View the entire collection of winning images from the 56th World Press Photo Contest. The winners were selected from over 100,000 images submitted to the contest.
Young women risk their lives to play basketball in Somalia. Even though Somalia’s UN-backed government has regained control of Mogadishu, al-Qaeda-linked militants are still active in the city. Al-Shabaab and other radical Islamist groups consider women playing sport to be un-Islamic.
Sumo wrestling in Japan has a tradition that dates back centuries, yet the sport—which demands total dedication and extreme rigor—is attracting the lowest number of young recruits for more than half a century.
Let Wei is an unarmed Burmese martial art, similar to the forms of kickboxing popular in Thailand and Cambodia. National champion Lone Chaw (36) is a folk hero in Myanmar and in 2007 opened a gym to pass on his knowledge to a younger generation of fighters.