From Sydney to Mumbai to Paris to Rio de Janeiro, communities around the world welcomed in the new year with spectacular light shows, embraces and ice plunges.
The New Year’s Eve ball dropped in soggy Times Square, where thousands of people stuck it out in heavy rain to celebrate in New York City.
Countries in the South Pacific Ocean were the first to ring in the New Year, with midnight in New Zealand striking 18 hours before the ball dropped in Times Square. Auckland was the first major city to celebrate, with thousands thronging downtown or climbing the city’s volcanic peaks for a fireworks vantage point.
Photo: AFP
American Samoa was among the last to welcome the year, a full 24 hours after New Zealand.
Conflict muted acknowledgements of the start of 2025 in places such as the Middle East, Sudan and Ukraine.
In New York City, crowds cheered and couples kissed when the ball weighing about 5.4 tonnes and featuring 2,688 crystal triangles descended a pole in Times Square.
The celebration included musical performances by TLC and the Jonas Brothers.
The revelry culminated with a dance party and a carpeting of soggy confetti as attendees left singing along to Frank Sinatra’s version of New York, New York.
Angie Cuadradu, from Virginia, said she hopes that this year is going to be great.
“We’re sending positive vibes everywhere,” she said.
Much of Japan shut down ahead of the nation’s biggest holiday, as temples and homes underwent a thorough cleaning.
The upcoming Year of the Snake in the Asian zodiac is heralded as one of rebirth — alluding to the reptile’s shedding skin. Other places in Asia are to mark the Year of the Snake later, with the Lunar New Year.
In South Korea, celebrations were cut back or canceled during a period of national mourning following Sunday’s crash of a Jeju Air flight in Muan that killed 179 people.
In India, thousands of revelers in the financial hub of Mumbai flocked to the city’s bustling promenade facing the Arabian Sea.
In Dubai, United Arab Emirates, thousands attended a fireworks show at the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest skyscraper.
Paris capped last year with its traditional countdown and fireworks extravaganza on the Champs-Elysees. The city’s emblematic Arc de Triomphe monument was turned into a giant tableau for a light show that celebrated the city’s landmarks and the passage of time with whirring clocks.
“Paris is a party,” Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said.
In Switzerland and some other places, people embraced the cold, stripping and plunging into the water in freezing temperatures.
Rio de Janeiro threw Brazil’s main New Year’s Eve bash on Copacabana beach, with barges shooting off 12 straight minutes of fireworks.
The Taipei MRT is open all night tonight following New Year’s Eve festivities, and is offering free rides from nearby Green Line stations. Taipei’s 2025 New Year’s Eve celebrations kick off at Taipei City Hall Square tonight, with performances from the boy band Energy, the South Korean girl group Apink, and singers Gigi Leung (梁詠琪) and Faith Yang (楊乃文). Taipei 101’s annual New Year’s firework display follows at midnight, themed around Taiwan’s Premier12 baseball championship. Estimates say there will be about 200,000 people in attendance, which is more than usual as this year’s celebrations overlap with A-mei’s (張惠妹) concert at Taipei Dome. There are
LOOKING FOR WHEELS: The military is seeking 8x8 single-chassis vehicles to test the new missile and potentially replace the nation’s existing launch vehicles, the source said Taiwan is developing a hypersonic missile based on the Ching Tien (擎天) supersonic cruise missile, and a Czech-made truck has been tentatively selected as its launch vehicle, a source said yesterday. The Ching Tien, formerly known as Yun Feng (雲峰, “Cloud Peak”), is a domestically developed missile with a range of 1,200km to 2,000km being deployed in casemate-type positions as of last month, an official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The hypersonic missile to be derived from the Ching Tien would feature improved range and a mobile launch platform, while the latter would most likely be a 12x12 single chassis
UP AND DOWN: The route would include a 16.4km underground section from Zuoying to Fongshan and a 9.5km elevated part from Fongshan to Pingtung Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday confirmed a project to extend the high-speed rail (HSR) to Pingtung County through Kaohsiung. Cho made the announcement at a ceremony commemorating the completion of a dome at Kaohsiung Main Station. The Ministry of Transportation and Communications approved the HSR expansion in 2019 using a route that branches off a line from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung’s Zuoying District (左營). The project was ultimately delayed due to a lack of support for the route. The Zuoying route would have trains stop at the Zuoying Station and return to a junction before traveling southward to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝).
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday vowed to investigate claims made in a YouTube video about China’s efforts to politically influence young Taiwanese and encourage them to apply for Chinese ID cards. The council’s comments follow Saturday’s release of a video by Taiwanese rapper Chen Po-yuan (陳柏源) and YouTuber “Pa Chiung (八炯)” on China’s “united front” tactics. It is the second video on the subject the pair have released this month. In the video, Chen visits the Taiwan Youth Entrepreneurship Park in Quanzhou in China’s Fujian Province and the Strait Herald news platform in Xiamen, China. The Strait Herald — owned by newspaper
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