With a presence in nearly every city and town across Iran, the paramilitary Basij volunteer corps has an ever-increasing influence on life in the Islamic Republic. Authorities created the Basij, which means mobilization in Persian, just after the country's 1979 Islamic Republic. It is part of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard. Photo: In this Thursday, August 22, 2013 photo, a female member of the Basij paramilitary militia aims a rifle as a trainer looks over her shoulder in Tehran, Iran. (Photo by Ebrahim Noroozi/AP Photo)

A mysterious sea creature with some frighteningly sharp teeth washed up on a beach in England last week, where David Mackland snapped these photos. A Grind TV story reports that Mackland estimated the creature to be about 4-5 feet in length. (Photo by David Mackland/OurCarnoustie)

A devotee carrying an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, jumps into the Sabarmati river to immerse the idol on the last day of the 10-day-long Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Ahmedabad, India, September 27, 2015. (Photo by Amit Dave/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)

Shemika Charles limbos under her car at Niagara Falls State Park on May 28, 2015 in Buffalo, New York. A world record holding limbo queen thinks she has become the first person to shimmy under a car. Shemika Charles amazed herself and onlookers when she bent over backwards to get underneath the SUV earlier this week. The supple 22-year-old entered the record books in 2010 when she limboed down to an incredible eight and a half inches – the height of a beer bottle. She trains for up to four hours a day to keep her body in peak condition and now travels around America performing with her family. However, regular performances put an incredible strain on her body and she sees a chiropractor once a week to have her hips realigned. Her mother was also a successful limbo dancer in her home country of Trinidad and Tobago but had to give up due to injury. (Photo by Ruaridh Connellan/Barcroft USA)

Race fans watch from the grandstands as Air Force One circles the Daytona International Speedway as President Donald Trump makes his arrival to attend the NASCAR Daytona 500 auto race at Daytona International Speedway, Sunday, February 16, 2020, in Daytona Beach, Fla. (Photo by Jim Topper/AP Photo)

Israeli security forces arrest an Ultra Orthodox Jewish man as they close a synagogue in the Mea Shearim Ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood in Jerusalem, on March 30, 2020, amid efforts to curb the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. (Photo by Ahmad Gharabli/AFP Photo)

Fox cubs venture out from their den under a popular boardwalk alongside Lake Ontario during the global outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on April 22, 2020. (Photo by Carlos Osorio/Reuters)