October 8, 2013

A Sikh youth performs an act of fire as he displays martial art skills during a religious procession on the eve of birth anniversary of Guru Ram Das in Amritsar, India. Ram Das was the fourth of the ten gurus of Sikhism.

The Brazilian booth during a media presentation for the upcoming book fair in Frankfurt, Germany.

The new U.S. $100 bill is introduced by Michelle Scipione, vice president of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank Cash Services Department, during an event at the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

A visitor walks along the exhibition titled "Man and Power in Russia in the XIX-XXI centuries" at the State Museum of Political History of Russia in St. Petersburg. The exhibition is a large-scale innovative project to create a complete image of the Russian political history of two centuries.

Artisan Rintu Das applies finishing touches to an idol of the Hindu goddess Durga inside a marquee, ahead of the Durga Puja festival, in Kolkata, India. The festival, which will be celebrated from Oct. 11 to 14, is the biggest religious event for Bengali Hindus. Hindus believe that the goddess Durga symbolises power and the triumph of good over evil.

Taiwanese children cover their heads to keep from the sun during a rehearsal for National Day celebrations in front of the Presidential Office in Taipei, Taiwan. National Day is known as Double-Ten, because it falls on October 10, the tenth day of the tenth month of the year. It commemorates the Republican Revolution, which broke out in Wuhan, China, on Oct. 10, 1911, and brought about the end of China's Qing dynasty.

An Indonesian worker cleans a river in Jakarta. According to the Indonesian Environmental Status report published in June 2013 by the Ministry, 82 percent of the 52 rivers surveyed are polluted with domestic and industrial waste.

A demonstrator from the group called Black Bloc runs outside the Municipal Assembly during a protest supporting a teachers' strike in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Oct. 7, 2013. The protest is to demand changes in the public state and municipal education system.

Flowers grow on a rock covered with moss. The rock from Spratlys Islands was given as a gift in 2011 to War Remnants Display on Mount Hon Me, Hon Dat district, Kien Giang province, Vietnam. (Photo taken by Bùi Thụy Đào Nguyên/Vietnam/VOA reader)