The Detroit News. As the world celebrated, time zone by time zone, the rolling start of a new millennium calculated by the birth of Jesus Christ, Christians and non-Christians alike added prayers and spiritual song to the global revelry. Residents of the Pacific island nation of Tonga were among the first to greet Jan. 1.
Daylight is near.
Multiculturalism continued at a festival attended by 300,000 at New Zealand's largest city, Auckland. It was a tribute to a quixotic graffiti artist, long since dead, who chalked the word on the city's sidewalks and walls after his conversion to Christianity. In Buddhist temples across Japan and South Korea, monks were ringing out the old year by clanging temple bells 108 times, once for each of the 108 evils of the world that worshippers hoped to dispel. Attendants at Tokyo's Meiji Shrine, one of the most popular New Year's Eve destinations, said they expected about 4 million devotees during the first three days of the new year. But the new year also began with unhappy reminders of old conflicts.