Santa Claus (actually it’s ski teacher Alberto Ronchi) catches some air over the resort town of Madonna di Campiglio in northern Italy’s Dolomites.
Reuters
2 of 46
Destruction sits in the wake of a car bombing in the Pakistani town of Jamrud. Seventeen people were killed when the bomb exploded near a bus stop outside a local market.
AFP/Getty Images
3 of 46
A Palestinian resident of the West Bank village of Madama argues with an Israeli soldier tasked with intervening in clashes between Palestinian farmers and Israeli settlers.
AFP/Getty Images
4 of 46
Gong Shulin finishes a swim in the freezing waters of the Song Hua River in Harbin city, China. More than 500 winter swimmers belonging to a local club take a dip daily, believing the exercise is good for their health.
EPA
5 of 46
FDNY firefighters battle a three-alarm fire at a junkyard on Tuckerton Street in Queens.
Dennis Clark
6 of 46
A trumpeter plays from the Old Town tower over a traditional Christmas market in Prague’s Old Town Square.
AFP/Getty Images
7 of 46
Indonesia’s Mount Lokon, which has erupted 800 times since July, spews volcanic ash during another eruption.
Reuters
8 of 46
A Georgian orthodox priest unceremoniously dunks one of about 900 babies welcomed to the faith at a mass baptism in Tbilisi, Georgia.
EPA
9 of 46
Bahraini civil rights activist Seyyed Yousif al-Muhafda is surrounded by police as they storm a market in Manama. Al-Muhafda was one of at least six opposition supporters nabbed.
EPA
10 of 46
A city engineer monitors the seawall in Vancouver’s Stanley Park for damage as high tides and strong winds from a winter storm battered the
Reuters
11 of 46
A young boy frowns from the window of a Newtown, Conn., school bus as it passes the location of a funeral service for one of the victims of last week’s massacre. Most children in Newtown returned to classes for the first time today.
AFP/Getty Images
12 of 46
A Pakistani health worker administers polio vaccine to a child in Peshwar amid a nationwide vaccination campaign marred by the deaths of four female health workers. Local clerics and pro-Taliban lobby are reportedly spreading rumors the US-made drops are meant to sterilize Pakistanis.
EPA
13 of 46
Park Geun-hye, presidential candidate for South Korea’s ruling right-wing Saenuri Party, is mobbed by supporters at a rally in Busan ahead of Wednesday’s election.
Reuters
14 of 46
Qatari children don Amiri Guard uniforms as they march in a military parade in Doha marking their country’s National Day celebrations.
EPA
15 of 46
Victorious Syrian rebel fighters remove a poster of President Bashar Al-Assad from the front of a military hospital in Halfaya after capturing the facility from government troops.
Reuters
16 of 46
Displaced Afghan children warm themselves around a stove at a refugee camp in Kabul where German-run charity organization Johanniter distributed winter relief assistance to some 279 displaced families.
AP
17 of 46
These protestors have some coal for the stockings of those on Capitol Hill in Washington amid a demonstration against the “fiscal cliff” showdown and possible cuts to Medicare.
UPI
18 of 46
Green grass peeks through the snow (thanks to some help from a massive oak) on a hillside near Glide, Ore.
ZUMA Press
19 of 46
A Bahraini policeman nonchalantly sprays a Shiite Muslim woman with pepper spray during an anti-government demonstration in Manama.
AFP/Getty Images
20 of 46
A ring-tailed lemur can’t believe what Santa has left for him at his enclosure in the ZSL Whipsnade Zoo.
ZUMA Press
21 of 46
Members of the German armed forces rush to a presentation of the Patriot surface-to-air missile system for the media in Warbelow. Germany will provide the system to help protect NATO ally Turkey from Syrian attacks.
AFP/Getty Images
22 of 46
An Afghan commando stands guard at sunset over the Goshti district of Nangarhar province, which borders Pakistan.
AFP/Getty Images
23 of 46
Palestinian brides sit together during a mass wedding ceremony for 250 couples in Rafah, Gaza Strip.
Reuters
24 of 46
Germany’s Viktoria Rebensburg cries out in victory. Her giant slalom runs at the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup in Are, Sweden, won her the gold.
AFP/Getty Images
25 of 46
Workers unload the seven-foot-tall 13 that will signal the new year from high atop One Times Square in New York. For now, though, it’s headed to display at the Times Square Museum until Dec. 26.
Reuters
26 of 46
A girl throws away damaged blocks while unloading bricks at a brick factory in Lalitpur, Nepal.
Reuters
27 of 46
Sample-happy DJ Girl Talk drops baloons on the crowd massed around him at the S.S Coachella’s “Music Festival At Sea” in the Bahamas.
FilmMagic
28 of 46
Indian activists listen to a speech at a march outside the home of Delhi’s chief minister in response to the gang-rape of a student on a public bus.
AFP/Getty Images
29 of 46
Heavy frost coats the trees on the bank of the frozen Yenisei River, where the air temperature stands at about -15 degrees Fahrenheit.
Reuters
30 of 46
Confiscated weapons hang from a massive magnet before being destroyed at a foundry in Santiago, Chile, as part of a government arms-control program.
Reuters
31 of 46
Chelsea’s David Luiz comes in a little high with his challenge against Leeds United’s Luciano Becchio during their League Cup quarterfinal match in Leeds. Chelsea dominated, 5-1.
Reuters
32 of 46
A Soyuz rocket — carrying U.S. astronaut Thomas Marshburn, Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko and Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield to the International Space Station — begins its blastoff from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
AP
33 of 46
A child peers from between firefighters lining the road outside St. Rose of Lima church in Newtown, Conn., for a funeral procession for school shooting victim Daniel Gerard Barden.
AP
34 of 46
Get wet, Scorpio.
Getty Images
35 of 46
People, including a few in traditional Mayan gear, gather in front of the Kukulkan Pyramid in Chichen Itza, Mexico. With the end of the current cycle of the Mayan calendar at hand, one seer said: “We are preparing ourselves to receive a huge magnetic field straight from the center of the galaxy,”
AP
36 of 46
Early-morning commuters battle blinding snow along Interstate 70 near Lawrence, Kan. — the Midwest’s first major snowstorm of the season.
AP
37 of 46
Croatians gather in front of a museum in Zagreb to participate in an initiative by local artist Kresimir Tadija Kapulic to release into the night sky Chinese lanterns carrying Christmas and New Year.
AFP/Getty Images
38 of 46
The casket of Hawaiian Sen. Daniel Inouye lays in state inside the US Capitol Rotunda in Washington. Inouye was a decorated WWII veteran of and one of the longest-serving members of Congress.
Reuters
39 of 46
An unexploded ordnance sits ominously in the middle of the road in Ghouta, Syria.
Reuters
40 of 46
Santa-clad window washers work on the outside a hotel in Tokyo’s business district.
Reuters
41 of 46
Butcher Doug Nicholson prepares for a long winter’s nap with his stock — something of a tradition for the owner of C Nicholson & Son in Britain’s Whitley Bay since thieves attempted to abscond with his customers’ Christmas dinners a few years ago.
ZUMA Press
42 of 46
A Syrian man seeking to escape his country’s bloody civil war crosses illegally into Turkey through a gap in the border fence in Cilvegozu.
AP
43 of 46
Tourists cross a stone bridge over the Tuojiang River in Fenghuang, China.
Getty Images
44 of 46
Masked members of the left-wing Quebracho movement monitor a burning-tire roadblock in Buenos Aires during a demonstration marking the anniversary of the ’01 clashes that signified the height of the nation’s economic crisis.
AFP/Getty Images
45 of 46
Pictures of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting adorn a bouquet of roses at a roadside memorial in Newtown, Conn.
AFP/Getty Images
