It wasn't so cold this year.. And we finns where in the townsquare jamming in a consert while the rockets where shot to the air. Air temperature was max -5c..

The ban will only include rockets, not mortars which carry much more oomph anyway.

...my girlfriend and I arrived back from a vacation in Isreal for our first New Years in Denmark. The irony was that from sundown to midnight, Denmark effectively turns into what looks like a (drunken, happy) war zone.

This decentralization of fireworks happens in the suburbs of Houston, TX, too.

Mmm, this picture could have been made a bit better if:
1) Photographer took first exposure of skyline, sans fireworks.
2) Then took this picture.
3) Brought them both into photoshop, used first exposure (static lights) to eliminate perhaps 35% of the city lights in the second exposure, leaving the fireworks standing out just a wee bit more.

Still, though, pretty awesome.

Same here in the Netherlands.
Problem is that only few people clean up after themselves, quite a few think you can throw fireworks in the direction of anything and everybody and some even think it's fun to burn stuff like schools and other people's cars and attack firemen and ambulance personnel.
It needs some form of more regulation, as too many people misbehave as soon as they think they can get away with it.

Real cool. I've seen it in person. You have to see it for yourself, to really see how cool the Norwegians celebrate New Years.