There is the widest geographical spread we have ever had in this issue's galleries feature.

The eyes of the world have been on the World Cup of football (soccer in the United States), staged this year in South Africa.

But the lens of freelance Samantha Reinders was focused elsewhere - on the shanty towns of Cape Town.

How much difference, she wondered, would some of the money spent on this magnificent sporting spectacle have made if it had been used to improve the lives of the country's poor and denied?

In Turkey, freelance Tolga Sezgin spent time on the banks of the River Tigris near the ancient city of Hasankeyf.

Here the government planned a new dam and hydro-electric installation. But that was more than thirty years ago and controversy has surrounded the project ever since.

Tolga met and photographed many of the local people whose lives will be changed dramatically if the dam is ever built.

Palestinian freelance photographer Laura Boushnak wanted to highlight the casualties of war but, in her case, sometime after the fighting was done.

She visited many of those injured and maimed by the thousands of cluster bombs left behind in Lebanon after the Hezbollah-Israeli war there in 2006.

Tammy David is from the Philippines but - during a holiday in the United States - became aware of an organisation which exists to help women suffering from what doctors call "morbid obesity" come to terms with their condition.

She went to the organization's annual convention and persuaded some of the ladies there to be photographed, even though they are usually far too shy because they of their size.

Finally, World Press Photo seminar attendee Dimitris Galanakis, working with a friend Giorgia Galanoy, wanted to record how one street in their native city of Athens was changing.

They found that industry, which had dominated the section of the city on which they were concentrating, was disappearing - to be replaced by buildings mainly for entertainment and consumerism.