Purists across the world hailed the new millennium yesterday, while the great majority, who celebrated it a year ago, bade farewell to 2000 with few regrets but with a rousing welcome for 2001.
As the turning globe carried country after country into a new millennium, a new century or just a new year, Australia, still glowing from hosting a successful Olympic Games, set off a show of spectacular fireworks on Sydney Harbor Bridge and began an all night party at nearby Bondi Beach.
PHOTO: AP
The Philippines celebrated with a cacophony of gunfire and firecrackers -- ironically in a country still reeling from an explosion in Manila less than 24 hours before that killed 14 and injured 100.
Shortly afterwards China staged a computerized laser show and a mass wedding at the Great Wall and students toppled 3.5 million dominoes in a record attempt.
But while President Jiang Zemin (
Most Western countries celebrated the millennium in style a year ago.
But others, including both China and Russia, regard the completion rather than the start of the 2,000th year of the Christian era as the true millennium and are marking it only now.
Russia, whose vast territory spans 11 time zones, went into 2001 with much to forget -- the Kursk nuclear submarine disaster, gangsterism and the intractable war in Chechnya -- but also with a note of optimism from President Vladimir Putin, who was able to say that "notable elements of stability" had appeared during his one year in office, while admitting that the benefits had not yet reached everybody.
Most Russians celebrate the new year at home, especially as for Orthodox Christians it does not arrive for another two weeks. But large crowds were still expected in Moscow's city center.
South Asia had little to celebrate, with India and Pakistan still exchanging accusations and occasional gunfire in Kashmir, Sri Lanka battling endlessly on against Tamil separatists, and Afghanistan mired in its decade-long civil war.
In the Vatican, Pope John Paul in a new year message prayed that the future would bring a more fraternal and caring world.
"I hope that the new millennium brings all nations peace, justice, brotherhood and prosperity," he said, in his midnight speech to tens of thousands of people gathered in St. Peter's Square.
The last few hours of 2000 saw Europe and the Americas ready to celebrate, ignoring for a few hours floods and freezing cold and doom-laden warnings of impending recession.
Paris, which a year ago converted the Eiffel Tower into a roman candle of fireworks, planned this time to bathe the monument in a sparkling blue hue from midnight until dawn and to turn the city center into daylight with a "cathedral of light."
London, whose fireworks last year were called a damp squib, and whose centerpiece Millennium Dome has been a year-long embarrassment, played the party-pooper this time.
Transport stopped before midnight, bridges to the center closed, and police were discouraging revelers from assembling in Trafalgar Square, their traditional haunt.
By contrast, Scotland's two main cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow vied to provide the brightest, loudest (and no doubt most drunken) Hogmanay.
Serbs seeing in the New Year in central Belgrade found extra reason to celebrate, looking forward with fresh hope to a new era after the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.
Across the Atlantic, Brazil celebrated a sharp revival of Latin America's largest economy, and has spent freely to try to regain its past glory as a tourist resort, dented by years of poverty and crime.
The snow covering much of the US was expected to add to the numbers fleeing south to its promise of sun and samba.
In the US, presidential wranglings at last ended, a foot of snow on New York and warnings of possible terrorist attacks did not discourage the half-million people who poured into Times Square.
Confetti, balloons, live music and a huge crystal ball illuminated at the press of a button by boxing legend Muhammad Ali set off what was likely the biggest party of them all.
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