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FROM SYDNEY TO Mumbai to Nairobi, communities around the world have welcomed 2025 with spectacular light shows, embraces and ice plunges.
It offered a hopeful start to 2025 for some, even as the world’s ongoing conflicts raised security concerns and led to muted or even cancelled festivities.
Countries in the South Pacific Ocean were the first to ring in the New Year with midnight in New Zealand striking 18 hours before the ball dropped in Times Square.
In New York, crowds cheered and couples kissed when the ball weighing almost six tonnes and featuring 2,688 crystal triangles descended down a pole in Times Square. The celebration included musical performances by TLC and the Jonas Brothers.
“It’s the biggest party in the world. There’s no other place to celebrate New Year’s than Times Square,” said Tommy Onolfo of Long Island.
Rio de Janeiro threw Brazil’s main New Year’s Eve bash on Copacabana beach, with barges shooting off 12 straight minutes of fireworks.
Thousands of tourists on cruise ships and charter boats witnessed the show up close, while many more streamed onto the sand to find their spot.
The crowd on Copacabana was expected to exceed two million people — most decked out in white to keep with tradition. They packed together to enjoy concerts by Brazilian music legends Caetano Veloso, Maria Bethânia and Ivete Sangalo, among others.
Right after the fireworks concluded, Brazil’s biggest pop star Anitta took to the stage.
Auckland was the first major city to celebrate, with thousands thronging downtown or climbing the city’s ring of volcanic peaks for a fireworks vantage point.
Fireworks blasted off the Sydney Harbour Bridge and across the bay. More than a million Australians and others gathered at the iconic Sydney Harbor for the celebration. British pop star Robbie Williams led a singalong with the crowd.
The celebration also featured Indigenous ceremonies and performances that acknowledged the land’s first people.
Hong Kong marked the start of the new year with a dazzling fireworks display over Victoria Harbour.
The theme for the 12-minute light and musical extravaganza was “The Symphony of Happiness,” conveying wishes for prosperity in the new year.
In India, thousands of revellers in the financial hub of Mumbai flocked to the city’s bustling promenade facing the Arabian Sea. In Sri Lanka, people gathered at Buddhist temples to light oil lamps and incense sticks and pray.
In Dubai, thousands attended a fireworks show at the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest skyscraper.
And in Nairobi, Kenya, scattered fireworks were heard.
Rome’s traditional New Year’s Eve festivities have an additional draw: the start of Pope Francis’ Holy Year, the once-every-quarter-century celebration projected to bring some 32 million pilgrims to the Eternal City in 2025.
During Mass on Wednesday, the Pope is expected to again appeal for peace in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Paris capped a momentous 2024 with its traditional countdown and fireworks extravaganza on the Champs-Elysées. The city’s emblematic Arc de Triomphe monument was turned into a giant tableau for a light show that celebrated the city’s landmarks and the passage of time, with whirring clocks.
“Paris is a party,” proclaimed Mayor Anne Hidalgo.
The Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games hosted in the French capital from July to September transformed the city into a site of joy, fraternity and astonishing sporting achievements.
In Switzerland and some other places, people embraced the cold, stripping and plunging into the water in freezing temperatures.
American Samoa will be among the last to welcome 2025, a full 24 hours after New Zealand.
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Kids are also being let down by waiting lists in hospitals. Looking forward to hearing Simon saying this
@Shaun Gallagher: Nothing like diverting attention away from real issues.
@Patrick MC Dermott: As he has as Are Lingus is no longer state owned so nothing to do with him
@Shaun Gallagher: Did anyone ever find those children who went missing, whilst under govt care? Why doesn’t the journal investigate some as serious and horrendous as this? Nobody takes you serious as a”news site”. None of you are considered to be real “journalists”. Seriously, do a journal investigates piece on young kids going missing whilst in govt care!!!!
In another dispute any minister or taoiseach would say they can’t comment as they can’t interfere in industrial relations process or dispute
Fine Gael, typically anti worker
Who exactly is using the children as pawns? I haven’t heard either Aer Lingus or the unions mention it?
@Gerry McAuley: Simon Harris is
@Stephen Kelly: all soundbites as usual. “Get back to the table”…… They’ve been at the table for nearly 2 years. Now things have escalated. Doesn’t look like the pilots are going to blink so Aerlingus have made a decision to play hard ball and are losing money and damaging their own reputation to keep the workers down. If only management would publish their own pay increases like they published the pilots remuneration. That would be some reading.
