Boys pan for gold on a riverside at Iga Barriere, 25 km (15 miles) from Bunia, in the resource-rich Ituri region of eastern Congo February 16, 2009. Ituri is one of many areas of the country to have experienced bitter ethnic conflict between rival tribes in recent years. Massacres have left tens of thousands dead. It is this fighting that led U.S. authorities to take the unprecedented step of naming Congo in section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank financial regulation act, which says U.S.-listed companies that source gold, tungsten, tantalum and tin from Congo or its neighbours must assure the U.S. stock exchange regulator that their business is not helping fund conflict. (Photo by Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters)

Environmental activist Rob Greenfield walks around Beverly Hills, California on May 16, 2022 wearing a suit filled with every piece of trash he has generated living and consuming like a typical American for one month to raise awareness about how much garbage just one person generates. (Photo by Robyn Beck/AFP Photo)

Spectators shoot video with his their cellphones as Aerosparx Grob109b motor gliders launch fireworks while performing aerobatics at the end of Oeiras Valley Air Show, an aerobatics festival integrated in the Portugal Air Summit'22, over Santo Amaro Beach on October 16, 2022 in Oeiras, Portugal. The festival included various aerobatics performances with airplanes from the Air Race Championship, a Supermarine Spitfire, and air shows by former world champions Ramón Alonso, Castor Fantoba, Jorge Macias, Luís Garção, Quijote, Jacobstars and The Raven Team. It also had an overflight of the Portuguese Air Force F16s and, at the end of the afternoon, Aerosparx team illuminating Santo Amaro water mirror with fireworks launched from the airplanes' wings. (Photo by Horacio Villalobos#Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)

A group of frogs hitched a lift on a passing crocodile. Clearly comfortable in the croc’s company the amphibians wait patiently for their chauffeur to move. But the bemused crocodile doesn’t appear to be going anywhere in a hurry. The hilarious images were captured by Tanto Yensen, 36, from Jakarta, Indonesia. (Photo by Tanto Yensen/Media Drum World Photo Agency)

Iraqi army soldiers attempt to move their truck stuck in the mud near the village of Al-Boutha al-Sharqiyah, west of Mosul, on December 2, 2016, during a broad offencive by Iraq forces to retake the main hub city from Islamic State group jihadists. (Photo by Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP Photo)

A period of relative stability has put the Iranian capital No1 on the list of world cities that have achieved biggest improvements in liveability over the past five years, as calculated by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The “most improved” top 10 contains some unexpected names. So, eg, the fourth place: Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Latest ranking: 128; Ranking five years ago: 131; Five-year index movement: 3.8%. Here: A supporter of Ivory Coast president Alassane Ouattara campaigns in a market in the city’s Koumassi quarter. (Photo by Sia Kambou/AFP Photo)

A dinosaur robot produced by Tyco Electronics Japan G.K. is controlled by a smartphone at CEATEC (Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies) Japan 2014 held at at Makuhari Messe in Chiba, east of Tokyo, Japan, 07 October 2014.With a Sharp Aquos ZETA mobile phone model, users can make the 6.5-meter (21 feet, 4 inches) long, 2.1-meter (6 feet, 11 inches) tall dinosaur robot to walk forward and backward, jump, move its head, hands and legs up and down, left and right, open and close its mouth by touching the screen panel and make it bark by shaking the handheld. (Photo by Kimimasa Mayama/EPA)

In this May 4, 2014 photo, a miner holds an amalgam of mercury and gold he mined after working a 28-hour shift at an illegal gold mining process, in La Pampa, in Peru's Madre de Dios region. Thousands of artisanal gold miners sweat through the long shifts and endure, for a few grams of gold, the perils of collapsing earth, limb-crushing machinery and the toxic mercury used to bind gold flecks. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)