amaZing events in pictures

Artist Harwinder Singh Gill displays a special new year message he carved into the tips of coloured pencils in Amritsar, India

A man writes "2011" with a torch on a snow-covered field in Sieversdorf, eastern Germany

An ice fisherman drills a hole in the ice covering Berlin's Weissensee (White Lake). With a 20cm sheet of ice covering the lake and temperatures well below zero, scores of amateur ice fishers were trying their luck at catching perch.

Two employees of the Frankfurt international airport walk along a passageway dug through thousands of tons of snow piled up near the runway of the airport

A skier checks the depths of snow on the slope at Arosa, Switzerland

A security guard uses an escalator at an observation deck in Osaka, Japan

Jon Benjamin walks through snow flurries with his son Judah on the Finger Rock Trail near Tucson, Arizona. The US National Weather Service issued a blizzard warning for eastern and southeastern Arizona.

This squirrel has thought of a new way to gather food, by performing for an audience. The scene captured by Anvar Seifullin in Hyde Park, London, in autumn, shows American tourists bemused by the squirrel's performance.

A keeper carries an anaesthetised golden-haired monkey to its new enclosure at the Chengdu Zoo, Sichuan province, China

An aerial view of flooded areas of Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia, including what is left of the main runway at the airport

A worker prints an image of The Black Nazarene on a T-shirt at a printing shop in Manila. The Black Nazarene (Nuestro Padre Jess Nazareno) is a wooden sculpture of Jesus Christ that came from Mexico and is believed to be miraculous. Thousands of Filipino devotees will join the procession of the The Black Nazarene on Sunday, and believe that whoever touches the Nazarene will be healed or receive a miracle.

A vehicle drives down the flooded runway at Rockhampton Airport

A man carries beer and ice through floodwaters in Depot Hill in Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia

A resident of Rockhampton paddles a kayak loaded with beer back to his flooded home after the swollen Fitzroy River broke its banks and inundated the town

Caleb Mines, 12, and his dogs Tia and George are sticking it out with the family in Depot Hill, Queensland, as floodwaters continues to rise

A girl with cat makeup holds her 3-month-old Canadian Hairless during a cat exhibition dedicated to the New Year holiday in Rostov-on-Don, Russia

An Indian elephant eats snow at Prague Zoo

People take photos from a bridge against a backdrop of the partially frozen Multnomah Falls near Bridal Veil, Oregon, USA

People walk on a pier in the Baltic Sea resort town of Koserow, Usedom island, Germany. Frost, wind, snow and ice have caused metre-high ice formations on the beach of the resort town.

A workman sweeps in front of a snow sculpture of a house in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, China. The Harbin International Ice and Snow festival will be officially launched with a fireworks display

A CRH train is tested as it runs through a snow-covered landscape on the Changchun-Jilin Inter-city high speed railway line in China. Construction has been finished nine months ahead of schedule, and the line will start operation on January 10, 2011.

Tom Daley and Louis Smith perform at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich during the launch of BMW's London 2012 performance team initiative designed to provide athletes with support ahead of the London 2012 Olympic Games

This image provided by Christie's auction house in New York shows a portrait of Mao Zedong by Andy Warhol, with two bullet holes put there by "Easy Rider" star Dennis Hopper. Hopper shot two bullet holes through the picture, but instead of earning the wrath of the artist, Warhol honoured him by listing him as the work's collaborator. The screenprint will be sold by Hopper's estate during a two-day auction of his collection at Christie's on January 11-12.

Freezing fog at Chester bridge over the river Dee.