Countries around world celebrate New Year’s Eve while hoping for brighter 2022
Global News
New Year's Eve, which used to be celebrated globally with a free-spirited wildness, felt instead like a case of deja vu thanks to the fast-spreading Omicron variant.
Sorrow for the dead and dying, fear of more infections to come and hopes for an end to the COVID-19 pandemic were — again — the bittersweet cocktail with which the world said good riddance to 2021 and ushered in 2022.
New Year’s Eve, which used to be celebrated globally with a free-spirited wildness, felt instead like a case of deja vu, with the fast-spreading omicron variant again filing hospitals.
At the La Timone hospital in the southern French city of Marseille, Dr. Fouad Bouzana could only sigh when asked what 2022 might bring.
“It’s starting to become exhausting,” he said, “because the waves come one after another.”
The mostly muted New Year’s Eve celebrations around the world ushered in the fourth calendar year framed by the global pandemic. More than 285 million people have been infected by the coronavirus worldwide since late 2019 and more than 5 million have died.
In Paris, officials canceled the fireworks amid surging infections and reintroduced mandatory mask-wearing outdoors, an obligation followed by the majority of people who milled about on the Champs-Elysees as the final hours of 2021 ticked away.
In Berlin, police urged people not to gather near the Brandenburg Gate, where a concert was staged without a live audience. In Madrid, authorities allowed only 7,000 people into the city’s Puerta del Sol downtown square, a venue traditionally hosting some 20,000 revelers.
In the United States, officials took a mixed approach to the year-end revelry: nixing the audience at a countdown concert in Los Angeles, scaling it back in New York yet going full speed ahead in Las Vegas, where 300,000 people were expected for a fireworks show on the strip.
Antonio Espaillat, the owner of a Dominican Republic nightclub, first learned of the collapse when his sister called him while trapped in the debris.
Svetlana Petrenko, a spokesperson for the military, said the explosive device was rigged with shrapnel and an investigation is underway.
Crimea is a strategic peninsula along the Black Sea in southern Ukraine. It was seized by Russia in 2014, while Barack Obama was in office.
Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh pledged to locate and punish the perpetrators of the attack that killed 26 civilians.
Nine people were killed and dozens more injured in Russia's deadliest assault on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv since last July.
The basilica is bathed in a hushed silence as mourners from across the globe make a slow, shuffling procession up the main aisle to pay their last respects.
'There is nothing to talk about — it is our land, the land of the Ukrainian people,' Zelenskyy said in response to suggestions that he should hand over Crimea to Russia.
A magnitude 6.2 earthquake shook Istanbul and other areas, prompting widespread panic and dozens of injuries with officials saying many tried to jump from buildings.
Thousands gathered in Rome on Wednesday to pay their respects to Pope Francis, who will lie in state for three days at St. Peter's Basilica ahead of his funeral.
Among the fines, the European Commission imposed a 500 million euro fine on Apple for preventing app makers from pointing users to cheaper options outside its App Store.
Trump, who wouldn't say if he agreed with Scott Bessent, also said he had "no intention" of firing the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, after previously suggesting he would.
Two senior police officers said at least four gunmen, whom they described as militants, fired at dozens of tourists from close range.
The IMF said that the global economy will grow just 2.8 per cent this year, down from its forecast in January of 3.3 per cent, according to its latest World Economic Outlook.