We sprint around the globe from east to west, beginning with a call from the future: Phil Mercer, BBC correspondent in Sydney (where it's already 2010) describes the fireworks display claimed to be the biggest in the world; Tristana Moore, BBC Correspondent in Munich, muses on similarities between German and American party habits; and Laurie Raimondo, with the Times Square Alliance, describes New York's preparations for tonight's ball drop.

Today is New Year's Eve, and that means citizens of the world will be ringing in 2010 when the clock hits midnight. We're leaping through time zones with reporters from across the globe for a look at how some cities are getting ready to celebrate. Tristana Moore is a BBC Correspondent in Munich; Phil Mercer reports for the BBC from Sydney, and Anna Sale is a producer for The Takeaway in New York.  Sale called in from Times Square, where many hundreds of millions around the world will watch the ball drop at midnight EST.

The United Nations Security Council will vote today to reauthorize the mandate for international forces in Afghanistan. Forty-two countries have troops in Afghanistan in numbers small and large, ranging from Singapore's two soldiers to Britain's 9,000. We're spending the week on the now eight-year-old war in Afghanistan; today we look at the role international forces are playing and how well U.S. forces and international allies are working together. Evelyn Farkas is a senior fellow with the American Security Project, a public policy organization. She was part of a NATO delegation with the International Security Assistance Force that just returned from Afghanistan this week. We also speak to BBC defense and security correspondent Nick Childs in London, and BBC correspondent Tristana Moore in Berlin.

The suspected Nazi John Demjanjuk has arrived in Germany today where he faces a warrant accusing him of being a guard at a Nazi-run internment camp during World War II and being an accessory to the murder of 29,000 people. The retired Ohio autoworker was deported from the United States and arrived Tuesday morning at Munich's airport. Now the 89-year-old will be brought before a judge and formally arrested.

In the 1980s Demjanjuk was extradited to Israel where he was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death; his conviction was overturned by the Israeli supreme court which accepted his claim of mistaken identity. But Demjanjuk has remained at the top of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of "most wanted" Nazi war crimes suspects.

For more on this story we turn to Tristana Moore, the BBC’s reporter in Berlin.