Festivities to conclude 2023 and welcome 2024 were, as tradition dictates, celebrated all over the planet. World Tour.
In Sydney, Bangkok, Paris, Rio… the world’s major capitals celebrated the passage into 2024 with dazzling fireworks. In New York, thousands of people waited to see the traditional descent of the crystal ball in Times Square, all lit up, and vendors sold vuvuzelas and 2024-stamped hats for their New Year’s Eve. The police, deployed in Manhattan, were towing suspicious cars, closing roads, and setting up a steel barrier to filter the crowd. Before the New York celebrations, Democratic President Joe Biden appeared on television, expressing optimism for the US economy, talking about his love for chocolate chip ice cream, praising his country’s resilience, and announcing the “return” of the American people.
In Sydney, self-proclaimed “New Year’s Eve capital of the world”, over a million partygoers flooded the harbor’s foreshore, with authorities warning that all vantage points had been taken. The population gathered at all the city’s iconic sights, despite unusually humid weather, to admire Sydney Harbor, the Harbor Bridge, and the Sydney Opera House bathed in colorful fireworks.
The pyrotechnics also lit up the skies of Auckland, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Manila, and Dubai.
In Paris, over a million people gathered on the Champs-Elysées. A fireworks display over the Arc de Triomphe at midnight marked the highlight of the celebration, under the sign of the Olympic Games, with numerous activities evoking the sporting event that the city will host next summer.
In Thessaloniki, Greece, nudist bathers wearing Santa hats frolicked in the fresh waters of the Mediterranean in the south of France, while revelers ate meat skewers and danced in the streets during the traditional year-end celebrations in Thessaloniki.
In Rio de Janeiro, thousands of people celebrated the New Year on Copacabana Beach with fireworks and music from a symphony orchestra and local pop, funk, and samba stars.
The bars and restaurants on one of Tel Aviv’s liveliest streets, in Israel, celebrated the New Year when the sirens sounded, signaling rockets fired from the Gaza Strip on the city and its surroundings as well as on southern Israel. The attack on southern Israel took place at midnight local time (10:00 pm GMT) and the attack on Tel Aviv at 12:01 am (10:01 pm GMT), according to AFP journalists.
In the streets of Kiev, as in Moscow, as the Russian invasion approaches its second anniversary, revelers were also celebrating the New Year festivities.
