A woman takes part in a carnival parade as part of New Year's Eve festivities in San Jose, Costa Rica, 27 December 2023. (Photo by Jeffrey Arguedas/EPA/EFE)
Residents observe a police officer take up position during an operation at the Mare slums complex in Rio de Janeiro March 25, 2014. The federal troops have taken control of security operations in Mare slums complex to help quell a surge in violent crime following attacks by drug traffickers on police posts in three slums on the north side of the city, government officials said. (Photo by Ricardo Moraes/Reuters)
A female army recruit attends a base training at the armored battalion in Setermoen, northern Norway on August 11, 2016. Norway has become the first NATO member to have compulsory conscription for women as well as men in the army. Recently, the first batch of army recruits joined the ranks in The Armored Battalion in the Norwegian Army located in Setermoen in northern Norway. (Photo by Kyrre Lien/AFP Photo)
Afghan militia men stand near to the dead body of a beheaded Islamic State group loyalist in the Achin district of Nangarhar province east of Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, December 27, 2015. An Afghan official says fighters for the Islamic State group and a militia controlled by a prominent lawmaker have beheaded a total of eight men in tit-for-tat revenge killings in the eastern border province of Nangarhar. (Photo by Mohammad Anwar Danishyar/AP Photo)
Lamas dance during the “Tiaoqian” praying ceremony at the Youning Temple on February 8, 2009 in Huzhu County of Qinghai Province, China. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)
An attendee dances at the start of the “Big Goth Dance Party” during the Porcupine Freedom Festival, or PorcFest, the Free State Project's annual summer gathering in Lancaster, NH on Wednesday, June 25, 2014. (Photo by Matthew Cavanaugh/The Washington Post)
Artist Robert Mickelson is an expert sculptor whose medium of choice happens to be glass. There's something so pure and serene about glass. Perhaps it's the material's transparency coupled with its fragility. Whatever it may be, Mickelson knows how to accentuate the element's most appealing qualities. Each of his life-like sculptural pieces exude realism with a refined quality.
Chinese archaeologists announced the discovery of 110 life-sized terracotta warriors, guarding the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, China's first emperor.
Photo: Archaeologists work on a terracotta warrior in the third excavation of pit one at the Terracotta Warriors and Horses Museum in Xi'an in northwest China's Shaanxi province Saturday, June 9, 2012. (Photo by AP)