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I only read Activate for the pictures, as they’re so good at picking out the best of Reuters. I caught up from issue 100 (late May), and here are 15 favorites.

1. “A woman dressed as a maiko (apprentice geisha) walks down a street wearing US Democratic Party candidate Barack Obama campaign buttons in Kyoto, Japan, on May 20, 2008.”
2. “White House staff, press, and Secret Service personnel sit outside a luxury trailer where US first lady Laura Bush flies in privacy inside a C-17 military aircraft, during a seven-hour flight from Afghanistan to Slovenia, on June 8, 2008.”
3. “People watch fireworks during the first edition of the Golden Nights International Pyrotechnic Festival in Bucharest, Romania, on July 5, 2008.”
4. “Firefighter Cody Cox of Colorado looks over a burned redwood forest while working to control hot spots during a wildfire in Big Sur, California, on July 7, 2008.”
5. “People walk across a copy of Russian-born expressionist Vassily Kandinsky’s painting ‘Weilheim-Marienplatz’ on the pavement of the market square in the southern Bavarian town of Weilheim, Germany, on July 28, 2008.”
6. “A magnet carries confiscated guns, to be thrown into a melting pot and destroyed, at an iron and steel plant in Montevideo, Uruguay, on July 24, 2008.”
7. “A reveller swims in tomato pulp during the annual tomatina (tomato fight) in the Mediterranean village of Buñol, Spain, on August 27, 2008.”
8. “A man carries drinking water through a flooded street in the northern Indian city of Lucknow, on August 27, 2008.”
9. “Informatics PhD student Sebastian Bitzer performs push-up exercises with a programmed Kondo humanoid robot, at the newly opened Informatics Forum building of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, on September 3, 2008.”
10. “A US soldier waves to residents at the newly opened Mithaq swimming pool in Baghdad’s Sadr City, on August 30, 2008.”
11. “A worker mows around a sculpture entitled ‘Innerscape on the Move’ by artist Zadok Ben-David at a Sotheby’s exhibition at Chatsworth House in England, on September 16, 2008.”
12. “A worker climbs among skylights on the ‘living roof’ — a 2.5 acre expanse of native California plants — at the California Academy of Sciences building in San Francisco, California, on September 18, 2008.”
13. “Museum of Tropical Queensland researcher Neil Bruce studies specimens in a lighted aquarium on Lizard Island Reef in far-northern Australia.”
14. “Spanish flamenco dancer Andres Marin performs as musician Llorenc Barber plays bells, during a rehearsal of ‘El Cielo de tu Boca’ at the Biennial of Flamenco in Seville, Spain, on September 22, 2008.”
15. “A Kazakh officer shows off a large map with a plan of the joint Kazakh-Russian military exercise at Otar range, some 93 miles west of Almaty, Kazakhstan, on October 3, 2008.”