Edinburgh is staging four days of events to celebrate the new year
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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.
More than 25,000 people took part in a torchlight procession on Thursday
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.
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The Discovery Channel cancels plans to air a re-enactment of Michael Jackson’s autopsy, amid concerns the programme was distasteful.
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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.
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Sri Lanka’s government decides to change the names of all state institutions still bearing the nation’s former British colonial name, Ceylon.
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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.
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Swat team members were posted outside the bank
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.
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Estonia will become the third ex-Communist country to embrace the euro
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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.
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Both trains were heading north
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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.
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The tornado caused damage in north-west Arkansas
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.
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Crowds begin to gather in central London ahead of the annual New Year’s Eve fireworks display on the River Thames.
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UN peacekeepers have been attacked by Gbagbo loyalists
Ivory Coast’s incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo has offered to recount the vote of last month’s disputed poll.
He claims to have won the election outright, even though international observers say his rival, Alassane Ouattara, was the victor.
The UN says some 200 people have been killed or disappeared – mostly Ouattara supporters.
UN human rights chief Navi Pillay has told Mr Gbagbo he could be held accountable for human rights abuses.
Some of Ivory Coast’s neighbours have threatened military action to oust Mr Gbagbo but analysts say intervention in Ivory Coast would be far more difficult than West Africa’s previous operations in Liberia and Sierra Leone.
The UK has said it would back military intervention, if sanctioned by the UN.
Mr Ouattara is holed up in a hotel in the main city, Abidjan, protected by UN peacekeepers.
Some of Mr Gbagbo’s allies have threatened to storm the hotel on Saturday – a threat which UN chief Ban Ki-moon has said could spark renewed civil war.
The election was intended to reunify the country which has been divided since a 2002 conflict.
Mr Ouattara was initially proclaimed the winner by Ivory Coast’s election commission.
But as it was doing this, the Constitutional Council cancelled the vote in parts of the north still controlled by New Forces rebels who back Mr Ouattara, and said Mr Gbagbo had won with 51% of the vote.
Both men have been sworn in as president.
Mr Gbagbo did not give any details of his recount proposals.
“We are negotiating. I ask myself why those who claim to have beaten me oppose a recount of the votes,” he said.
The UN helped organise the poll and says Mr Ouattara won.
As international pressure increases on Mr Gbagbo to step down, the EU has agreed to widen a travel ban to 59 Gbagbo allies, diplomats say.
Mr Gbagbo accuses France, which retains considerable economic interests in its former colony, of mobilising international opinion against him.
“Amongst today’s great global powers, each has its own sphere of influence. When it’s something to do with Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa, France speaks and the rest follow,” Mr Gbagbo told Euronews.
He has ordered the 9,500 UN peacekeepers to leave Ivory Coast and there have been some attacks on them by Mr Gbagbo’s supporters.
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