Bridge Fire is one of three out-of-control blazes that have erupted around the United States' second-biggest city, fueled by a punishing heat wave and fanned by gusting winds, it has now has now swelled to over 51,000 acres, destroying at least 33 homes.
© Etienne LAURENT / AFP

 

Cleaner Kazuyoshi Taguchi and colleague Kazumi Minowa (not pictured) clean the right ear of the Ushiku Daibutsu giant Buddha statue in Ushiku of Ibaraki Prefecture on September 9, 2024. The 120-metre giant Buddha statue which stands northeast of Tokyo on Monday received an annual "soot removal" by veteran cleaners of more than 20 years.
© Philip FONG / AFP

 

A statue of a horse overlooks the burned area of the Bridge Fire in Pinon Hills, California, on September 11, 2024. A wildfire in the hills near Los Angeles exploded overnight, torching dozens of homes as its footprint swelled 1,000 percent by September 11, 2024. The Bridge Fire is one of three out-of-control blazes that have erupted around the United States' second-biggest city, fueled by a punishing heat wave and fanned by gusting winds.
© David SWANSON / AFP

 

A boy roller-blades past a destroyed building at a camp sheltering people displaced by conflict in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on September 8, 2024 amid the ongoing war in the Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas.
© Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP

 

Gisele Pelicot (C) arrives to attend a session of the trial of her former partner Dominique Pelicot accused of drugging her for nearly ten years and inviting strangers to rape her at their home in Mazan, a small town in the south of France, in Avignon, on September 11, 2024. A court in the southern town of Avignon is trying Dominique Pelicot, a 71-year-old retiree, for repeatedly raping and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape his heavily sedated wife in her own bed over a decade. Fifty other men, aged between 26 and 74, are also on trial for alleged involvement, in a case that has horrified France. The court proceedings, which runs until December, are open to the public at the request of Dominique Pelicot's ex-wife and victim.
© Christophe SIMON / AFP

 

Men collect debris on a flooded street after Super Typhoon Yagi hit Hai Phong, on September 8, 2024. Super Typhoon Yagi uproots thousands of trees, sweeps ships and boats out to sea and rips roofs off houses in northern Vietnam, after leaving a trail of destruction in southern China and the Philippines.
© Nhac NGUYEN / AFP

 

A worker sorts used plastic bottles at a recycling unit in Karachi on September 12, 2024.
© Asif HASSAN / AFP

 

People carry drinking water along a sandbank of Madeira River in Paraizinho Community, in Humaita, Amazonas state, northern Brazil, on September 7, 2024. More than a thousand Brazilian towns are on alert due to low humidity levels, comparable in some cases to deserts like the Sahara, while the country faces the worst drought in its history and the fires do not stop.
© Michael DANTAS / AFP