Hello 2017: Fireworks and tight security as world celebrates new year

 New Year’s celebrations across the world
have ushered in 2017 with dazzling
fireworks displays and crowded streets
amid tightened security measures for the
festivities.
There was a huge police presence on the
streets of London as spectators from
nearly 100 countries flocked to the
Thames to watch the night sky light up as
Big Ben struck midnight.
With memories of the lethal Berlin lorry
truck attack still fresh, London mayor
Sadiq Khan assured crowds the capital
was “as safe as it possibly can be”.
After the event passed successfully, he
hailed it as demonstrating to the world
that London “is open to all”.

In Scotland , Hogmanay celebrations
were expected to attract a crowd of up to
80,000 people to Edinburgh for the sold-
out, world-famous event, described as
the UK’s largest outdoor winter festival.
But the dazzling scenes in much of the
world posed as a stark contrast to an
atrocity in Istanbul, Turkey , where at
least 35 were killed in a gun attack on a
nightclub.
The New Year arrived in New York at
5am (Irish time) as hundreds of
thousands of merrymakers witnessed the
descent of the kaleidoscopic New Year’s
Eve ball in Times Square at midnight on
Sunday, celebrating a century-old New
York tradition under an unprecedented
umbrella of security.
As many as 2 million people, surrounded
by a ring of 40-ton sand trucks and some
7,000 police, gathered in the “Crossroads
of the World” to watch the glittering
sphere complete its minute-long drop,
marking the beginning of 2017.
With the throng counting down the
seconds, the crystal-paned ball slid with
smooth precision down its pole, mounted
on a tower at the head of the plaza. At
the stroke of midnight, it touched home,
illuminating a giant “2017” sign and
sending a shower of fireworks into the
sky.