President Barack Obama said Tuesday he had fulfilled a campaign promise to make the U.S. tax system fairer with a deal to avert the fiscal cliff crisis that passed after a fierce duel in Congress.

"The one thing that I think hopefully in the New Year we'll focus on is seeing if we can put a package like this together with a little bit less drama, a little bit less brinksmanship, not scare the heck out of folks quite as much," he said.

Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said on Tuesday he hoped the eurozone's fourth economy would see a return to job creation in the last quarter of 2013.

"I think 2013 will be better than 2012," de Guindos said on Cadena Ser radio.

A torrent of water surged Tuesday into Sudan's Blue Nile river as President Omar al-Bashir inaugurated the expanded Roseires dam, which officials say should help develop one of the country's poorest, insurgent-hit regions.

When Bashir arrived to open the Arab-funded, Chinese-built expansion before thousands of dancing and flag-waving residents, an arc of water poured through the flag-draped dam, sending spray into the air and rapids bubbling.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un called Tuesday for a "radical turnabout" in the impoverished country's economy in a rare New Year's address that also appeared to offer an olive branch to South Korea.

Kim's speech, broadcast on state television, was the first of its kind for 19 years, since the death of his grandfather and the North's founding president Kim Il-Sung.

A "sin tax" on cigarettes and alcohol dampened the New Year party spirit when it was introduced in the Philippines Tuesday, as part of a government bid to boost finances.

Many stores started selling tobacco and drink at inflated prices before midnight, ahead of the official implementation of the tax hikes on January 1, hitting partygoers in the pocket.

Zambians on Tuesday woke up to a new year and new bank notes, which lop off three zeros in a bid to address high inflation that made the currency cumbersome to work with.

Zambia's Finance minister Alexander Chikwanda launched the new Kwacha notes assuring the citizens that the move to rebase currency was meant to address previous bouts of depreciation.

Coming together in the early hours of 2013, the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly passed a last-gasp bill Tuesday to avert huge tax increases and draconian spending cuts making up the so-called "fiscal cliff."

Lawmakers voted 89-9 to approve the measure, which now goes to the House of Representatives where it faces a less certain fate, although the chamber's Republican Speaker John Boehner said he would bring the bill to the floor soon.

The famous "I love NY" tourist T-shirts may have to be changed to "All 52 million of us love NY."

That's how many people visited the Big Apple in 2012, setting a new record that broke the previous year's milestone of 50 million.

President Mohamed Morsi has said the fall of the Egyptian pound, which is at an eight-year low against the dollar, does not worry him and expects a return to stability in the coming days, a report said Monday.

The issue "does not worry us and we are not afraid. In a few days things will balance out," Morsi said late Sunday in comments reported by the official MENA.

Spain defied the markets by averting a sovereign bailout this year but high interest rates could yet force Madrid to its knees as the nation confronts a 207-billion-euro ($274 billion) financing headache in 2013.

The eurozone's fourth-biggest economy has skirted a rescue so far even after slipping into a recession in mid-2011 that has sent the unemployment rate soaring to 25 percent, the highest in Spain's modern history.