@Gerry McAuley: I don’t like prawns.
Yes, they should only strike between 1am and 2am, so it has as little affect as possible, that’s the way to have your demands met. Bit like why nurses are vastly underpaid, the odd time they do try to fight for what they should be paid they still make sure everybody is looked after so they get naff all.
I support the pilots. Not sure what gives Simon the impression that he can decide for the nation how they feel about this. Mental health services for children are non existent. The children that Simon promised would have surgery for scoliosis are still waiting. Children are being let down by this government and it’s a very cheap shot from Simon to use them as pawns on this issue.
He is not too worried about the children he promised an operation to for scoliosis within four months in 2017and they are still waiting for it. Many of them are much worse now and have gone downhill since.
@Patrick Treacy: Any chance RTE would challenge him on that issue? Not a hope.
Has anyone ever wondered why politicians never go on strike? Think about that for a minute and then decide if they should be allowed criticise others for fighting for their conditions. Pilots are well paid but if they didn’t fight for it they’d end up like nurses, underpaid. I do however think that people should stop clapping when they land the plane, that’s what we do for nurses instead of paying them more, it’s not fair that pilots get more pay and claps.
@Eddie Garvey: politicians can’t go on strike. They could not turn up but they can’t go on strike, they’re elected not employed.
Children in this country are let down by your Government everyday Taoiseach. But sure blame the pilots, absolutely laughable. Get your own house in order.
No surprise here from Fine Gael – completely anti worker and against collective bargaining.
Aer Lingus pilots have gone through the negotiations for 2 years so it’s clear where the fault lies here. Looking for pay to match inflation is something every worker deserves, especially as we’ve seen that corporate greed is a massive factor in inflation
Leave the kids out of a dispute workers action, just like your Government left them out for scoliosis surgery, Disgusted at you!
Children’l from 20 years ago have been let down by Simon and his buddies. Have all emigrated and left this country cause can’t afford to live. And they are still doing it today to today’s children
Travellers or not we are all pawns in the daily grind that our elites have planned for us.
@JP: we ARE the product.
@Thesaltyurchin: Wrong article, that’s social media.
@Steve O’Hara-Smith: nope, it’s never been exclusive to Tech, it’s 100% how our government view us
It’s a disgrace from the greedy pilots
@John D Doe: Greedy pilots? Would you be happy in your job with no pay rise in 5 years all the while inflation is reducing your wage slip. I’m guessing you wouldn’t be but of course you get outraged when others stand up for what they feel they are entitled to while you cry
@John D Doe: they haven’t had a pay increase since 2019. Inflation since then sits at over 21%. The average Irish workers wages since 2019 in figures released by CSO last month has increased by 24%. So tell me, how are they greedy?
@John D Doe: The pilots took a pay cut when everyone was required to help out the economy messed up by or Govt. Most employees got the cuts reinstated. That is their entitlement. The limits haven’t got theirs back. I have no skin in the game, but I am appalled by the abuse Mark Tighe gets on RTE when he puts the pilots case across.
@Unridden Ana: jaysus no pay increases here since 2018!!
@John D Doe: You’re a disgrace to your parents. I’d say they’re seriously embarrassed by you and your unintelligently informed direction in your sad life.
@MegaLlong: Well do something about it instead of just complaining on the internet
@Ger Whelan: Ger don’t respond to him, he just spouts out involuntarily and is getting help for it!! Tablets didn’t help!!
Fair play to him. Speaking a bit of sense irrespective if your party position.
Has Simon Harris now taken over from Ryan Tubridy as the patron saint of children?
Hi. Is it possible to do a fact check on the Air Lingus pilots claim that inflation has gone up by 24.8% since 2019 and that’s why they’re looking for such an enormous increase in their pay.
@Daithí Ó Gruagáin: Google it
Lots of people here trying to distract from the point. A pilots job not much more difficult than a person driving articulated truck and some already earning well over 200 K a year . Tell me ..a pensioner..how that kind of wage deserves a 25% wage increase. Blackmail . Nothing less
@Maurice Dinan: A pilot’s job is a lot more difficult than driving a truck. 99.9% of the time ticking along on autopilot with almost nothing to do for hours on end but be constantly ready to respond in a split second to any emergency and try to keep everyone alive in a broken aircraft several kilometres up.
