Located in Siberia, Laka Baikal is the largest freshwater lake on the planet that contains approximately 20 percent of the Earth’s freshwater. Apart from being the oldest lake in the world at over 25 million years old, Lake Baikal is also home to over two thousand varieties of flora and fauna, of which almost 1,600 are endemic to the lake. The water of Lake Baikal is renowned for being some of the clearest in the world. When the lake freezes during the winter, an amazing phenomena takes place: large shards of transparent ice form on the surface of the lake, giving the amazing appearance of turquoise ice.

Discovered in 1952 by French bio-speleologist Henri Coiffait, the waterfall and accompanying sinkhole were fully mapped in the 1980s by the Spéléo club du Liban. The cave is also known as the "Cave of the Three Bridges." Traveling from Laklouk to Tannourine one passes the village of Balaa, and the "Three Bridges Chasm" (in French "Gouffre des Trois Ponts") is a five-minute journey into the valley below where one sees three natural bridges, rising one above the other and overhanging a chasm descending into Mount Lebanon. During the spring melt, a 90–100-metre (300–330 ft) cascade falls behind the three bridges and then down into the 250-metre (820 ft) chasm. A 1988 fluorescent dye test demonstrated that the water emerged at the spring of Dalleh in Mgharet al-Ghaouaghir.

Nestled among the cocoa plantations of western Ivory Coast is a gold mine that does not feature on any official maps. It is not run by an industrial mining company, nor does it pay taxes to the central government. The unlicensed mine is a key part of a lucrative business empire headed by the deputy commander of the West African nation's elite Republican Guard, United Nations investigators allege. Here: A gold prospector sits and eats close to a soldier at a gold mine near the village of Gamina, in western Ivory Coast, March 18, 2015. (Photo by Luc Gnago/Reuters)

Tatyana Abramova, 33, plays with her home fox Plombir at her countryside house outside Siberian city of Novosibirsk on September 12, 2020. The official start of the Soviet experiment to better understand the domestication of animals by humans began in 1959, and was initiated by geneticists Dmitri Beliaiev and Lioudmila Trout on a farm in Akademgorodok, the scientific center of excellence in Siberia. Their primary objective was to domesticate foxes, to understand how the ancestor of wolves, another canine, evolved into a loyal and loving dog. And understand what this domestication tells us about the genetic evolution of species. (Photo by Alexander Nemenov/AFP Photo)

Peruvian shamans holding a figure of a Nino Jesus (Child Jesus) and a snake perform a ritual at the Rimac river to fight the negative effects of the Nino weather phenomena over Nature, in Lima, October 1, 2015. (Photo by Mariana Bazo/Reuters)

A woman poses for a photographer (not pictured) as a man sits next to her in downtown Catania, Italy April 20, 2016. (Photo by Tony Gentile/Reuters)

Dancer Beth Bracegirdle of the Balbir Singh Dance Company practises at the Billingham Forum pool in Billingham, UK on July 20, 2016, ahead of the 52nd Billingham international folklore festival of world dance in August. (Photo by Owen Humphreys/PA Wire)