A police officer dressed in a Santa Claus costume, with the blue color representing the police, walks in Macacos slum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Pacifying Police Unit, or UPP, organized for Santa to visit the pacified slum to hand out Christmas gifts to young residents. (AP)
A Mayan priest lights a fire at the start of a ceremony at the Kaminal Juyu archeological site, in preparation for the Oxlajuj B’aktun, in Guatemala City Guatemala. The Oxlajuj B’aktun is on December 21, marking a new period in the Mayan calendar, an event only comparable in recent times with the new millennium in 2000. A chorus of books and movies tried to link the Mayan calendar to rumors of impending disasters ranging from rogue black holes and sun-storms to the idea that the Earth’s magnetic field could ‘flip’ on that date. Archaeologists says there is no evidence the Maya ever made any such prophesy. (AP)
View of an eruption at Tungurahua volcano, from the city of Banos, Ecuador. (AFP)
North Koreans bow before the statues of late leaders, Kim Il Sung (L) and Kim Jong Il, at Mansu Hill in Pyongyang. Sirens wailed for three minutes at noon Monday in honor of the first anniversary of the death of Kim Jong Il. (AP)
South Korean presidential candidate Park Geun-hy (C) of the ruling Saenuri Party thumbs up to her supporters during her election campaign rally in Suwon, south of Seoul. (AP)
View of a large neon heart that is lit above the entrance of Altiero Spinelli building of the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium. The heart – 15 meters (50 feet) high and weighing about 275 kilograms (605 pounds) – adorned the facade of the Czech Republic’s Prague Castle before the end of Vaclav Havel’s second presidential term in December 2002. (Reuters)
A Palestinian resident of the northern West Bank village of Madama argues with an Israeli soldier after Israeli forces came to intervene in clashes between Palestinian farmers and settlers from the Yitzhar settlement, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, near Nablus. (AFP)
A Tunisian man prays at the mausoleum of Mohamed Bouazizi, the young fruit and vegetable seller whose self-immolation kicked off the Arab Spring in the central town of Sidi Bouzid, as Tunisia marks the second anniversary of the start of the revolution. (AFP)
A boat carrying tourists travels past wishing spheres floating on the Singapore River. Over 100 elderly and youths from voluntary welfare organizations penned their New Year wishes onto wishing spheres before launching them into the Singapore River. Some 20,000 spheres have been released onto the Singapore River as part of the coming New Year Day celebrations. (Reuters)
An Indian army soldier rides through a wall of glass tubes during the flag down ceremony of Indo-ASEAN Car Rally in the northeastern Indian city of Guwahati. (Reuters)
This NASA image shows how about 3 million years ago in the nearby galaxy M33, a large cloud of gas spawned dense internal knots, which gravitationally collapsed to form stars. (AFP/NASA)
A meteor streaks past stars in the night sky over the village of Pesevici, near Zenica, 80 km from Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina (Reuters)
Visitors admire a creation by Chinese artist Zhang Enli during the Kochi-Muziris Biennale art exhibition in the southern Indian city of Kochi. (Reuters)
Turkish soldiers block protesters as they try to march to a court house near Istanbul. Thousands of Turkish secularists protested Thursday against the trial of nearly 300 people charged with attempting to overthrow Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted government. (Reuters)
Indian firefighters attempt to control a fire that broke out at an electronics market in the old quarter of New Delhi. (AFP)
Deer graze in the frozen undergrowth of Richmond Park in west London, England. (Reuters)
One World Trade Center stands in construction in New York as the first of 18 segments of a spire crowning it was hoisted into place. At 104 -storeys, it is the highest building in New York and when the 408-foot spire is complete, it will become the tallest in the western hemisphere. (AFP)
Snow covers roses left at a monument for Norwegian opera singer Kirsten Flagstad outside the Opera House in Oslo, Norway. (Reuters)
A policeman speaks by mobile phone at a souvenir shop decorated with suits of armor as he sheltered from heavy snow in Kiev, Ukraine. (AFP)
Egyptian boys sit in front of graffiti and Arabic, bottom. that reads, ‘regime you are afraid of a paint brush and a pen,’ in Tahrir Square in Cairo. The Egyptian military assumed joint responsibility with police for security and protecting state institutions until the results of a Dec. 15 constitutional referendum are announced. (AP)
A member of Egypt’s Republican Guard stands behind a barbed wire barricade, as the Guard blocks a road leading to the presidential palace in Cairo. (Reuters)
English pop-rock balladeer Elton John performs at the International Sport Arena in Guangzhou, in China’s southern Guangdong province. Elton John dedicated his Beijing show to Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei – a controversial move the artist said was unlikely to make the nation’s cultural minders happy. (AFP)
