AFP/Sydney

A dazzling display of fireworks lit up Sydney Harbour early yesterday as Australia’s biggest city welcomed the New Year in spectacular style, defying terrorist fears days after a deadly siege.
From Hong Kong to London and New York to Rio, millions around the world will celebrate when the clock ticks past midnight, ringing in 2015 with massive fireworks displays, concerts and light shows.
In Sydney, rocked by deadly drama just before Christmas when an Iranian-born gunman with a history of violence and extremism took 17 hostages in the city’s financial hub, tonnes of fireworks exploded over the harbour watched by a crowd estimated at more than onemn.
“We are celebrating that we are a multicultural, harmonious community but we will be thinking about what happened,” Lord Mayor Clover Moore said in reference to the incident in which two hostages and the gunman died.
In the aftermath of the siege, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said security agencies had picked up a heightened level of “terrorist chatter” and warned that “the terror threat remains high and... at this level, an attack is likely”.
But the fireworks display went ahead without incident.
Brilliant bursts of colour lit up the harbour in spectacular fashion in the midnight showpiece, with fireworks cascading off the Harbour Bridge, shooting off the Opera House and streaming across the sky in one of the world’s first major celebrations to ring in 2015.
Across Asia,millions will be partying, with Hong Kong’s dazzling skyline along Victoria Harbour set to light up during an eight-minute pyrotechnic display. In China, Beijing’s bid to stage the 2022 Winter Olympics was to be the theme of celebrations. Concert pianist Lang Lang will be the star performer at an extravaganza at Olympic Park.
The Chinese capital has held New Year countdowns at the historic Temple of Heaven since 2011, but has moved the event to the site of the 2008 summer games to raise the profile of its winter Olympics bid.
In Taiwan the landmark skyscraper Taipei 101 will be at the centre of celebrations, with performances by pop singers and a firework display at midnight expected to attract hundreds of thousands.
And in Japan, the Meiji Jingu shrine in Tokyo brought out stocks of lucky charms and set up large offertory boxes as it prepared to welcome a huge wave of worshippers overnight. The huge shrine expects 3mn visitors in the first three days of the new year.
But in Malaysia, a sombre mood prevailed after the crash of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 carrying 162 people in Indonesia and flooding in the country’s northeast which has displaced almost 250,000 people. Year-end countdown celebrations have been cancelled, with many companies instead launching fundraising campaigns for flood victims.
In Indonesia, Surabaya was holding a candlelight vigil in the hours leading up till midnight to remember the people on the plane which departed the city on Sunday.






Related Story