Dubai shattered the world record for the largest ever pyrotechnic display on New Year’s Eve with a show involving more than half a million fireworks, Guinness World Records said yesterday.

Lavish fireworks displays have ushered in 2013 across the Asia-Pacific region and Europe is holding scaled-back festivities in the hope of beginning a new year that will be kinder to its battered economies.

Hundreds of world landmarks from Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate to the Great Wall of China went dark last night, part of a global effort to highlight climate change.