New Year celebrations get underway worldwide

Sydney Harbour boasted the biggest fireworks display in the world London – Caroline Kent Celebrations are being held around the world to ring in the start of 2013. Australia and Asia were first to experience the festivities, with the city of Auckland in New Zealand holding the first major event of 2013. There, in the closest city to the International Date Line, fireworks exploded over the city's Sky Tower as midnight struck at 11:00 GMT. Two hours later crowds around the harbour in Sydney, Australia witnessed an extravagant display of their own. If anyone in town was asleep, they would certainly have been awoken by seven tons of fireworks fired from roof tops, barges, and Sydney Harbour Bridge, in a 6.6 million Australian dollars (£4.2m) pyrotechnic performance billed by organisers as the world's largest display. The Associated Press reports that as many as 100,000 people were expected to congregate around Hong Kong's harbour for the city's biggest ever fireworks display, costing £980,000. Meanwhile preparations are still underway in Moscow, Paris and London. New Yorkers will ring in 2013 in Times Square whilst more than two million people are expected to party on Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana beach.
Arabstoday wishes our readers worldwide a very Happy New Year.