Evening Edition

A fiery waterfall plunged from the landmark Australian structure as seven tonnes of fireworks ignited in the night sky, thrilling 1.5 million people crammed on the city’s foreshore.

The celebrations followed devastating floods that have hit 200,000 in the country’s northeast, muting the festivities there, while extreme heat prompted wildfire warnings around Melbourne and Adelaide in the south.

Gbagbo was under growing pressure to cede power to Alassane Ouattara, the internationally-recognised winner of a November 28 presidential election, with both Britain and US saying it was time to go.

The midnight deadline issued by Ouattara’s camp came as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said reports had been received of “at least two mass graves” amid fears of crimes against humanity there.

France meanwhile advised its citizens in Ivory Coast, “in particular families with children,” to temporarily leave the West African state because of the “acute political crisis” there.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned UN troops would resist any assault on the temporary headquarters of Alassane Ouattara’s shadow government, which he said could trigger civil war in the fragile West African state.

Police said protesters near the home of unpopular President Asif Ali Zardari in the financial hub of Karachi pelted stones as they shouted slogans including “We’ll sacrifice our lives — we’ll save the sanctity of the Prophet”.

Teargas shells were fired to disperse them, while normally busy town centres turned quiet across the Muslim country, AFP reporters said, following a move to amend a law which permits death sentences for those found to have blasphemed.

Italy immediately recalled its ambassador to Brazil to protest Lula’s decision not to extradite Cesare Battisti, considered by Rome as a “terrorist.”

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi stormed “this affair is far from over.”

At the stroke of midnight the nation of 1.3 million people will bid farewell to its kroon, adopted in 1992 to replace the Soviet ruble, and become the 17th member of the troubled eurozone.

“Estonia’s entry means that over 330 million Europeans now carry euro notes and coins in their pockets,” European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said Friday ahead of the official midnight switch.

Advocates for a pardon said the legendary gunman — reputed to have shot dead 21 people, one for each year of his life — had reached a pardon deal with then-governor Lew Wallace in exchange for testimony regarding another shooting.

But Wallace allegedly failed to pardon the outlaw, who was then shot down by Sheriff Pat Garrett on July 14, 1881.

The US State Department and the European Union led a chorus of international condemnation of the sentence delivered Thursday in the second trial of the Yukos oil company founder and his co-defendant Platon Lebedev.

A Moscow judge found the pair — already in prison since 2003 on tax evasion charges — guilty of money laundering and embezzlement and extended their jail stay for the six years sought by the prosecution.

The deal will more than double the size of CVS Caremark’s business that provides prescription drug coverage under the Medicare Part D program. Medicare is the U.S. government’s healthcare program for the elderly.

Universal American shareholders are expected to receive about $12.80 per share to $13.00 per share in cash for the business, which accounted for less than half of the company’s total revenue in the first nine months of 2010.

Baffinland shares rose 4.3 percent to C$1.44, above ArcelorMittal’s sweetened offer of C$1.40 a share, suggesting that some investors hope the bidding battle that began in September will continue.

Rival Nunavut Iron, backed by private equity and a Canadian management team, is also offering C$1.40 a share, but for 60 percent of the company.

The Anglo-Australian miner, under pressure to land a big deal after scrapping a $39 billion bid for Canada’s Potash Corp in November, declined to comment on the rumors which drove Anadarko’s shares to a 2-1/2-year high at one point in New York Stock Exchange trading on Friday.

Fund managers and analysts said Anadarko was a good strategic fit for BHP, which is sitting on a pile of cash and needs to expand. Speculation that BHP Chief Executive Marius Kloppers was eyeing Anadarko first surfaced in September, as the U.S. oil company’s shares slowly rebounded after BP Plc’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill sent them tumbling.

A dispute between Gbagbo and rival candidate Alassane Ouattara over who won the presidential election on November 28 has plunged the West African state into turmoil and U.N. experts have reported killings, disappearances and arbitrary detentions.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said on Friday she had written to Gbagbo and other senior officials “to remind them … that they will be held personally responsible and accountable for human rights violations resulting from their actions and/or omissions, according to international human rights and humanitarian law.”

Crowds queued at some banks in the snow-blanketed capital, Tallinn, on Friday to exchange cash, mainly coins, in a move the small Baltic state of 1.3 million hopes will mark the end of its struggles since the 2008 financial crisis.

