Top 10 PHOTOS in the last 24 hours

A police officer speaks to Zaynab al-Khawaja, the daughter of Human Rights activist, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, after she refused to leave after a sit-in at a roundabout in Budaiya Highway west of Manama in Bahrain. Hundreds of anti-government protesters tried to enter the highway for a sit-in during an anti-government protest. Riot-police dispersed them by firing tear gas and grenades.

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A journalist takes a sample of the red polluted water in the Jianhe River in Luoyang, Henan province. According to local media, the sources of the pollution are two illegal chemical plants discharging their production waste water into the rain sewer pipes.

Family members mourn for their relatives, who died after consuming bootleg liquor, outside a hospital at Diamond Harbour, a town about 50 km from Kolkata. An adulterated batch of bootleg liquor has killed at least 100 drinkers in eastern India, with dozens more arriving at a cramped rural hospital with poisoning symptoms.

PC Air transsexual flight attendants (left to right): Phuntakarn Sringern, 24, Nathatai Sukkaset, 26, Chayathisa Nakmai, 24, and Dissanai Chitpraphachin, 24, pose for photographers in a PC Air aircraft at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi International Airport December 15. PC Air set its first proving flight from Bangkok to Surat Thani province after it recruited four transsexual flight attendants earlier this year. The airline's original plan to hire only male and female attendants was changed when more than 100 job applications from transvestites and transsexuals were received, four of whom were recruited along with 19 female and seven male flight attendants. The airline said the qualifications were the same as that required of female flight attendants, which include femininity and attractiveness.

'Cardinal Sin' a new work by British artist Banksy is unveiled at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool Liverpool, northern England. The piece made up of an 18th century replica stone bust of a cardinal with the face sawn off and replaced with a mosaic of bathroom tiles is thought to be a comment on the abuse scandal in the church and its subsequent cover-up, the gallery said in a press release.

Jewish settler schoolboys from a nearby settlement sit on rubble from demolished structures as they take part in a lesson in the West Bank settler outpost of Mitzpe Yitzhar, near Nablus. Israeli forces on Thursday tore down structures in the settler-outpost built without government approval.

People walk past an activist during an Animal Naturalis demonstration to promote vegetarianism in central Barcelona.

Names of countries taking part to the 8th World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference are pictured on the chairs for delegates, in Geneva. 

Egyptian workers count votes at a counting center at Imbaba in Giza, on the outskirts of Cairo. Egyptians voting on Thursday said they felt empowered by the first free election after Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule, a vote likely to give Islamists the upper hand in a parliament that will help shape Egypt's new constitution.

Members of the US military rest on board an Air Force C-130 transport plane marking the end of their presence in Iraq after departing the Baghdad Diplomatic Support Center in Baghdad December 15. The US military officially ended its war in Iraq on Thursday, packing up a military flag at a ceremony with U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta nearly nine years after the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein. This ceremony is called the "casing of the colors" and signifies the departing and inactivation of the U.S. military's presence in Iraq. 

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