With a presence in nearly every city and town across Iran, the paramilitary Basij volunteer corps has an ever-increasing influence on life in the Islamic Republic. Authorities created the Basij, which means mobilization in Persian, just after the country's 1979 Islamic Republic. It is part of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard. Photo: In this Thursday, August 22, 2013 photo, a female member of the Basij paramilitary militia aims a rifle as a trainer looks over her shoulder in Tehran, Iran. (Photo by Ebrahim Noroozi/AP Photo)

Celebrities including singer Nicole Scherzinger and actor Simon Pegg have been snapped by top photographer Rankin for an Oxfam campaign. All in all, a dozen well-known faces have been captured in various poses to highlight the charity's Lift Lives for Good campaign. The fundraising drive, launched at the start of the year, aims to shine a light on the work done by the charity to help poor people around the world. Photo: Undated handout photo issued by Oxfam of Caroline Flack who took part in a photo shoot with top photographer Rankin for Oxfam's Lift Lives for Good campaign. (Photo by Rankin/PA Wire)

A man rides a horse at a playground on a hill in Kabul April 19, 2015. (Photo by Mohammad Ismail/Reuters)

Romanian riot police detain a man, face covered in blood, after minor clashes erupted during a protest in Bucharest, Romania, Thursday, February 2, 2017. Brief clashes broke out between protesters and police in Romania¹s capital, as tens of thousands of people protested for the second night a government decision to decriminalise official misconduct. (Photo by Vadim Ghirda/AP Photo)

A British soldier from 3 Commando Brigade looks through the sight of his sniper rifle at Camp Gibraltar February 24, 2003 near Kuwait City, Kuwait. (Photo by Ian Waldie/Getty Images)

A country music fan cools off in the wind on the second day of the Stagecoach country music festival in Indio, California April 26, 2014. (Photo by Mike Blake/Reuters)

Ebiowei, 48, carries an empty oil container on his head to a place where it would be filled with refined fuel at an illegal refinery site near river Nun in Nigeria's oil state of Bayelsa November 27, 2012. Locals in the industry say workers can earn $50 to $60 a day. Thousands of people in Nigeria engage in a practice known locally as “oil bunkering” – hacking into pipelines to steal crude then refining it or selling it abroad. The practice, which leaves oil spewing from pipelines for miles around, managed to lift around a fifth of Nigeria's two million barrel a day production last year according to the finance ministry. (Photo by Akintunde Akinleye/Reuters)

A 20 metre high spiral staircase in a tower used as an emergency exit, is seen inside a Federal Reserve bank (Bundesbank) bunker, prior to the bunker's official opening to the public in Cochem, Germany, March 18, 2016. West Germany's Central Bank (Deutsche Bundesbank) stored some 20 billion German marks of emergency notes in two underground bunkers, one in Frankfurt the other in Cochem, between 1964-1988 during the cold war. (Photo by Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters)