Stern section of the stricken container ship Rena is almost totally submerged, about 14 nautical miles (22 km) from Tauranga, on the east coast of New Zealand's North Island. (Reuters)

A Filipino woman who arrived from Syria holds onto a document as she sits in a bus from the Manila International Airport in suburban Paranaque City, south of Manila. (AP)

Bangladeshi Muslim pilgrims stand on boats and offer Friday prayer on the banks of the River Turag in Tongi, on the outskirts of Dhaka. (AP)

Scaffoldings frame the bronze statue of Pope John Paul II by Italian sculptor Oliviero Rainaldi at the start of its restoration in Rome. The Vatican has criticized the artist for creating a sculpture that some mockingly say looks more like Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini than Pope John Paul II. (AP)

Lebanese men seen in a mirror stand outside their cars in Sawfar, on the international road linking Beirut and Damascus. (AFP)

An idol of Buddha is silhouetted at the Tibetan Monastery in Lumbini, south-west of Kathmandu, Nepal. (Reuters)

An Indian Hindu Sadhu (holy man) smokes cannabis at Gangasagar, south of Kolkata. Thousands of Hindu pilgrims have begun to converge for the Gangasagar Mela on January 14, on the occasion of Makar Sankranti, a holy day of the Hindu calendar. (AFP)

A dressed monkey sits at a roadside to earn money from passers-by for his owner in Islamabad, Pakistan. (AP)

Senior veterinary surgeon Irina Berezina holds the 5-month-old North American puma cub named Arnaldo during one of his walks after quarantine at the Royev Ruchey Zoo, in the suburb of Russia's Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk. (Reuters)