A child runs towards Mohamed Maarouf, 28, as he walks with a sack of gifts while dressed in Saint Nicholas (Santa Claus) costume in a slum near the centre of Iraq's southern city of Basra on December 24, 2021. (Photo by Hussein Faleh/AFP Photo)

A customer buys a box of bullits and a target of Osama Bin Laden October 3, 2001 at Blue Ridge Arsenal in Chantilly, VA. Guns sales have risen across America since the September 11th terrorist attacks. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

A pug dressed as Yoda from the movie Star Wars walks along the runway at the 9th Annual Pug Parade on February 25, 2006 in Bradenton, Florida. 117 pugs competed for 10 prizes in 6 categories. Proceeds from the event benefit the Sarasota County Humane Society. (Photo by Phillippe Diederich/Getty Images)

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has spent the last six years working on a giant aircraft capable of launching rockets to space. Today, his company Stratolaunch Systems literally rolled that plane out of its hangar in the Mojave Desert for the first time ever.

Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, is locked under the rule of extremists from the Islamic State group trying to purge it of everything they see as contradicting their stark vision of Islam. A trove of photographs now housed at the Library of Congress offers a glimpse of a different Mosul – before wars, insurgency, sectarian strife and now radicals' rule. The scenes were taken in the autumn of 1932 by staff from the American Colony Photo Department during a visit to Iraq at the end of the British mandate. (Photo by AP Photo)

A man takes a photograph of his friend as thick smoke rises from a fire, which broke out at oil wells set ablaze by Islamic State militants before they fled the oil-producing region of Qayyara, Iraq, January 28, 2017. (Photo by Muhammad Hamed/Reuters)

A model wears a face mask to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, designed by Iraqi designer Ziad Tariq at his workshop in Basra, Iraq, Monday, July 20, 2020. (Photo by Nabil al-Jurani/AP Photo)

A man dressed as Santa Claus arrives to distribute toys on children living in an impoverished neighbourhood in Iraq's southern city of Basra on December 26, 2020. (Photo by Hussein Faleh/AFP Photo)