Joining the euro caps a drive for integration with the West and away from the influence of Russia that began with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In Europe, Greeks, Irish and Spaniards planned to party through the night to help put a year of economic woe behind them. And in New York, nearly a million New Year’s Eve revelers were expected to cram into Times Square to watch the midnight ball drop, just days after the city got clobbered by a blizzard.

People gathered in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square in a chilly drizzle to take part in “Las Uvas,” or “The Grapes,” a tradition in which people eat a grape for each of the 12 chimes of midnight, after which they drink and spray each other with sparkling cava wine. Chewing and swallowing the grapes in time is supposed to bring good luck. Cheating, on the other hand, is frowned on and can bring misfortune.

The United Nations has said that the volatile West African nation, once divided in two, faces a real risk of return to civil war, but Prime Minister Guillaume Soro told reporters that the country is already at this point – “indeed in a civil war situation.”

“This is what’s at stake: Either we assist in the installation of democracy in Ivory Coast or we stand by indifferent and allow democracy to be assassinated,” Soro said at a news conference, adding that more than 200 people already have been killed and 1,000 others wounded by gunfire.

It took a few moments to recognize the great white dome bowing forward into the night. Another had fallen onto itself, its peak barely visible over the iron gate. The white walls of the 90-year-old mansion were crushed, the portico collapsed. Haiti’s national palace was destroyed.

It was clear from the first, terrible moments after the quake, when I ran out of my broken house to find the neighborhood behind it gone, that Haiti had suffered a catastrophe unique even in its long history of tragedy.

Growers in tropical Assam state, India’s main tea growing region, say rising temperatures have led not only to a drop in production but to subtle, unwelcome changes in the flavor of their brews.

The area in northeastern India is the source of some of the finest black and British-style teas. Assam teas are notable for their heartiness, strength and body, and are often sold as “breakfast” teas.

Karzai rebuffed the request, according to secret diplomatic records, and the minister – privately termed “the worst” by U.S. officials – kept his perch at an agency that controls $2 billion in U.S. and allied projects.

The State Department correspondence, written as Karzai was assembling a Cabinet shortly after his 2009 re-election, reveals just how little influence U.S. officials have over the Afghan leader on pressing issues such as corruption.

In one of his last official acts – or non-acts – before leaving office, New Mexico’s governor refused to pardon the Old West outlaw Friday for one of the many murders he committed before he was gunned down in 1881.

Gov. Bill Richardson cited ambiguity surrounding the pledge of a pardon 130 years ago as the reason.

“Six hours, 12 hours, as long as they last we will be watching,” Chapel said.

That is, unless they are among the latest victims of a long-running feud in the TV industry over the fees that cable providers pay to carry channels on their lineups.

GM sold between 250 and 350 Chevy Volts this month and Nissan’s sales totaled less than 10 Leaf sedans in the past two weeks. Production for both is slowly ramping up.

It will be well into 2012 before both the Volt and Leaf are available nationwide. And if you’re interested in buying one, you’ll need to get behind the 50,000 people already on waiting lists.

Getting there isn’t that hard as Saban’s contract allows him to use a private plane for his personal use, which includes sneaking away from the Crimson Tide when he can.

Several of the nation’s top college coaches have such a clause in their multimillion-dollar contracts. They say it’s particularly valuable in a profession that has seen Urban Meyer step down at Florida amid concerns about his health and Michigan State’s Mark Dantonio miss a month after a mild heart attack.

Top-ranked Connecticut’s record 90-game winning streak in women’s basketball ended Thursday night when No. 9 Stanford outplayed the Huskies from the start in a 71-59 victory at Maples Pavilion – where the Cardinal have their own streak going.

Stanford hasn’t lost in 52 games at home. The Cardinal took an early 13-point lead, never trailed and didn’t let the mighty Huskies back in it after halftime in this one. They kept pounding the ball inside and banging the boards.

With UConn’s NCAA-record 90-game run over, Auriemma can get back to his primary goal – winning a third straight national title.

“It’s where we go from here that will define this team more than the 90 wins,” Auriemma said. “How we play going forward will be this team’s defining moment. The 90 wins just belonged to a few of these guys. What happens for the rest of the season will belong to them. And I am excited about that.”

U.S. diplomatic memos leaked this month show previously unknown friction between the two allies over military assistance and strategy. Military cooperation has always been seen as an unshakable link between Egypt and the U.S., even as the political side of the alliance has gone through public ups and downs over Washington’s on-and-off pressure on reform and human rights.

