Around the world in the last 24 hours

Here are some of the most breathtaking images from across the globe in the last 24 hours...

A woman laughs as she is smeared with sindur as part of a ritual on the last day of Durga Puja.

North Korean girls look through a window at a foreign delegation visiting a school in Haeju, capital of an area damaged by summer floods and typhoons in South Hwanghae province. Isolated North Korea has appealed for food aid following the disasters and years of mismanagement. In South Hwanghae province, which traditionally produces about a third of the country's total cereal supply, officials say a savage winter wiped out 65 percent of the barley, wheat and potato crops.

Then summer floods and storms destroyed 80 percent of the maize harvest, according to the province's governing People's Committee, and may have an impact on the October rice harvest. Only 30 percent of a United Nations food aid target for North Korea has been met so far. The United States and South Korea, the North's two biggest donors before sanctions, have said they won't resume aid until they are satisfied the military-led Communist regime will not divert the aid for its own uses and progress is made on disarmament talks.

Tribal fighters take up positions as they keep watch over anti-government protesters marching past near Tagheer square in Sanaa.

A pedestrian takes cover from tear gas after being hit by a jet of water during a rally against the public state education system in Santiago.

Chilean students are demanding free and better state education, as well as an end to profit-making in the public state education system.

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men stand around a plastic pool containing fish as they perform the Tashlich ritual outside their seminary, Nadvorna Yeshiva, in Bnei Brak, near Tel Aviv, ahead of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, which starts at sundown Friday.

Tashlich is a ritual of casting away sins of the past year into the water.

An Afghan riot police officer keeps watch prior on a protest in Kabul. Hundreds of Afghans from the Hmbastagi party staged a protest to condemn the US-led invasion, which will mark its 10th anniversary on October 7.

Julieta Gonzalez, 2, takes in the sun as she waits to go into a 'Back-to-School' giveaway at the Fred Jordan Mission in Los Angeles, California. Five thousand homeless and underprivileged children were given new athletic shoes, clothes, backpacks, and haircuts for the new school year.

A military aircraft of deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's lies destroyed at the airport in Sirte. Rebels said that the aircraft was destroyed by NATO air strikes

A boy plays cricket near US soldiers on patrol in the town center of Khas Konar district in Kunar province, eastern Afghanistan.

Captain Mark Kelly hugs his wife US Representative Gabrielle Giffords after receiving the Legion of Merit from US Vice President Joe Biden during Captain Kelly's retirement ceremony in the Secretary of War Suite in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington.

This marks only the second visit to Washington for Giffords since she was shot through the head in a January 8 shooting spree in Tucson that killed six people and wounded 12 others.

Russian servicemen march during a ceremony near the Eternal Flame at the Military Glory Memorial in the far eastern city of Vladivostok.

After a demand by President Dmitry Medvedev, a local gas firm had to resume supplies at the memorial which had been cut off several days before. The firm referred to a $3,000 debt by Russia's Pacific Fleet, which owns the memorial, according to local media.

Cubans hold photographs of victims of the Cubana Flight 455 bombing, one day before its 35th anniversary, during a vigil outside the the US diplomatic mission in Havana.

Cuban exile and former CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles, the man accused of masterminding the attack on a Cuban airliner on October 6, 1976 which killed 73 people in Barbados, currently lives free in Miami.