Then there’s the radiation hazard associated with the job because most of the time is spent in the upper atmosphere.
I would not do it for 200k.
I do enjoy how gangster he looks. Sort like De Niro
The Taoiseach is a jackeen disgrace!
Whinging about something that never happened – “using children as pawns”. Such absolute hysterics! Next he’ll be claiming that all employees in a Trade Union are using Trade Unions “as human shields” fer gawwd sake!
It is also an absolute disgrace that Aer Lingus was ever let go from National and indigenous ownership. New owners have done nothing but defame, from the very start, the Irish people, the Irish Nation, the Irish culture and more importantly the established **class** of a prestigious, high-end, and proud Irish brand that always engaged respectfully with worker’s unions and *loyal*, consistently hardworking, employees – as is our [dissident, worker-centric and pro-TU] culture.
There should have been caveats written into that sales contract prohibiting them from engaging in behaviours, activities or policies that are anti-Trade Union and (therefore) defamatory of or to the Irish people, and/or the Irish Nation.
Their carry on is a disgrace!
And more importantly, their carry on is indicative of a corporate culture mentality of pro-colonialist WASP supremacy. They have essentially placed British pilots in ethnic superiority to indigenous Irish pilots, they have platformed and condoned pro-colonialist supremacy and relegated Irish pilots to an inferior employee position and designation via pay disparity.
Basically, British owners have practiced and endorsed a policy of ethnic supremacy through pay apartheid.
Denigrating Irish as “less than”. “Less worthy” of pay parity.
While the actually inferiorly educated British, and their post-Brexit, “can’t reverse”, inferiorly licenced, HGV truck drivers are mowing down Irish cyclists and pedestrians the length and breadth of Ireland!!
That said, these pilots should be Striking over being forced to still fly lethal Boeing planes, fer jaysus sakes lads!!
Or at least incorporating the phasing-out of Boeing useage, as part of their demands (such as: “we’ll drop to 21% if all planes are swopped to Airbus before Christmas, and if Aer Lingus provides alternative guaranteed and recession-safe perks. Like a company gym and pool or free local gym membership, subsidised pet insurance, or free company-funded human health insurance for whole family. Or company housing and/or subsidised housing or, better yet, a company Credit Union that can back&support mortgages for all employees”).
Where are the European and International Regulators on serious Boeing problems? EASA, IAA etc?
Obviously the American’s can’t be trusted.
Obviously the yankee FAA can’t be trusted.
American consumers have been switching their flights to Airbus flights…..FOR MONTHS NOW!!
How many investigative journalistic reports, and documentaries, do Irish (EU+Australia/NZ) pilots actually need before they start *refusing* to fly ALL Boeings?
From European National Broadcasters to Netflix to Al Jazeera – I have personally gone from cautious confidence (reliant upon engineering to the letter of the law, and absolute transparency with safety obligation) in the 20th Century feat of engineering to bypassing any development of a ‘fear of flying’ phobia, directly to: “Nope. Ferry.”
(…and I’ll take yer horse with me, for a few bars of Kerrygold! ;-P )
Why has nobody asked the question though – how have half the country not already shifted their holiday plan to Ferry (France/Spain) and Trains over flying (any airline) with Boeing?
I support all workers who are in a Trade Union.
There is nothing in this life more righteous.
And who are exercising their Rights through their Trade Union.
But to really get me to rally behind these pilots – striking at the very last minute in the thick of sunmer season – they had better be striking the match of an International Pilot Boycott of Boeing.
[side note: it is the nurses, junior doctors, and later also Consultants, who should be implementing intensive "Work-To-Rule" actions during the non-flu season. Let's see how far that gets the HSE's supposedly "fully staffed hospitals"!]
Your a pathetic minister using emotional language like that. Stop your condensing rubbish and call an election. You should keep out of issues you know nothing about.
To the pilots on the forum and there be many, three questions already posed multiple times without reply. Let’s see if we can do better this morning.
Do you guys use the free parking at Dublin airport for personal trips, holidays abroad and the like?
If a pilot prefers to use public transport to travel to the airport can they allow a third party to avail of it?
Do any pilots earn a 2nd income in this way ?
have your say