FROM ICE bubbles to boiling lava, these photographs highlight the stunning shapes and patterns found in nature. The series of extraordinary images were taken by German software engineer Thorsten Scheuermann after he decided to examine his surroundings. A trip to the city of Kalapana in Hawaii, home to the Kilauea Volcano, provided Thorsten with the setting for his lava picture, while a visit to the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon offered him the opportunity to photograph ice bubbles up-close. The 37-year-old, now of Washington, USA, said: 'These are sights that can gain greater significance and have their beauty exposed when excluding everything else around them.'
SQUABBLING over the last piece of grain, these hungry squirrels are determined to stock up on as much food as possible .
These are the amazing close up pictures of North Korea's mass games - after photographers were previously banned from taking shots so close to the dazzling formation dances .
IN THE not so MISTY MOUNTAINS of Wiltshire, there lies an abandoned hobbit house .
It's incredible to think anyone could live in such horrendous squalor - yet two men have been prosecuted for keeping their homes in such revolting conditions that it was no longer fit for their animals .
POWERFUL bolts of lightning illuminate the night sky in an incredible autumn storm over the Sardinian coastline .
DIVING boffins fired harpoons into 30-foot-long whale sharks in a bid to put the sea-beasts on Google Maps .
A PENSIONER was left with a fractured jaw after being beaten and robbed outside his home in Birmingham last weekend .
GETTING behind the camera, this monkey practices his photography skills on his friends .
From vivid greens to glowing pinks, the colours of the aurora borealis fill the night sky above a snow covered Lapland .
At first glance what might look like ordinary rusty bridge and road railings, are in fact amazing works of art .