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See the full 12 minute New Year fireworks display from Sydney Australia. The theme was this month's second full Moon, called the Blue Moon.

Recape Predictions for 2009 Business/Economy 1) The last half of 2008 will be declared a recession and it will continue through the first quarter. We will have little growth in the 2nd and 3rd quarter, modest growth in the 4th quarter. >Right 2) The Dow will finish at 11,500 on the last trading day of 2009, which will be Thursday, December 31st. >probably not 3) Dollar at the end of 2009 will equal € 1.32 > No ADD strikes again. I meant to say 1 Euro = $1.32 - No either way 4) Unemployment will peak in early fall. >TBD...

SYDNEY – Under explosive bursts of crimson, purple and blue, more than 1 million New Year revelers in Sydney got one of the world's biggest parties started Thursday — bidding farewell to the tough year that was 2009 and welcoming a new decade. As the family-friendly, pre-midnight fireworks show illuminated Australia's largest city, preparations were under way across the world for pyrotechnics, parties and prayers in the final countdown to herald the end of the period dubbed "the Noughties." The mood of celebrations was tempered in some places by the effects of the financial downturn, which bit hard in 2009,...

From the Currier & Ives vault, and slightly re-colored by your faithful correspondent, a card to wish you and yours a Happy New Year.

What would everyone consider the best 5 movies of this last decade?

China fears riots will spread as boom goes sour Today millions will leave the cities to return to their rural family homes for the new year celebrations. But this year Beijing hopes the newly jobless revellers will stay there - to prevent a fresh wave of unrest in the cities Tania Branigan in Dongguan Sunday 25 January 2009 They surged into the grimy streets around the factory: first scores, then hundreds, then more than a thousand, as word spread and tension loaded the stale, grey air. The boldest overturned a police van and smashed up motorcycles, then tore through the...

Violence scarred celebrations and led to a bloody New Year across the country as emergency services endured a chaotic end to 2008. Ambulance control centres reported receiving 999 calls as often as once every seven seconds - the second highest volume of calls since the Millennium - as binge drinkers turned nasty in the freezing temperatures. Many of the calls related either to alcohol-fuelled assaults or excessive drunkenness.

Update: The French press reported that the Interior Ministry released a final "verified" count of 1,147 vehicles burned in France over New Year's Eve. The number is up 30.64% from last year's total, 878. REUTERS - At least 445 cars were torched over the night of New Year's Eve in France, a 20 percent rise on last year, but there were relatively few clashes with police, the Interior Ministry and police said on Thursday. Car burnings are regular occurrences in France but the registering the New Year's Eve total has become something of a tradition since they achieved symbolic status...

Okay, I'll start: 1) Blagojevich walks scott free 2) My salary continues to remain stagnate 3) The bailout results in a massive debt to taxpayers with zero benefit to them 4) Iran aquires nuclear weapons and we (including Bush) failed to do anything about it 5) Jamie Gertz continue's to become even more attractive as she ages

The Freeper Canteen Wishes Everyone NEW YEAR WISHES May peace fill all the empty spaces around you And in you, may contentment answer all your wishes. May comfort be yours, warm and soft like a sigh. And may the coming year show you that every day is really a first day, a new year. Let abundance be your constant companion, so that you have much to share. May mirth be near you always, like a lamp shining brightly on the many paths you travel. ~~What Are You Doing New Years Eve~~ ~~Auld Lang Syng~~ An added second of time!...

Inevitably, at the end of, and the beginning of each year we are all subject to some “year in review” served up right to us through the dysfunctional eyes of some baby boomer. Their constant comparisons to everything from the sixties and, in the strangest way, always telling us that our hard times today just aren’t anything compared to some bizarre year they pull out of their tuckus from the sixties. I’m so sick of these people. The baby boomers are the most self absorbed, dysfunctional group of malcontents that have ever been created in the history of the United...

The Ignorant Fishermen 2000 years ago before Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead, He chose men. The elite class and religious rulers of that day called these men ignorant. God, however, called these men to be His Fishermen and Ambassadors to the dying world. Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel. Now as he walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew...

Wait a second. The start of next year will be delayed by circumstances beyond everyone's control. Time will stand still for one second on New Year's Eve, as we ring in the New Year on that Wednesday night. As a result, you'll have an extra second to celebrate because a "Leap Second" will be added to 2008 to let a lagging Earth catch up to super-accurate clocks.

Wait a second. The start of next year will be delayed by circumstances beyond everyone's control. Time will stand still for one second on New Year's Eve, as we ring in the New Year on that Wednesday night. As a result, you'll have an extra second to celebrate because a "Leap Second" will be added to 2008 to let a lagging Earth catch up to super-accurate clocks. By international agreement, the world's timekeepers, in order to keep their official atomic clocks in step with the world's irregular but gradually slowing rotation, have decreed that a Leap Second be inserted between...

2008 Year In Review!!! Herein are some New Years resolutions for Barack Obama, President Elect of the United States. I will stop trying to fashion myself after Presidents of the past. I am not Lincoln, nor Kennedy, nor even FDR. I resolve to try my upmost to be the sort of President that others will fashion themselves as. I will not allow any more photos to be taken of myself with my shirt off. It is gratuitous and somewhat vain. I will accept that fact, now having had the national security briefings, that George W. Bush had things mostly right...

PROFESSIONAL socialite Paris Hilton has confirmed she and rocker boyfriend Benji Madden will host a New Year's eve party at a secret Sydney location. "I can't wait to be partying with the Aussies and Benji DJ-ing by my side," Hilton said from Los Angeles. The billionaire hotel heiress is paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to attend parties around the globe, and was last down under when advertising magnate John Singleton reportedly paid her $5 million for a six-day promotional visit almost two years ago. This year's party will be streamed live over The Bongo Virus - a platform similar...

the cat is called " fortune-bringing cat"(招财猫)!

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- The father of Rhode Island's first baby of 2008 faces deportation after being arrested for violating immigration laws, while his roommate, also an illegal immigrant, was found dead of a suspected suicide hours after the arrest. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Mynor Montufar at his apartment Friday after local newspapers and television stations showed him and Carmen Marrero as parents of the first baby born in the state after the new year rolled in, officials said. ICE spokeswoman Paula Grenier said the timing of Montufar's arrest was coincidental to the publicity surrounding his child. Another man...

As we start the New Year what plans do you have for the year and what is already sorted for the New Year. I am not talking about resolutions we covered that one last week I am talking more about things that you are planning not so much things you may wish to resolve to do but things you will or can do. In Britain many of my friends have already booked their summer holiday (vacation) some because they or their partners have set holiday at work or have to give their employers dates now. Others have booked their vacation...

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan – 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, sound off the men and women of Combined Joint Task Force-82 as they count down to midnight, Dec. 31. Though no one popped open a bottle of bubbly, Servicemembers here still found a way to have fun on the last night of 2007. Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines celebrated the count down to New Year’s 2008 here with live music and lots of laughs. The tunes were courtesy of visiting Boston band Lansdowne and Level 82, part of the 82nd Airborne Division’s All-American Band. Two comedians, Daniel Kinno and Julie...