Spirit of Optimism Holds Sway as World Hails New Millennium

Much of the world welcomed 2001 today with fireworks, good cheer and optimism, and even in troubled lands the hope of a better future prevailed.

Yugoslavia’s celebrations, the first since the ouster of former President Slobodan Milosevic, were dubbed “the first free New Year.”

Heavy rains in the last few days brought some relief from power cuts in Yugoslavia by boosting water levels behind power dams. However, flooding drove 2,000 people out of their homes in the smaller Yugoslav republic, Montenegro.

“We have done the best a nation and a state can do in the year behind us,” new President Vojislav Kostunica said in a New Year’s Eve address on state television in the main republic, Serbia. “We have won freedom without reaching out for violence.”

As the turning globe carried country after country into a new millennium and a new century, Australia, still glowing from hosting a successful Olympic Games, set off a show of spectacular fireworks on Sydney Harbor Bridge.

The Philippines celebrated with a cacophony of gunfire and firecrackers--ironically in a country still reeling from a series of explosions in Manila less than 24 hours before that killed 14 people and injured 100.

Shortly afterward, China staged a computerized laser show and a mass wedding at the Great Wall.

Russians marked the holiday with gift-giving and by decorating homes with images of the Santa Claus-like Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost) and his sidekick Snegurochka (Snow Maiden). Christmas, an official holiday since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, is celebrated on Jan. 7 on the Orthodox calendar.

Bundled up in a red cloak on an unusually cold Roman night, Pope John Paul II made a midnight New Year’s Eve appearance to a cheering crowd in Vatican City and wished the world peace and prosperity.

Cold, rainy weather canceled fireworks celebrations in Liverpool, England, and Londonderry in Northern Ireland.

In the Dutch town of Volendam, near Amsterdam, at least four people died and about 130 were injured Sunday as fire swept through a cafe packed with celebrating teenagers.

“In panic, several people jumped out of windows” on the third story to escape the flames, Volendam police spokesman Wietse Peter said.

In Paris, 1,000 drummers from all over Europe were recruited to beat the countdown to midnight in unison at the Georges Pompidou Center.

The French capital, which a year ago converted the Eiffel Tower into a Roman candle of fireworks, bathed the monument in a sparkling blue hue from midnight until dawn.

In Japan, as the Year of the Dragon gave way to the Year of the Snake, temple bells sounded 108 times, symbolically driving out the 108 sins in the Buddhist catalog.

Taiwan marked New Year’s Day by lifting a 51-year-old ban on voyages from tiny Taiwanese-controlled islets near the Chinese coast to the mainland.

In Malaysia, 11 skydivers from the United States, Germany, Sweden and Saudi Arabia jumped off the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, the world’s tallest buildings, and set what they claimed was a world record for the greatest number of people to parachute off a building.

In one of the few occurrences that marred the holiday, a bomb blast injured 10 people in downtown Istanbul and caused thousands of Turks celebrating New Year’s Eve to briefly flee the area.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but police said the explosion could have been the work of leftist militants angry over the killings of their colleagues during recent raids on prisons.