2026 is here! Not in Morocco \u2014 but in New Zealand and Australia.<\/p>\n
The two countries celebrated the year\u2019s arrival a few hours ago, with a series of fireworks that lit up the\u00a0 skies.<\/p>\n
Sydney celebrated the new year with fireworks, but also released white doves\u00a0 to express solidarity with the families of the Bondi Beach massacre, in which 15 people were killed on December 14.<\/p>\n
Before midnight, a crowd paid one-minute of silence in commemoration of the victims.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, in Auckland, the Sky Tower featured a countdown followed by spectacular fireworks that kicked off 2026.<\/p>\n
Despite the rain, thousands of people flocked to the city to celebrate the new year.<\/p>\n
According to CBS News, the five-minute display included 3,500 fireworks launched from different floors of the tower.<\/p>\n
However, community events were canceled in New Zealand\u2019s North Island due to weather forecasts.<\/p>\n
Chris Minns, Premier of New South Wales, announced a massive security presence in Sydney\u2019s streets, including police armed with machine guns.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that [the Bondi attack] means fundamental changes,\u201d he said on Monday.<\/p>\n
The official acknowledged that it might be \u201cconfronting\u201d for people to see police carrying firearms and weapons that were never spotted before.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I don\u2019t make any apology for that. We want people to be safe in our community,\u201d Minns said.<\/p>\n
He urged people in Sydney, however, not to let the Bondi attack change their way of life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"2026 is here! Not in Morocco \u2014 but in New Zealand and Australia. The two countries celebrated the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210203,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[127903,85,119174,111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-210202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-2026-new-year","tag-australia","tag-bondi-attack","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}