A Brazilian police sharp-shooter secures a position atop a school building in front of the Rocinha shantytown, where Rio de Janeiro’s government started the installation of the Pacifier Police Unit project. Brazilian authorities stepped up a pacification drive in Rio’s largest shantytown, nearly doubling the police presence in a hillside favela overlooking the city’s most famous beaches. (AFP)

Men wearing cardboard hats, depicting Apple’s new iPhone 5, wait for the release of the phone near Apple Store Ginza in Tokyo, Japan. (Reuters)

On a cool autumn evening, a mountain lake in the Altai Republic, Russia, carries the reflections of high mountain slopes where the first snows of winter have already fallen. These high altitudes are home to the snow leopard and its prey, the Argali sheep, the world’s largest mountain sheep. (Vera Undritz/VOA)

Bangladeshi fire fighters and residents try to control a fire at the Begunbari slum in Dhaka. The cause of the fire in which at least 500 shanties were gutted is not known. (AP)

African penguins gather to keep warm as others are fed sardines by staff at the South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds after they were recently found covered in oil on Robben Island, Cape Town, South Africa. Some two hundred penguins were found covered in oil following a spillage by a stricken bulk carrier. (AP)

Philippine National Police officers and SWAT members try to arrest resisting informal settlers during demolition of their shanties at suburban Taguig city, east of Manila, Philippines. (AP)

Morning fog raises from vineyards near Escherndorf, southern Germany. (AFP)

Bubble artist Melody Yang looks through bubbles that she created on a table during a demonstration in Vancouver, British Columbia. The demonstration was prior to her father Fan attempting a world record for the number of people inside a bubble. (Reuters)