New Year celebrations from across the world

(1 Jan 2022) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4359595, 4359600, 4359577, 4359569, 4359555 People around the world celebrated the New Year early Saturday, with fireworks and light shows returning to public squares but mass gatherings forbidden in many countries. Coronavirus safety measures resulted in toned down celebrations for a second year running. In Berlin, police urged people not to gather near the Brandenburg Gate, where a concert was staged without a live audience. In the United States, officials took a mixed approach to the year-end revelry: a scaled-back celebration in New York, nixing the audience at a countdown concert in Los Angeles, but the full works in Las Vegas. In Brazil, Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana beach welcomed a small crowd of a few thousand for 16 minutes of fireworks. Rio’s New Year’s bash usually brings more than two million people to the beach. Celebrations were muted in London, where the countdown to midnight was projected onto the Shard skyscrape