The disagreements, the memos show, are over a wide range of topics, with the U.S. pressing Egypt to focus its military toward terrorism, halting cross-border smuggling and helping out in regional crises. They also suggest that, to the dismay of the Americans, the Egyptian military continues to see Israel, its enemy in four wars spanning 25 years in the last century, as its primary adversary 31 years after the two neighbors signed a peace treaty.

Michigan’s Lake Superior State University features the term linked to popular online video clips in its annual List of Words to Be Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness. The 2011 list, compiled by the university from nominations submitted from across North America throughout the year, was released Friday.

Nominators did more than vanquish “viral.” They also repudiated Sarah Palin’s “refudiate,” flunked “fail” and weren’t at all wowed by “wow factor.” In all, 14 words or phrases made the cut to be, well, cut from conversation.

The attorney general’s office notified San Francisco police on Dec. 2 that there was not sufficient evidence to charge Deborah Madden, AG spokesman Jim Finefrock said Friday.

Madden, 60, of San Mateo, had been accused of stealing small amounts of cocaine from the lab while working there last year.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is ditching his black-tie affair and holding a free barbecue, while Minnesota Gov.-elect Mark Dayton is encouraging blue jeans at his inaugural ball. In California, where Gov.-elect Jerry Brown is walking into a projected $28 billion deficit, expect a B-movie production compared to the glitzy 2007 inaugural of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. And rockers Bon Jovi won’t be making an appearance this year for Pennsylvania Gov.-elect Tom Corbett.

“It’s a tough environment,” said Michigan Gov.-elect Rick Snyder, who will inherit the country’s second-highest unemployment rate when he takes office Saturday. “You want to set the right kind of tone.”

From California, where waterlogged residents have contended with record winter rainfall, to the snowbound states along the Eastern seaboard, New Year’s Eve celebrations beckoned as a welcome respite from the brutal weather that closed 2010. The Friday forecast was relatively clear, except in the Rocky Mountain region, where a snowstorm was bearing down.

The snow had disappeared from Times Square days earlier, though mounds of it were left Friday on city streets and curbs. Vendors sold hats and noisemakers, crews prepared TV sets for the ball drop and hundreds milled around Times Square at midnight Thursday. Three students from a Michigan college scoped out a good location for Friday night.

The running back said he felt wonderful, tremendous, joyful. So why the public cry? Relief, strong emotions after a lot of tough times for him and the team, and … well, why not?

After all, Rep. John Boehner, who lives just north of Cincinnati, wept on national TV the night Republican election victories assured he will be the nation’s next speaker of the House. And from the neighboring state to the south, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., choked up as he bid farewell this month to a retiring colleague.

The report obtained by The Associated Press through a Freedom of Information Act request hints that drug use was rampant among the private security guards spotted by Lance Cpl. Joshua Birchfield’s unit about an hour before he was shot in Afghanistan’s Farah Province on Feb. 19.

The U.S. Marine Corps previously concluded Birchfield died in the line of duty when he was shot by a local contractor as a group of Marines was on foot patrol. The U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which investigates noncombat deaths of Navy personnel, looked into whether a crime was committed and who committed it.

The white clay pipes – actually, castoffs likely rejected during manufacturing – were crafted between 1608 and 1610 and bear the names of English politicians, social leaders, explorers, officers of the Virginia Company that financed the settlement and governors of the Virginia colony. Archeologists also found equipment used to make the pipes.

Researchers believe the pipes recovered from a well in James Fort were made to impress investors and the political elite with the financial viability of the settlement. They are likely the rejects that failed to survive the ceramic firing process in a kiln.

Citing the remaining 221 trailers as blight, New Orleans officials have told the last remaining residents to be out by the start of 2011 or face steep fines.

New Orleans once had more than 23,000 FEMA trailers, and for many people still living in them, they are akin to permanent homes. These residents say they will find it hard to make the city’s deadline.

The Delaware Republican appeared on several network television morning shows to defend herself a day after The Associated Press revealed authorities have opened a criminal investigation to determine whether she broke the law by spending campaign money on personal expenses such as rent.

“There’s been no impermissible use of campaign funds whatsoever,” O’Donnell told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Gov. Sean Parnell and Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell, who oversees elections, signed the paperwork certifying her win in the hotly contested race.

“It’s done,” Treadwell said after penning his last signature in front of cameras in Parnell’s office.