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 Herero man holds the head of a freshly butchered cow, killed to supply meat for a funeral, 2012. (Photo by Jim Naughten, courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York)

A giant ham bread, a typical Venezuelan Christmas dish, is seen on a table during an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the biggest ham bread, in Caracas November 15, 2014. The giant hallaca more than 120 metres long. (Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

A selection of winning images from the Life in Another Light photo contest 2020, from Kolari Vision. Here: Lights and Shadows in the Dolomites, in the landscape infrared category. (Photo by Tomasz Grzyb/Kolari Vision)

Paris-born Polish film maker, Roman Polanski. (Photo by James Jackson/Evening Standard/Getty Images). January 1969

The moon shines through trees at a United Nations displacement camp at dusk on March 14, 2011 in Ras Jdir, Tunisia. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Tourists pay a visit to Edradour distillery on March 26, 2012 in Pitlochry, United Kingdom. (Photo by Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images)

Anne Hathaway arrives for the premiere of Twentieth Century Fox & Blue Sky Studios' “RIO” on April 10, 2011 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by John Sciulli/Getty Images)