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An explosion has been reported outside a church in the north Egyptian city of Alexandria with unconfirmed reports of a number of casualties.

Several people were killed in the blast, an unnamed security official was quoted as saying by AFP news agency.

Alexandria, with a population of about four million, is the country’s second-biggest city.

Christians from the Coptic Orthodox Church make up about 10% of Egypt’s predominantly Muslim population.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Crowds are lining the banks of the Thames in central London ahead of the New Year’s Eve fireworks, which are expected to be seen by up to 250,000 spectators at midnight.

The eight-minute display will have a musical soundtrack for the first time.

Thousands of people have gathered on Victoria Embankment and the South Bank, while nearby Tube stations and bus stops face restrictions.

Supt Julia Pendry of the Metropolitan Police said it was already “very busy”.

Many people may become very disappointed if they did not set out early, she said, and asked spectactors to consider using Tube stations away from the main fireworks areas to reduce congestion.

“It’s obviously very mild so lots of people have come to London,” she added.

“We want Londoners and all visitors to the capital to be able to welcome the new year in a safe and crime-free environment.”

The organiser of the celebrations, James Donald, said the display would consist of “really high-energy fireworks” at the London Eye, which opened in 2000.

He said BBC Radio 1 DJ Nihal had created a dynamic soundtrack of “cool tunes”.

The show – which has taken five months of planning – will bring to life more of “the character of London” than in previous years, Mr Donald added.

London Ambulance Service staff are preparing for one of their busiest nights of the year, expecting more than 500 calls an hour.

Deputy director of operations Jason Killens asked people to “use the ambulance service wisely and only call us in a genuine emergency”.

“Don’t call the ambulance service simply because you’re drunk, when you’re looking to go home.”

Revellers can travel for free on Tube, bus, tram and train services run by Transport for London from 2345 GMT until 0430 GMT, but valid tickets are needed on national rail services.

Later on Saturday more than 500,000 people are expected to watch London’s new year parade, which is marking its 25th anniversary.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Hundreds of thousands of revellers have welcomed in the new year at open-air parties around the UK.

An estimated 80,000 are attending the annual Hogmanay party in Edinburgh, while 250,000 are expected to have watchd the fireworks in central London.

Other cities in Scotland, including Glasgow and Inverness, are also hosting new year celebrations.

The better weather is also expected to encourage partygoers in Wales to take to the nation’s streets.

Hundreds of people were expected to attend the free Calennig celebrations at Cardiff Civic Centre, which features a live music concert with Dr and The Medics and T.

The event included a fire show and funfair, as well as midnight skating at an open-air ice rink.

Edinburgh’s Hogmanay festival lasts four days and got under way on Thursday with a torchlight procession.

The ticket-only main event on New Year’s Eve includes an open- air concert starring Biffy Clyro, The Charlatans and Billy Bragg.

Billy Bragg, who had finished his performance but was staying on with his family to watch Biffy Clyro and the fireworks, said he had taken along a pair of tartan long johns but had not needed them on stage.

He said Scotland had “kind of invented New Year get-togethers”, so Edinburgh was where he wanted to be.

Biffy Clyro’s frontman Simon Neil said: “There’s no better way to end the year.

“We have been really fortunate all year – but even if it had been awful, it would have felt great because of tonight.

“It’s a real honour and we’re looking forward to rocking some cold folk.”

Edinburgh Hogmanay director Peter Irvine said record numbers of revellers had been expected to gather in the capital city.

“We always say this is the home of Hogmanay,” he said.

“This event has a really good feeling and atmosphere. It just works – I don’t think anyone else can do it like we do.”

In Glasgow, crowds will be toasting the new year with one of Scotland’s biggest outdoor ceilidhs, in George Square.

Crowds also gathered in central London for the free annual fireworks, which were launched from three barges and the London Eye.

The eight-minute display had a musical soundtrack for the first time.

Some 3,000 police officers are on duty, and a Metropolitan Police spokesman said the crowds were larger than last year but so far there had been only five arrests for minor offences.

