A member of the “Exit Point” amateur rope-jumping group jumps from a 44-metre high (144-feet high) waterpipe bridge in the Siberian Taiga area outside Krasnoyarsk, September 28, 2014. Fans of rope-jumping, a kind of extreme sport involving a jump from a high point using an advanced system of amortization including mountaineering and rope safety equipment, attended the Golden Autumn group's jumping season. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

“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)

A love story with two log choppers. “In 1993, I was working on a project about life in the Olomouc region of Czechoslovakia. One day, I came to the village of Dlouhá Loučka-Křivá and went into a courtyard where I saw two old people, a husband and wife, sawing firewood for winter. They were working quietly, concentrating. I watched them fetch a beam from a wrecked barn, but they didn’t discuss how they planned to carry it to the saw. The woman faced one way, the man the other. When they realised, the woman eventually turned and followed her husband. The picture I took is the picture of many relationships – when each partner wants something different, but they have to come to an agreement, pull together eventually”. (Photo by Jindrich Streit)

Staff prepare for Halloween at the Forbidden Corner tourist attraction, a labyrinth in the heart of Tupgill Park, in the Yorkshire Dales on October 19, 2022. (Photo by James Glossop/The Times)

A Chicago Police Officer runs toward gunfire as looters break into downtown stores in the early hours of the morning on August 10, 2020. (Photo by RMV/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

American rapper Megan Jovon Ruth Pete, known professionally as Megan Thee Stallion promotes a new music video with a topless photo in the first decade of September 2022. (Photo by theestallion/Instagram)

Ellie Alderson partner of Ollie Watkins (ENG) and Lewis Capaldi the wife of Dean Henderson (ENG) Aine May Kennedy partner of Conor Gallagher (ENG) Megan Davison wife of Jordan Pickford (ENG) at Arena Aufschalke, Gelsenkirchen, Germany on June 16, 2024. (Photo by Moritz Muller/Alamy Live News)

An injured demonstrator hugs another as riot police officers prevent them from attending a Pride parade, which was banned by local authorities, in central in Ankara, Turkey on June 29, 2021. (Photo by Cagla Gurdogan/Reuters)