The crowd around the tree as it is lit during the Christmas tree lighting ceremony at Fashion Island in Newport Beach, California. (AP)

Delegates attend the closing ceremony for the 18th Communist Party Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. (AP)

A walker passes pollarded trees, typical for the lower Rhine area, with yellow leafs on the river Rhine bank in Duisburg, Germany. (AP)

A toddler brandishes a red flag seen with demonstrators during a general strike in Porto, Portugal. The second general strike in eight months in Portugal, where the government intends to intensify austerity measures next year, left commuters stranded as trains ground to a virtual halt and the Lisbon subway shut down. (AP)

A Yemeni man, right, uses his mobile phone to take photos of his friend as they gather near the historical site of Bab al-Yemen in the the old city of Sana’a. (AP)

Belarusian Emergency Ministry employees cut up metal barrels that were used to hold pesticide and were taken from the ground at a burial site in a forest near the village of Novaya Strazha, some 200 kms (125 miles) southwest of Minsk. (AP)

Burma’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi scatters rose petals at the memorial of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in New Delhi. Suu Kyi is on a six-day visit to India. (Reuters)

Fruit bins burn at a packing store in Wolesley, about 120Km North of Cape Town, South Africa. The fire, which burnt more than 15000 wooden bins is thought to be connected to the farm workers strike. (AFP)

Fans queue in Leicester Square, London, after camping out for the night ahead of the UK premiere of the movie ‘The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2’ at a cinema. (AP)

Elementary school children wade through a river to go to school in the village of Nagari Koto Nan Tigo in Indonesia’s West Sumatra province. School children from around 46 families in the village are forced to cross the river every day because there is no bridge, villagers said. (Reuters)

Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), U.S. representative-elect for Illinois’ 8th Congressional District, is pictured with other female members of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington. Duckworth, a helicopter pilot in the Iraq war, who was shot down and lost both her legs in an attack, became the first Asian-American woman elected to Congress in Illinois. (Reuters)

Omani fans hold portraits of Sultan Qaboos bin Said as they attend the 2014 World Cup Asian zone group B qualifying football match between Oman and Japan in Muscat. (AFP)

The moment of totality of a solar eclipse at Cape Tribulation in Queensland state, Australia. Starting just after dawn, the eclipse cast its 150-kilometer (95-mile) shadow in Australia’s Northern Territory, crossed the northeast tip of the country and was swooping east across the South Pacific, where no islands are in its direct path. (AP//Tourism Queensland)

A warped house, inspired by drawings of Polish illustrator Jan Szancer, is pictured on the main street in Sopot, a Baltic sea resort, Poland. (AFP)