Authorities there are on high alert after thwarting a holiday terror plot.
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The prosecutor’s office said the two men already formally charged over the end-of-year plot had been ordered by a court to be detained for another month.
Authorities say the apparent plots to target New Year celebrations are not related to the suspected network behind the Paris attacks.
Hugh Carew, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police Department, said there were “no, new credible threats to the District of Columbia”.
Rooftop snipers, canine units, and air and water patrols will also be deployed around Times Square. They included hundreds of specially trained counterterrorism officers equipped with radiation detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs. Thousands of other officers will be spread throughout the city.
Crowds thronged to vantage points to see the displays which are expected to draw one million people, ahead of the chimes of midnight moving across Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and finally the Americas.
In Italy, it was smog that was putting a damper on the festivities.
Numerous police will be armed with rifles while helicopters and boats will be surveying the city as celebrations get underway.
Brussels has been on high alert since it emerged that several of the attackers involved in the Paris carnage on Nov 13 had links to the Belgian capital.
“Normally, I go out to the bars on the Asian side of Istanbul”, said 26-year-old IT expert Seyda Yilmaz. “It does not need to be an excellent one, but just a normal one”.
The fugitive suspect Abdeslam is believed to have fled to Brussels in the hours after the attacks, which were claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group.
In western NY, the Justice Department said a 25-year-old man, Emanuel Lutchman, was arrested after allegedly planning to attack a restaurant in Rochester, N.Y., in coordination with an Islamic State member in Syria contacted online.
Russian security forces will close off Moscow’s Red Square, traditionally a place where people gather to ring in the new year, amid safety concerns.
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Soldiers were on the streets of the French capital, and police forces in London, Madrid, Berlin and Istanbul increased their presence as Europeans turned out to celebrate the arrival of 2016.
