PERCHING on top of a gate, this young barn swallow waits patiently for his mum to return with dinner .

An Italian photographer travelled to northern India where he visited poverty stricken suburbs and captured ordinary people in a series of intimate and expressive portraits .

A pair of adorable polar bear cubs play-fight with each other in the Alaskan snow .

DIVING boffins fired harpoons into 30-foot-long whale sharks in a bid to put the sea-beasts on Google Maps .

THIS UNUSUAL collaboration between a mother and her two-year-old daughter makes for some stunning works of art .

FROM THE world famous Girl with a Pearl Earring painting to a jaguar in the grass, these incredible drawings are created from coloured ballpoint pens .

BEHIND the doors of this building, with its stacks of mattresses and discarded remains of wheelchairs, lies another victim of austerity cuts .

AFTER splashing out on sexy black lingerie, Paige Way was excited for a romantic night away at a swanky hotel with her boyfriend .

This is the moment a nimble red fox and a lumbering Alaskan brown bear were locked in a tense stand-off .

A good samaritan who came to the aid of a rape victim has told how they were turned away from the Salvation Army because "they only help men" .

SWIMMING next to 40 tonne whales, dare-devil divers take the plunge with these gentle giants of the sea .

A baby girl has become the youngest British patient to receive a life-saving cardiac operation after her heart swelled to twice its normal size within days of her birth .