Europeans brave cold on New Year's Eve

Russians crammed Moscow's Red Square to see in 2001

LONDON, England -- Throughout Europe, the dawning of the year was being ushered in with anything from grand fanfare to low key acceptance -- and warm clothes.

Paris, which a year ago converted the Eiffel Tower into a roman candle of fireworks, planned to bathe the monument in a sparkling blue hue from midnight until dawn on Monday morning.

As the city centre was transformed into daylight with a "cathedral of light," a thousand drummers from all over Europe were recruited to beat the countdown to midnight in unison at the Georges Pompidou Centre.

ALSO New Year marked in diverse ways

By contrast London, whose fireworks last year were called a damp squib, and whose centrepiece Millennium Dome has been a year-long embarrassment, is playing the party-pooper this time.

Transport was stopping before midnight, bridges to the centre were closed and police discouraged revellers from assembling in the traditional haunt, Trafalgar Square.

Official festivities in Liverpool, northwest England, Middlesbrough in the northeast and Londonderry in Northern Ireland were cancelled, as forecasters warned of continued bad weather and advised revellers to stay indoors.

Freezing temperatures, heavy snow and gales were predicted to hit parts of the country, and the Meteorological Office issued a severe weather warning.

But further north, Scotland's two main cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow were undaunted, vying to provide the brightest, loudest and most raucous Hogmanay.

For others, the New Year -- and strictly speaking, the new millennium -- marked the dawning of a year full of optimism.

Yugoslavia's celebrations, the first since the ousting of indicted war criminal Slobodan Milosevic, were dubbed "the first free New Year".

The weather, as with much of Europe, did its best however to dampen revellers' spirits, with flooding forcing 2,000 people out of their homes in the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro.

Russia, whose vast territory spans 11 time zones, went into 2001 with much to forget -- the Kursk nuclear submarine disaster, gangsterism and the war in Chechnya - but also with a note of optimism from President Vladimir Putin.

"We are leaving behind another year, a year of happy and tragic events, a year of difficult decisions," Putin, marking the end of his first year in power, said in a statement delivered to each of Russia's regions.

"But things which looked impossible a short time ago are becoming facts of our life. Distinct elements of stability appeared in our country, and that is valuable for politics, for economics and for every one of us," Putin said.

Russians marked the holiday with gift-giving and by decorating homes with images of the Santa Claus-like Dyed 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 January 7 on the Orthodox calendar.

Fireworks accidents by revellers too eager to wait for New Year's Eve injured at least five people in Italy.

Among the injured was a 15-year-old boy whose left hand had to be amputated, officials said on Sunday.

The Italian news agency ANSA, reporting from the southern city of Matera, said that the youth and a 13-year-old friend were brought to the hospital there Saturday night with wounds from fireworks explosions.

Also in southern Italy, three young people suffered hand or arm injuries in separate accidents in the area of Foggia.

In the days leading up to the holiday weekend, police seized tons of illegal fireworks throughout the country.

While Poles were expected to take to the streets in their tens of thousands to see in New Year, a select few were to escape the elements by heading into disused salt mines to have a ball.

Two separate balls were to be held in the giant underground caverns of the former Bochnia and Wieliczka salt mines, near Krakow in the south of the country.

The mines have been transformed into a museum and declared a world heritage site by UNESCO.

Warsaw will mark the official start of the third millennium by unveiling a giant clock measuring 6.3 metres (20 feet) in diameter at a height of 165 metres (540 feet) in a monument presented to the Polish people by Joseph Stalin in the 1950s.

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