World rejoices, welcomes 2014

Singing, prayers, dazzling fireworks usher in new year

New Year’s revelers keeping warm in a blanket laugh with a police officer Tuesday night in New York City’s Times Square as they await the dropping of the crystal ball to usher in 2014.
New Year’s revelers keeping warm in a blanket laugh with a police officer Tuesday night in New York City’s Times Square as they await the dropping of the crystal ball to usher in 2014.

NEW YORK - With fireworks, dancing and late-night revelry, millions around the world welcomed 2014, gathering for huge displays of jubilation and unity as the new year arrived.

photo

AP

The sky above Cathedral Square in Vilnius, Lithuania, lights up with fireworks shortly after midnight today as thousands celebrated the start of 2014 in the Lithuanian capital.

In New York, the glittering ball dropped at midnight in New York City’s Times Square to usher in the new year.

Bronx-born U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor led the 60-second countdown and pushed the button that unleashed the shimmering orb with 2,688 crystals, a role usually filled by the New York City mayor. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, on his last day in office, was sitting out the celebration after 12 years on the job, and newly elected Mayor Bill de Blasio took the oath of office just after midnight at his Brooklyn home.

A sea of people from all over the world packed into the bow-tie-shaped stretch of streets in midtown Manhattan to see the crystal ball drop.

Many of them arrived 12 hours or more in advance to watch the festivities because of security features put in place after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Kerrie McConaghy, 20, a university student visiting Times Square from Armagh, Ireland, was dancing and jumping up and down, donning a big, blue top hat.

“It’s unbelievable here,” she said. “The lights, seeing the ball, hearing the music, all the people. It’s amazing.

“TV doesn’t do this justice,” she said. “You have to be here to believe it.”

Ryan Seacrest hosted the countdown show from Times Square. Entertainers included Miley Cyrus, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Icona Pop and Blondie.

With people crowding Times Square, two men were hospitalized after an apparent stabbing in a bathroom at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan on Tuesday evening, officials and witnesses said.

The men suffered non-life-threatening injuries, a New York Fire Department spokesman told the Los Angeles Times.

In Hawaii, P resident Barack Obama closed out 2013 in low-key fashion Tuesday, hitting the beach with his family at a popular Hawaii snorkeling spot before making a stop for shave ice, a favorite treat of the island-born president.

The White House said the president planned to stay at home Tuesday night and ring in the new year with friends and family.

Across the world, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, a Persian Gulf city known for glitz, glamour and over-the top achievements like the world’s tallest skyscraper, sought to break another record by creating the largest fireworks show. In Ukraine, anti-government protesters hoped to set their own record for the most people to sing a national anthem at the same time.

In Dubai, the skyline was a canvas for a dazzling 30-minute show, capping off with six minutes of fireworks that engulfed the city’s man-made, palm-shaped island, with its fronds and trunk shimmering in thousands of lights.

Organizers had promised that the fireworks would form a flying falcon, sunrise and United Arab Emirates flag.

In total, the extravaganza was to include half a million fireworks from 400 firing locations synchronized by 100 computers, said Barrett Wissman, co-chairman of IMG Artists, which was managing the event.

The fireworks display was expected to surpass the world record held by another Persian Gulf Arab state in just the first 60 seconds. Kuwait has held the record since last year, when it fired more than 77,000 fireworks in a display lasting more than an hour.

On Kiev’s main square, at least 100,000 Ukrainians sang their national anthem in a sign of support for integration with Europe and what they expected could be their own record-breaking live singing of an anthem.

Hundreds of thousands have been rallying in the square since November when President Viktor Yanukovych decided to ditch a key deal with the European Union and align with Russia. Many in Ukraine had hoped for closer ties with the EU, favoring Europe’s democratic institutions over Russia’s authoritarian government, led by President Vladimir Putin for nearly 15 years. Pro-European activists have been living in tents on Kiev’s barricaded main square for more than a month.

Tens of thousands who thronged to the Kiev square and nearby streets sang “Ukraine Has Not Died Yet” seconds after the New Year’s countdown.