Party organisers will no doubt be relieved the freezing conditions of the past few weeks have been replaced by milder weather, with temperatures of 4-5C in Edinburgh, Glasgow and London.

The BBC Weather Centre says it is a dull and misty end to 2010.

“A band of rain and hill snow will move south through Scotland overnight, reaching northern England and Northern Ireland by dawn, with colder, clearer conditions, frost and ice following behind in a northerly breeze,” forecasters said.

“Further south, mostly dry and cloudy.”

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

The Archbishop of Canterbury says the 400-year-old King James Bible can help give meaning to modern lives, in his New Year address for the BBC.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Preparations for open air Hogmanay celebrations are well under way in cities across Scotland.

In Edinburgh 80,000 are expected to gather for the party on Princes Street to see in the New Year.

Glasgow is hosting a ceilidh in George Square, open only to ticket holders, followed by a fireworks display.

Inverness is preparing for a huge free party at the Northern Meeting Park Arena, with the Red Hot Chilli Pipers, Peatbog Fairies and Blazin Fiddles.

Aberdeen city council has organised a free fireworks display from the roof of His Majesty’s Theatre at midnight.

Hundreds of people are also expected to attend Stonehaven’s annual fireballs ceremony.

Stirling Castle’s event, which features singers including Wagner Carrilho from the X Factor, ends with the city’s “biggest ever” hogmanay fireworks display at midnight.

A piper will play at the Midsteeple in Dumfries from 2345 to 0015 GMT and revellers are expected to gather for the bells at midnight.

The events are a draw to tourists from around the world and a boost to the Scottish economy.

According to the Scottish government, Edinburgh’s Hogmanay alone generated an estimated £29m in 2009.

More than 25,000 people took part in a torchlight procession in Edinburgh on Thursday evening to kick off the city’s New Year festival in the capital.

The event, which started at Parliament Square, marked the beginning of a four-day celebration.

Organisers said the numbers of people attending Thursday night’s event had been “record-breaking”.

The city’s main Hogmanay ticket events, including an open air concert starring Biffy Clyro, begin at 2100 GMT.

Edinburgh’s emergency services and the city council have issued a number of guidelines warning revellers to stay safe, be sensible and keep warm and dry during the celebrations.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

The Discovery Channel cancels plans to air a re-enactment of Michael Jackson’s autopsy, amid concerns the programme was distasteful.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

More than half of councils in England have yet to comply with government demands to publish spending, with a month to go before the deadline.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Sri Lanka’s government decides to change the names of all state institutions still bearing the nation’s former British colonial name, Ceylon.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Several people have been injured in a blast said to have occurred at or near an army barracks in the Nigerian capital Abuja.

People were seen being carried away after the blast, which hit a beer garden, local journalists told the Associated Press.

A police spokesman told AFP the blast had occurred at the Sani Abacha barracks, and the cause was unknown.

But Nigerian media said the explosion had happened in a nearby market.

Nigeria has a recent history of bomb attacks in the capital and other cities:

On Thursday, two blasts disrupted a political rally in the southern city of Yenagoa, wounding several peopleBomb attacks in the northern city of Jos, a flash-point between Nigerian Christians and Muslims, left 38 people over ChristmasIn October, at least eight people were killed in explosions in Abuja as the country celebrated 50 years since independence from the UK

The barracks, named after Nigeria’s late military dictator, is located in Asokoro district, home to the presidential palace and said to be the city’s most secure area.

Officially renamed the Mogadishu Cantonment, the barracks is still known to many by its old name.

The nearby Mammy Market is said to be popular with politicians and civil servants, attracted by its roast fish eateries.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Two alleged armed robbers are in police custody after a botched heist at a Chase bank in a suburb of Houston, Texas.

The men had taken seven hostages and fired gunshots during the attempted robbery.

Five hostages were released and one suspect apprehended earlier in the day.

Local police, aided by FBI agents, had been negotiating with the suspects for four hours before the final two hostages were freed.

Police Lt Onesmio Lopez says the hostages are mostly unharmed. The robbers had struck and injured the bank manager after he had refused to open the vault.

Nearby streets in the suburb of Pearland had been sealed and businesses shut down.

