World prepares to ring in 2024

File photo : New Year’s Eve fireworks light up the sky over the Harbour Bridge during the fireworks display in Sydney on January 1, 2023.//AFP

Sydney, Australia  – Jubilant crowds will bid farewell to the hottest year on record Sunday, closing a turbulent 12 months marked by clever chatbots, climate crises and wrenching wars in Gaza and Ukraine.

The world’s population — now over eight billion — will see out the old and usher in the new, with many hoping to shake the weight of high living costs and global tumult.

In Sydney, the self-proclaimed “New Year’s capital of the world”, more than a million partygoers are expected to pack the city’s foreshore, despite uncharacteristically dank weather.

The city’s eight tonnes of fireworks will light the fuse on 2024, a year that will bring elections concerning half the world’s population and a summer Olympiad…