Jubilant crowds around the world, including Pakistan bid farewell to the hottest year on record 2023, closing a turbulent 12 months marked by clever chatbots, climate crises and wrenching wars in Gaza and Ukraine.
Much of the world’s population — now more than eight billion — is hoping to shake off high living costs and global tumult in 2024, which will bring elections concerning half the world’s population and the Paris Olympics.
Pakistan has announced a complete ban on New Year celebrations in an expression of solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas in retaliation for its October 7 attack, which left about 1,140 people dead, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
In response, Israel’s relentless aerial bombardment and ground invasion with troops and tanks have killed at least 21,320 people, mostly women and children, and wounded another 55,603 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
“Keeping in mind the seriously concerning situation in Palestine and to show solidarity with our Palestinian brothers and sisters, there will be a strict ban by the government on holding any kind of event for New Year,” Pakistan’s Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar said.
Police across the country said security and other arrangements, including measures against aerial firing, have been completed ahead of New Year’s Eve.
In Sydney, the self-proclaimed “New Year’s capital of the world”, more than a million partygoers packed the harbour foreshore, with city officials and police warning that all vantage points were full.
Sydneysiders gathered through the day at prominent sites, defying uncharacteristically dank weather, and were not disappointed when the Harbour Bridge and other landmarks were garlanded in light and colour by eight tonnes of fireworks.
Pyrotechnics also illuminated the skies in Auckland, Hong Kong, Manila and Indonesia.
The last 12 months brought “Barbiegeddon” at the box office, a proliferation of human-seeming artificial intelligence tools, and a world-first whole-eye transplant.
India outgrew China as the world’s most populous country, and then became the first nation to land an unmanned craft on the Moon’s south pole.
It was also the hottest year since records began in 1880, with a spate of climate-fuelled disasters striking across the world.
Fans bade adieu to “Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll” Tina Turner, “Friends” actor Matthew Perry, hell-raising Anglo-Irish songsmith Shane MacGowan and master dystopian novelist Cormac McCarthy.
Rebuilding
Perhaps more than anything, 2023 will be remembered for war in the Middle East, after Hamas’s October 7 attacks on southern Israel and Israel’s ferocious bombardment on Gaza.
The United Nations estimates that almost two million Gazans have been displaced since Israel’s siege began, or about 85 percent of the peacetime population.
With once-bustling Gaza City neighbourhoods reduced to rubble, there were few places left to mark the new year — and fewer loved ones to celebrate with.
“It was a black year full of tragedies,” said Abed Akkawi, who fled the city with his wife and three children.
The 37-year-old, now living in a UN shelter in Rafah, southern Gaza, said his house had been obliterated and his brother killed in the violence.
“God willing this war will end, the new year will be a better one, and we will be able to return to our homes and rebuild them, or even live in a tent on the rubble,” he told AFP.
In Rome, Pope Francis prayed for the victims of conflicts around the globe, citing Ukrainians, Palestinians and the people of Sudan.
“At the end of a year, have the courage to ask how many lives have been torn apart in armed conflicts, how many deaths?” the 87-year-old pontiff said after his Angelus prayer in St Peter’s Square.
“And how much destruction, how much suffering, how much poverty? Those who have an interest in these conflicts, listen to the voice of conscience.”
To the polls
Several pivotal elections are scheduled in 2024.
The political fate of more than four billion people will be decided in contests that will shape Britain, the European Union, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, Venezuela and a host of other nations.
But one election promises global consequences.
In the United States, Democrat Joe Biden, 81, and Republican Donald Trump, 77, appear set for a November rerun of their divisive 2020 presidential race contest.
As the incumbent, Biden has at times appeared to show his advancing age and even his supporters worry about the toll of another bruising four years in office.
There are at least as many concerns about a Trump return.
He faces prosecution on several counts and 2024 could determine whether the bombastic self-proclaimed billionaire goes to the Oval Office or jail.
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