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)