The Houston Chronicle estimates that more than 50 police officers had been on the scene.

The armed robbers had entered the Chase bank at around 1130 on Friday morning.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Estonia is just hours away from becoming the 17th member of the eurozone – the first ex-Soviet state to adopt the EU’s single currency.

The changeover from the kroon to the euro starts at midnight (2200 GMT) in the small Baltic nation of 1.3m people.

Despite market pressure on the eurozone and the bail-outs of Greece and the Irish Republic this year, polls suggest that most Estonians want the euro.

Estonia’s PM Andrus Ansip will withdraw euros from a cashpoint as 2011 arrives.

For many Estonians, 20 years after breaking away from the Soviet Union, the euro is proof that they have fully arrived in the West, the BBC’s Baltic region correspondent Damien McGuinness reports.

Estonia joined the EU in 2004 – one of eight former Communist countries that did so, including its Baltic neighbours Latvia and Lithuania.

Two other ex-Communist countries – Slovenia and Slovakia – are already in the eurozone.

Estonia’s government says the euro will attract foreign investors because devaluation is then ruled out.

However, poorer Estonians fear that prices will be rounded up, and that food will become even more expensive. And the prospect of having to contribute to bail-outs of richer eurozone countries is hard to stomach, our correspondent reports.

In the past year Europe’s debt crisis has hit Estonia severely. The tough cuts in state spending, necessary to join the eurozone, have pushed unemployment to more than 16%.

To avoid a last-minute rush, Estonians have been able to swap kroons for euros commission-free since 1 December, the AFP news agency reports.

Kroons will be used in parallel with the euro for the first half of January. Banks will swap Estonians’ kroons for euros until the end of 2011 and the central bank will carry on doing so indefinitely.

The kroon has been pegged to the euro for 18 years and will be converted at a rate of 15.65.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

At least 45 people were injured when one passenger train crashed into another in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires.

Realising a crash was imminent with a stationary train, the driver of the moving train applied emergency brakes, a rail official said.

He also left his seat to warn passengers to brace for impact.

Another 90 passengers suffered minor bruises and scrapes in the crash which occurred in Palermo district.

One of the injured is a woman seven months pregnant, officials at the Municipal Assistance Service (Same) said.

The 45 casualties were ferried by ambulance to hospitals around the city.

Giving details of the crash, Gustavo Gago, a spokesman for the privately run TBA railway network, said one train had stopped on a bridge and was hit from behind by another moving at a speed of between 30 and 40km/h (19 and 25mph).

Argentina suffered its worst rail disaster in 1970 when 142 people were killed and 368 injured at Benavidez, just north of the capital.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Three people have died after a tornado struck the small town of Cincinnati in Arkansas, according to local officials.

The storm caused damage near a local highway in the town’s centre and points west of Washington County, county dispatcher Josh Howerton said.

There were “lots of injuries”, he added, quoted by AP news agency.

The storm also caused damage in the town of Tontitown, the deputy emergency manager for Washington County said.

Rick Johnson said emergency responders are experiencing difficulties in reaching the damaged areas because of power lines that have been knocked down.

The Arkansas Department of Emergency Management said that power was out throughout Washington County.

The tornado hit Cincinnati, located about 20 miles (32km) west of the city of Fayetteville, around 0600 local time (1200GMT), said Joe Sellers, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oklahoma.

The storm system also injured at least two people and caused damage to five homes in Benton County, a region near the Arkansas state lines with the states of Oklahoma and Missouri, Matt Garrity, the county’s manager of emergency services, told the CNN news network.

Homes were damaged in the county, and the local airport has closed due to debris in the region, Mr Garrity said.

Tornado warnings were issued by the weather service for north-west Arkansas and parts of Missouri.

The storm system that caused the tornado is moving northeast into Missouri and is maintaining its strength, which is an unusual occurrence, Mr Sellers said.

He added that a combination of warm, wet air in the region and colder air moving in from the west created the conditions necessary for the tornado.

“Anytime you have a significant change in air mass there is going to be unsettled weather marking the two different air masses,” Mr Sellers told AP.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.