A trader wearing ‘Happy New Year’ glasses works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York. (AP)

A lightshow illuminates the Summer Palace during a new year count-down event in Beijing, China. (AFP)

A mosque silhouetted against sunset in Cairo, Egypt. (AP)

People celebrate the first public countdown to the New Year in Rangoon, Burma. Some 50,000 people were expected to gather at the revered golden Shwedagon Pagoda for the city’s first public countdown to the New Year and fireworks. (AFP)

A woman harvests sugarcane at the Montelimar sugar mill on the outskirts of Managua, Nicaragua. (Reuters)

Worshipers strike a giant bell to celebrate the New Year at Zojoji Buddhist temple in Tokyo, Japan. (AP)

Fireworks explode behind the Opera House during the New Year celebrations in Sydney, Australia. (AP)

Young monks have their meal in the changlie monastery in Aba prefecture, Sichuan province, China. (Tongqi Huang/China/VOA reader)

Fireworks explode in front of the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre over the Victoria Harbor as celebrating the 2013 New Year in Hong Kong. (AP)

Central African Republic soldiers patrol in a street of Bangui. Authorities have enacted a curfew ahead of a possible rebel move on the city. (AFP)

The Hubble Space Telescope captures a spectacular image of the bright star-forming ring that surrounds the heart of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1097. In this image, the larger-scale structure of the galaxy is barely visible: its comparatively dim spiral arms, which surround its heart in a loose embrace, reach out beyond the edges of this frame. (NASA/ESA/Hubble)

Denver Broncos’ head coach John Fox (C) gets a cooler poured over his head by Wesley Woodyard (R) and Demaryius Thomas (rear, partially obscured) after winning their NFL football game against the Kansas City Chiefs in Denver, Colorado, USA, December 30, 2012. (Reuters)

Fireworks explode near the Malaysia’s landmark Petronas Twin Towers during New Year celebrations in Kuala Lumpur. (Reuters)