Students from the Liceo Parini school celebrate the end of term in Milan, Italy on June 6, 2024. (Photo by Marco Ottico/LaPresse/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Coral grows in a sculpture at the MUSZIF underwater museum in Isla Fuerte, Bolivar department, Colombia, on May 22, 2024. In the Colombian Caribbean an underwater museum protects coral reefs threatened by tourism and climate change. (Photo by Luis Acosta/AFP Photo)

Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner are seen filming at the “One Night Only” set in SoHo, Manhattan on November 07, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)

“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)

Devotees ride on the roof of a train as they return to the city after attending the final prayers on the first phase of Bishwa Ijtema in Dhaka January 11, 2015. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims congregated in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka as the first phase of this year's Bishwa Ijtema, one of the biggest Islamic gatherings in the world after the Haj in Saudi Arabia, came to an end. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

Villagers look on as Mount Sinabung volcano spews thick volcanic ash, as seen from Beganding village in Karo, North Sumatra province, on May 19, 2017. Sinabung roared back to life in 2010 for the first time in 400 years. After another period of inactivity, it erupted once more in 2013 and has remained highly active since. (Photo by Ivan Damanik/AFP Photo)

A child, from Municipal school Parana, poses during the project “Fencing School” in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, March 30, 2016. Children in Rio de Janeiro lift their sights and their swords to new idols, as a round of fencing workshops takes to public schools. The International Fencing Federation, together with the Brazilian and state federations, will reach 40 public schools in March and April. The aim is to whip up a following for the Olympic sport, little known in the soccer-mad nation, as Rio sets the stage for the Summer Games in August. (Photo by Sergio Moraes/Reuters)

British Waters Wide Angle category runner-up. Grass snake swimming along a garden pond by Jack Perks (UK)in Nottinghamshire, UK. “I’m always on the lookout for unusual freshwater subjects and grass snakes are a species I’ve been after for years. I was told about a pond where the odd grass snake hangs around the lilly pads for frogs. I put my drysuit on and got into the water and could see one slithering along the surface. Slowly making my way towards it with my head only just poking above I got the spilt shot”. (Photo by Jack Perks/Underwater Photographer of the Year 2019)