Afghanistan, published by Taschen later July, is a retrospective portfolio of the Magnum photographer Steve McCurry’s most striking images of the country, from 1979 to 2016. Here: Kunar province, 1980. Armed mujahideen carry animal skins to use as inflatable buoys to cross rapids. (Photo by Steve McCurry/Taschen/Magnum Photos/The Guardian)

“Cassowaries are large, flightless birds related to emus and (more distantly) to ostriches, rheas, and kiwis”, writes Olivia Judson in the September issue of National Geographic magazine. How large? People-size: Adult males stand well over five foot five and top 110 pounds. Females are even taller, and can weigh more than 160 pounds. Dangerous when roused, they’re shy and peaceable when left alone. But even birds this big and tough are prey to habitat loss. The dense New Guinea and Australia rain forests where they live have dwindled. Today cassowaries might number 1,500 to 2,000. And because they help shape those same forests – by moving seeds from one place to another – “if they vanish”, Judson writes, “the structure of the forest would gradually change” too. (Photo by Christian Ziegler/National Geographic)

Twenty-year-old women dressed in kimonos walk during sunset after the “Coming-of-Age Day” celebration Yokohama Arena in Yokohama on January 11, 2021 under a state of emergency over the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. (Photo by Philip Fong/AFP Photo)

A musher races with his dogs during a sled dog European Championship in Venek November 22, 2014. (Photo by Laszlo Balogh/Reuters)

A Pakistani child, whose family was displaced by 2010 floods from a village in Pakistan's Sindh province, sits on a wooden cart outside her family's makeshift home, in a slum on the outskirts of Islamabad, on February 8, 2013. (Photo by Muhammed Muheisen/AP Photo)

The Virgin of El Rocio is carried by pilgrims during a procession around the shrine of El Rocio in Almonte, southern Spain, May 25, 2015. Every spring hundreds of thousands of devotees converge at a shrine to pay homage to the Virgin del Rocio during an annual pilgrimage which combines religious fervour and festive colour. (Photo by Marcelo del Pozo/Reuters)

A women sell food under the wing of a plane wreckage being used as housing in M'Poko Internally Displaced Persons camp in Bangui, Central African Republic on Saturday, February 13, 2016. The M'Poko IDP camp, just outside the capitol's airport, currently houses close to 20,000 people displaced due to the ongoing conflict in Central African Republic. (Photo by Jane Hahn/The Washington Post)