Fireworks in Sydney open New Year's festivities

SYDNEY, Australia -- A pulsing heart of red lights shone from Sydney's Harbor Bridge early today as tens of thousands watched fireworks ushering in the new year. Revelers around the world began partying, visited places of worship and gathered with family to welcome 2006.

Celebrations were taking place amid tight security as such cities as Sydney and Paris feared repeats of recent ethnic riots and authorities were on guard against terror attacks. In Indonesia, a bomb killed eight people and wounded 45 at a market crowded with holiday shoppers.

London's revelers prepared to celebrate the new year across the city, including at a huge open-air party in Trafalgar Square.

Families in Sydney trooped to vantage points around the harbor to watch a spectacular fireworks show that began at midnight.

The message of love in the celebration, however, went hand-in-hand with a huge police presence aimed at preventing a repeat of mid-December's two nights of racial violence in beach suburbs. More than 1,700 officers were on duty and police helicopters and boats patrolled.

Generally jubilant celebrations planned across Asia were in sharp contrast with last year, when the devastation of the Indian Ocean tsunami led many countries and individuals to cancel festivities.

In France, 25,000 police officers were assigned to keep order on New Year's Eve, a night when partying youths often set hundreds of cars ablaze as festivities get out of hand.

In the Philippines, officials threatened to arrest anyone who set off powerful fireworks or fired guns, seeking to prevent deaths and injuries that accompany New Year's Eve festivities every year.

Already, two Filipinos had died from guns fired in celebration and two deaths were reported from people accidentally eating a popular candy-looking sparkler. An additional 162 suffered firework-related injuries during the run-up to New Year's Eve, police and health officials said.

In Japan, police expected more than 14,000 people to climb the country's mountains -- including the 12,387-foot, snowcapped Mount Fuji -- to see the first sunrise of the new year. Some 100 million people were likely to visit shrines and temples in the first three days of 2006.

But a new holiday pastime also has emerged among Japanese -- watching professional wrestling on TV -- and many rang in the new year glued to their sets.