NEW YORK — From teeming Times Square to an Asian capital hosting its first public New Year's Eve countdown in decades, the world looked to the start of 2013 with hope for renewal after a year of economic turmoil, searing violence and natural disasters.
Fireworks, concerts and celebrations unfolded around the globe to ring in the new year and, for some, to wring out the old.
"With all the sadness in the country, we're looking for some good changes in 2013," Laura Concannon, of Hingham, Mass., said as she, her husband, Kevin, and his parents took in the scene in bustling Times Square on Monday.
A blocks-long line of bundled-up revelers with New Year's hats and sunglasses boasting "2013" formed hours before the first ball drop in decades without Dick Clark, who died in April and was to be honored with a tribute concert and his name printed on pieces of confetti.
Security in Times Square was tight, with a mass of uniformed police and plainclothes officers assigned to blend into the crowd. With police Commissioner Raymond Kelly proclaiming that Times Square would be the "safest place in the world on New Year's Eve," officers used barriers to prevent overcrowding and checkpoints to inspect vehicles, enforce a ban on alcohol and check handbags.
Syracuse University student Taylor Nanz, 18, said she and a friend had been standing in Times Square since 1:20 p.m. Monday. They hadn't moved from their spot "because there's a bathroom a block and a half away, but if you leave, you lose your place," she said, shivering behind an iron barricade with a clear view of One Times Square, the building where the crystal ball hovered.
"It's the first time — and the last time," she said.
Elsewhere hours earlier, lavish fireworks displays lit up skylines in Sydney, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and in the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai where multicolored fireworks danced up and down the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa. In Russia, spectators filled Moscow's iconic Red Square as fireworks exploded near the Kremlin.
Organizers said about 90,000 people gathered in a large field Yangon, Myanmar, for their first chance to do what much of the world does every Dec. 31 — watch a countdown. The reformist government that took office last year in the country, long under military rule, threw its first public New Year's celebration in decades.
"We feel like we are in a different world," said Yu Thawda, a university student who went with three of her friends.
The atmosphere of celebration was muted in some places with concern.
Europe planned scaled-back festivities and street parties, the mood restrained — if hopeful — for a 2013 that is projected to be a sixth straight year of recession amid Greece's worst economic crisis since World War II. More than 22,000 revelers in the Madrid square celebrated the arrival of the new year under umbrellas as rain fell steadily.
Hotels, clubs and other sites in New Delhi, the Indian capital, canceled festivities after the death of a rape victim on Saturday touched off days of mourning and reflection about women's safety. In the Philippines, where many are recovering from devastation from a recent typhoon, a health official danced to South Korean rapper Psy's "Gangnam Style" video in an effort to stop revelers from setting off huge illegal firecrackers, which maim and injure hundreds of Filipinos each year.
And even in Times Square, some revelers checked their cellphones to keep up with news of lawmakers' efforts to skirt the fiscal cliff combination of expiring tax cuts and across-the-board spending cuts that threatened to reverberate globally. And the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn., and Superstorm Sandy mingled into the memories of 2012.
"This has been a very eventful year, on many levels," Denise Norris said as she and her husband, the Rev. Urie Norris, surveyed the crowd seeking to jam Times Square for a countdown show with Ryan Seacrest as host and musical acts including Taylor Swift, Carly Rae Jepsen, Neon Trees, Flo Rida and Pitbull.
About a block away, Army Sgt. Clint Evanoff waited in a black suit, red vest and red tie to get into Times Square with a couple of his friends from his unit at Fort Drum, N.Y. Evanoff, 20, is scheduled to leave for Afghanistan, his first deployment, in about two weeks.
Looking ahead to the new year, "I'm just hoping to make it back," he said.
Elsewhere, too, hopes for 2013 were a mix of personal and political. In Boston, communications writer and editor Colin O'Brien, 25, said he was optimistic that the nation had realized it was time to make tough decisions about its finances and policy and that there might be "more common ground than people are willing to admit or accept." In Harrisburg, Pa., warehouse worker Adam Gassner, 43, had more internal goals: "hoping to continue to get myself back on my feet."
Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group
Comments » 1
KlausStoertebeker writes:
The most popular politician sentence in the capital of the United States is: "stop kicking the can down the road."
Everyone says that in Washington. The Democrats, the Republicans. The best example is the recent compromise in the budget dispute: A few very rich Americans pay a little higher taxes. But a real, balanced plan to reduce debt? Nil return. Follow-up in two months. Kick the can down the road!
But they all push the problems. Month after month. What is going on?
Through disarray instead of breakthrough
You should make no mistake: the last-minute number of Washington is no breakthrough, but through disarray. There will be many more such negotiations at the last minute give in the next few months, many we-are still time got away moments. In February, for example, the country of its debt ceiling encounters, shortly savings bomb suspended due to lack of agreement threatens again just. And so on and so forth. A superpower is exhausted in the details, their politicians continually great talk and ideologically inflate.
So the country of unlimited opportunities has become the land of unlimited stalemate. The blocked States of America. While so much is non-partisan to do: the country urgently needs a new immigration law, the infrastructure crumble, the weapons law is too lax.
The structural problem behind the halt is the drifting apart of the parties in a consensus ("checks and balances") laid out system of Government. Or better: drift a large tradition party, the Republicans, namely. The opposition always ruled with in America, because Presidents are often different majorities in the Parliament. But what if refuses the opposition?
With the current Republicans, hardly state is to make. The negotiations for the fiscal Cliff show this abundantly clear. Since one and a half years (!), U.S. President Barack Obama has struggled with the Republicans - only now these half-baked mini deal to bring forth. Nagging, tiresome finger-wrestling. But already some announces the revenge: "In two months, round comes two," Republican Senator Lindsey Graham on the fight to the US debt limit would be glad. Lots of fun! America in lower goose mood. Europe will be the winner.
Share your thoughts
Comments are the sole responsibility of the person posting them. You agree not to post comments that are off topic, defamatory, obscene, abusive, threatening or an invasion of privacy. Violators may be banned. Click here for our full user agreement.