Through the lens: The Citizen's Picture Editors select the best news photographs from South Africa and around the world.
A devotee hurls fire in a temple as part of a ritual marking the conclusion of a religious procession for the Gajan festival in North 24 Parganas district, West Bengal, India on April 13, 2025. Hundreds of devoted worshippers come together to engage in intense acts of devotion, seeking the blessings of the Hindu god Shiva. Celebrated with passionate rituals and symbolic acts of penance, the Gajan festival marks the end of the Bengali calendar year and is believed to grant the wishes of those who take part. Picture: Matrix Images / Rupak De Chowdhuri
“Flying car” takes flight for the first time in front of visitors who visited the venue of the Osaka Kansai Expo at Yumeshima in Konohana Ward, Osaka City, Osaka Prefecture on April 14, 2025. A demonstration flight of the next generation vehicle, the flying car, was held. Although the car was unveiled on the first day, the 13th, the flight was cancelled due to bad weather. The veachle’s demo flight will be conducted using a single-seater HEXA aircraft made by LIFT, a company developed by Marubeni and others, and is scheduled to continue until June 18th. The Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Japan will run until October 13th, with the theme “Designing Future Society for Our Lives” and the number of visitors is expected to be 28.2 million there. (Photo by Masanori Inagaki / Yomiuri / The Yomiuri Shimbun via AFP) A woman crafts small dishes out of clay at Thanh Ha Pottery Village in Hoi An, Vietnam, 08 April 2025. Thanh Ha is a traditional pottery-making village about 3 kilometers West of Hoi An Ancient Town. Pottery-making is a long-standing traditional trade in Thanh Ha, unique to Hoi An and the entire region. Sculptors in Thanh Ha village make pottery using a high-adhesive yellow clay, found in nearby fields at depths of 50-100 centimeters. A number of houses in the village offer the chance to make clay cups or small dishes, as well as the option to buy any of the many products for sale in the village, used for purposes in daily life and cultural practices, such as jars, vases, pots, incense burners, or candle holders. Picture: Matrix Images / Diego Azubel Tulips bloom at Oak Park in central Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, 13 April 2025. Picture: EPA-EFE/IGOR KOVALENKO A Thai Buddhist monk is splashed with water by residents and tourists during a rite to mark the annual Songkran festival, the Thai traditional New Year celebrations also known as the water festival in Bangkok, Thailand, 13 April 2025. Thailand celebrates the Songkran festival by splashing water as a symbolic sign of cleansing and washing away the sins and bad luck from the old year. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) inscribed Thailand’s Songkran Festival in the list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Picture: EPA-EFE/RUNGROJ YONGRIT People who fled the Zamzam camp for the internally displaced after it fell under RSF control, queue for food rations in a makeshift encampment in an open field near the town of Tawila in war-torn Sudan’s western Darfur region on April 13, 2025. Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) announced on April 13 that it had taken control of the famine-hit Zamzam camp, home to over 500,000 refugees according to the United Nations, after two days of heavy shelling and gunfire, amid its ongoing war with the country’s army and affiliated forces. (Photo by AFP) Penitents of the Brotherhood of The Peace take part in the procession of Jesus of Victory during Palm Sunday in Seville, Spain, 13 April 2025. Picture: EPA-EFE/Raul Caro Law enforcement officers on the N12 highway, Slovo Park, in Johannesburg, 14 April 2024, during the provincial department’s Easter Road Safety Campaign activation. Picture: Nigel Sibanda/The Citizen The Cambridge crew react to their win over Oxford at the finish of the 79th women’s boat race between Oxford University and Cambridge University on the River Thames in London on April 13, 2025. (Photo by HENRY NICHOLLS / AFP) Tourists visit Sintra palace in Lisbon, Portugal on April 07, 2025. The Sintra National Palace, also known as the Town Palace, was among the palaces used by the Portuguese Royal Family almost up to the end of the Monarchy, in 1910.Its construction began in the 15th century by an unknown architect. Its features are characteristic of Medieval, Gothic, Manueline, Renaissance and Romantic architecture. The palace is considered an example of organic architecture, an ensemble of apparently distinct forms, which nonetheless come together as a whole, through courtyards, stairs, corridors and galleries. It houses the largest set of Mudéjar tiles in Portugal, and its kitchen is crowned by two large conjoined chimneys: an icon of Sintra.t. Picture: Matrix Images / Khaled Elfiqi A supporter of Gabon’s junta chief Brice Oligui Nguema blows on a whistle while holding a Gabon flag after he won the presidential election in Libreville on April 13, 2025. Gabon’s junta chief Brice Oligui Nguema has won the presidential election with 90.35 percent of the vote, according to provisional results released on April 13, 2025 by the interior ministry. His main rival, Alain-Claude Bilie By Nze, took 3.02 percent of the vote and six other candidates failed to win more than 1 percent in elections that marked a return to democracy. Turn-out was 70.4 percent, said the ministry. (Photo by Nao Mukadi / AFP) An Ethiopian faithful joins the traditional Palm Sunday Mass at the Franciscan school and church in Beirut, Lebanon, 13 April 2025. The Orthodox and Maronite Churches in Lebanon celebrate Palm Sunday, which symbolically marks the biblical account of the entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem, signaling the start of the Holy Week before Easter. Picture: EPA-EFE/WAEL HAMZEH An Ethiopian Christian attends a mass on Palm Sunday at Saint Simon the Tanner Monastery on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt, 13 April 2025. The Orthodox Church marks Palm Sunday, which symbolically marks the biblical account of the entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem, signaling the start of the Holy Week before Easter. Picture: EPA-EFE/MOHAMED HOSSAM UAE Team Emirate’s Slovenian rider Tadej Pogacar showers at the end of the 122nd edition of the Paris-Roubaix one-day classic cycling race, 259,2 km between Compiegne and Roubaix, northern France on April 13, 2025. (Photo by JEFF PACHOUD / AFP) A man on a scooter sells traditional Chinese snack tanghulu outside a shopping mall in Shenzhen, in southern China’s Guangdong Province on April 14, 2025. Markets on April 14 welcomed a US tariffs reprieve for electronics, but President Donald Trump warned no country would get “off the hook” in his trade war — especially China. (Photo by JADE GAO / AFP) Morning moonset over Giewont in the Tatra Mountains, south Poland, 13 April 2025, during the Full Pink Moon. Picture: EPA-EFE/GRZEGORZ MOMOT MORE: 24 hours in pictures, 10 April 2025
