Revellers across the globe prepared today to ring in the New Year with fireworks and festivities under tight security after a narrowly-averted Christmas Day airline bomb plot in the United States. Partygoers from Tuvalu to Tijuana are set to raise a toast to bid farewell to 2009 and usher in a new decade, closing the door on 10 years scarred by wars, terror attacks, natural disasters and financial turmoil. In Sydney, the world's first major city to see in the New Year, around 1.5 million people are expected to crowd the harbour foreshore for a high-tech fireworks display on the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge. Paris's Eiffel Tower is to be transformed into a multicolored light show while in Berlin; more than one million revellers are expected on the boulevard leading to the Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of German unity. Celebrations in Britain centre on the London Eye, the giant wheel across the river Thames from the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, as the worlds most famous clock heralds the start of the New Year. A downpour of confetti is to mark the moment at New York's traditional mass celebration in Times Square in the heart of of Manhattan.<br/>