So far the greatest number of people - 121,653 - singing a national anthem at the same time was recorded in India in May 2013, according to the Guinness World Records. Ukrainian activists said Monday that they had invited a Guinness official to attend the singing.

At the Vatican, Pope Francis used his year-end prayer service to urge people to ask themselves whether they spent 2013 to further their own interests or to help others.

“Let us courageously ask ourselves: How did we live the time [God] gave us?” Francis asked in his homily. “Did we use it above all for ourselves, for our interests, or did we know how to spend it for others as well?”

During his first year as pope, Francis has stressed that he wants the Catholic Church to be a “poor” church, focused on reaching out to those who live on the margins of society and others in need.

He also encouraged people to reflect on whether they used 2013 to improve the place where they live. “This year did we contribute, in our own small ways, to make it more livable, orderly, welcoming?”

In Britain, officials planned to welcome 2014 with a mixture of futuristic fireworks and torch-lit tradition. For people in London, the New Year offered the opportunity to taste the fireworks.

The city’s mayor - in conjunction with telecommunications company Vodafone - said the explosive display would be packed with peach-flavored snow, edible banana confetti and orange-scented bubbles, allowing people to feast with more than just their eyes. The multisensory display also was to include scratch-and-sniff programs and fruit-flavored sweets.

In Sydney, fireworks organizers set off 7.7 tons of pyrotechnics in 12 seconds in a display that sprayed from the sails of the Sydney Opera House and the Australian city’s harbor bridge.

“It filled up the whole sky,” said Mona Rucek, a 28-yearold tourist from Munich, Germany.

Closer to the International Dateline, New Zealand concluded 2013 with its own fireworks that burst from Auckland’s Sky Tower while cheering crowds danced in the streets of the South Pacific island nation’s largest city.

In Tokyo, five priests at the Zojoji temple used ropes to swing a wooden pole against a large bell, sounding the first of 108 gongs to mark the new year. Simultaneously, “2014” lit up in white lights on the modern Tokyo Tower in the background.

Juji Muto said he was curious to hear how the bell sounded. The 75-year-old retiree said he wishes every year for good health.

China planned light shows at part of the Great Wall near Beijing and at the Bund waterfront in Shanghai. The city of Wuhan in central Hubei province called off its fireworks show and banned fireworks downtown to avoid worsening its smog.

Meanwhile, more than 260 people had been injured by firecracker blasts and celebratory gunfire in the Philippines, a nation marking the end of a year of tragic disasters, including a Nov. 8 typhoon that left more than 6,100 dead and nearly 1,800 missing.

“Many here are welcoming the new year after losing their mothers, fathers, siblings and children so you can imagine how it feels,” said village chief Maria Rosario Bactol of Anibong community in Tacloban, the city worst hit by Typhoon Haiyan. “I tell them to face the reality, to move on and stand up, but I know it will never be easy.”

In South Africa, law-enforcement agencies said policing in major South African cities had been beefed up as revelers prepared to usher in the new year.

In Johannesburg, much of the attention was focused on the downtown neighborhood of Hillbrow, where residents in high-rise apartment buildings traditionally celebrate New Year’s Eve by hurling large appliances onto the streets below.

Although the practice is said to be gradually dying, the tradition of throwing anything from unwanted toasters to fridges, televisions and couches still occurs in what is described as the country’s most densely-populated square mile.

Elsewhere in the country, Cape Town was hosting a free concert with lasers, fireworks and a special tribute to anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela, who died Dec. 5.

With a lit-up Table Mountain forming a backdrop to the celebrations, images from Mandela’s life were being projected onto City Hall where he gave his first public speech after his release from 27 years in prison in 1990.

Information for this article was contributed by Aya Batrawy, Nataliya Vasilyeva, Rod McGuirk, Jim Gomez, Kelvin Chan, Ali Kotarumalos, Ken Moritsugu, Yuri Kageyama, Eric Talmadge, Louise Watt, Colleen Long, Frances D’Emilio, Jake Pearson, Julie Pace and Ray Faure of The Associated Press and by Matt Pearce of the Los Angeles Times.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/01/2014

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