Time zone by time zone, world welcomes the new year
People pose for pictures with a 2023 installation Saturday as they celebrate the New Year's eve at Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem's Old City.
NEW YORK — New Year’s celebrations swept across the globe, ushering in 2023 with countdowns and fireworks — and marking an end to a year that brought war in Europe, a new chapter in the British monarchy and global worries over inflation.
Firdia Lisnawati, Associated Press
Dancers perform Saturday during culture parade to bid farewell to 2022 and welcome 2023 in Bali, Indonesia.
The new year began in the tiny atoll nation of Kiribati in the central Pacific, then moved across Russia and New Zealand before heading deeper, time zone by time zone, through Asia and Europe.
At least for a day, thoughts focused on possibilities, even elusive ones like world peace, and mustering — finally — a resolve to keep the next array of resolutions.
Evgeniy Maloletka, Associated Press
A man in a Santa Claus costume meets children Saturday at a subway station decorated for Christmas and New Year's in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
In a sign of that hope, children met St. Nicholas in a crowded metro station in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
Yet Russian attacks continued New Year’s Eve. At midnight, the streets of the capital, Kyiv, were desolate. The only sign of a new year came from local residents shouting from their balconies, “Happy New Year!” and “Glory to Ukraine!” And only half an hour into 2023, air raid sirens rang across Ukraine’s capital, followed by the sound of explosions.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported an explosion in Holosiivskyi district, and authorities reported that fragments of a missile that had been shot down had damaged a car in a central district.
Aurelien Morissard
Revelers watch a sound and light show projected on the Arc de Triomphe as they celebrate the New Year on the Champs Elysees, in Paris, France, Saturday, Dec. 31, 2022. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)
In Paris, thousands celebrated on the Champs Elysees, while French President Emmanuel Macron pledged continuing support for Ukraine in a televised New Year’s address. “During the coming year, we will be unfailingly at your side,” Macron said. “We will help you until victory and we will be together to build a just and lasting peace. Count on France and count on Europe.”
Big Ben chimed as more than 100,000 revelers gathered along the River Thames to watch a fireworks show around the London Eye. The display featured a drone light display of a crown and Queen Elizabeth II’s portrait on a coin hovering in the sky, paying tribute to Britain’s longest-serving monarch, who died in September.
Danny Lawson, PA via AP
Viking reenactors use torches to write 2023 on Saturday at the Flamborough Fire Festival, a Viking-themed parade in aid of charities and local community groups, held on New Year's Eve in Flamborough near Bridlington, England.
Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana beach welcomed a small crowd of a few thousand for a short fireworks display, and several Brazilian cities canceled celebrations this year due to concern about the coronavirus. The Brazilian capital’s New Year’s bash usually drew more than 2 million people to Copacabana before the pandemic.
Turkey’s most populous city, Istanbul, brought in 2023 with street festivities and fireworks. At St. Antuan Catholic Church, dozens of Christians prayed for the new year and marked former Pope Benedict XVI’s death on Saturday at age 95.
New York City prepared to join the glow of the new year with a dazzling Saturday night spectacle in iconic Times Square, anchoring celebrations across the United States. The night culminates with a countdown as a glowing geodesic sphere 12 feet in diameter and weighing almost six tons descends from its lofty perch atop One Times Square. Its surface is comprised of nearly 2,700 Waterford crystals that will be illuminated, officials said, by a palette of more than 16 million colors.
At the stroke of midnight, a ton of confetti was expected to rain down on soggy revelers, glittering amid the jumbo screens, neon and pulsing lights.
Stefan Jeremiah, Associated Press
A couple kisses Saturday in Times Square while attending the New Year's Eve celebrations in New York.
Last year, a scaled-back crowd of about 15,000 in-person mask-wearing spectators watched the ball descend while basking in the lights and hoopla of the U.S.’ marquee New Year’s Eve event. Because of pandemic rules, it was far fewer than the tens of thousands of revelers who usually descended on the world-famous square before the pandemic.
Before the ball dropped, there were heavy thoughts about the past year and the new one to come.
Ali Thompson, who was showing her brother around Times Square the day before, said people should do their part to take care of their corner of the world.
“I think we live in a broken world, and we see that play out every day,” she said. “I think anytime that we can do something to make it a little less broken is always a good thing.”
Bianca De Marchi, AAP Image via AP
Fireworks explode Sunday over the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge as New Year celebrations begin in Sydney, Australia.
In Australia, more than 1 million people crowded along Sydney’s waterfront for a multimillion-dollar celebration based around the themes of diversity and inclusion. More than 7,000 fireworks were launched from the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and another 2,000 from the nearby Opera House.
In Auckland, New Zealand, large crowds gathered below the Sky Tower, where a 10-second countdown to midnight preceded fireworks. The celebrations in New Zealand’s largest city returned after COVID-19 forced them to be canceled a year ago.
While COVID-19 continues to cause death and dismay, countries largely lifted quarantine requirements, restrictions for visitors and relentless testing that had limited travel and gatherings. Revelers in major city centers across the Asia-Pacific region ushered in the first new year without COVID-19 restrictions since the pandemic began.
Lee Jin-man, Associated Press
People light up their smartphones Saturday as they celebrate New Year's Eve in front of the Bosingak pavilion where the annual New Year's bell-ringing ceremony is held in Seoul, South Korea.
Chinese cautiously looked forward to 2023 after a recent easing of pandemic restrictions unleashed the virus but also signaled a return to normal life.
Like many, salesperson Hong Xinyu stayed close to home over the past year in part because of curbs on travel. “As the new year begins, we seem to see the light,” he said at a countdown show that lit up the towering structures of a former steel mill in Beijing. “We are hopeful that there will be more freedom in the future.”
In military-ruled Myanmar, authorities announced a suspension of its normal four-hour curfew in the country’s three biggest cities so residents could celebrate New Year’s Eve.
Concerns about the Ukraine war and the economic shocks it has spawned across the globe were felt in Tokyo, where Shigeki Kawamura has seen better times. “I hope the war will be over in Ukraine so prices will stabilize,” he said. He was one of several hundred people huddled in the cold in a line circling a Tokyo park to receive free New Year’s meals.
