Britain said Saturday it believed there was a heightened threat of "terrorist attacks" in the Kenyan capital Nairobi and that attacks "may be in the final stages of planning".

"The Kenyan authorities have alerted the public to a heightened threat from terrorist attacks in Nairobi. We believe that terrorists may be in the final stages of planning attacks," a Foreign Office statement said.

Britain's newest warship is heading to the Gulf for its first mission at a time of tensions over Iran's threat to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz, a key transport route for oil.

The Royal Navy's Type 45 destroyer HMS Daring, which has a "stealth" design to help avoid detection by radar, is to join other British ships in the region, the Ministry of Defense confirmed Saturday.

A British soldier has been killed in an explosion while on foot patrol in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defense said Saturday, becoming the 46th Briton to die there this year.

"It is with great sadness that the Ministry of Defense must announce the death of a soldier from 1st Battalion the Yorkshire Regiment on 30th December 2011 in the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand province," a statement said.

Queen Elizabeth II's husband Prince Philip left hospital Tuesday, four days after being rushed in for emergency heart surgery and missing the royal family's Christmas celebrations.

The outspoken 90-year-old prince smiled and waved as he was driven away in a dark Range Rover vehicle from Papworth hospital near Cambridge, eastern England, an Agence France Presse photographer witnessed.

Britain said on Friday suicide bombings in Syria that killed at least 40 people must not undermine an Arab League plan aimed at ending the bloodshed.

"I condemn the bomb attacks in central Damascus today and regret the loss of life and injury I have heard reported," said Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt in a statement.

Health authorities sought Wednesday to reassure 50,000 British women who have breast implants made by a French company at the heart of a cancer scare, saying there was no evidence of a link to the disease.

France has said up to 30,000 women there may need to remove defective implants produced by the Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) company amid cancer fears, even though no "causal link" to the disease had yet been established.

With hairdo, handbag and hubris, she dominated — and divided — Britain for a decade. Now a film about Margaret Thatcher is doing it all over again.

"The Iron Lady" stars Meryl Streep as Britain's first female prime minister, whose neo-Victorian values and free-market ideology helped transform a battered post-imperial country into an economically dynamic but industrially depleted and increasingly unequal society.

European Union powers led condemnation by U.N. Security Council members Tuesday of Israel's increased settlements in the occupied territories and growing attacks by settlers on Palestinians.

Britain, France, Germany and Portugal said in a joint statement after a council meeting on the Middle East conflict that they were "dismayed by these wholly negative developments" and the threat they pose to the peace process.

Prime Minister David Cameron paid a pre-Christmas visit to British troops in Afghanistan on Tuesday, although his plans were upset by a dust storm, officials and media said.

Cameron had intended to visit Camp Bastion in the restive southern province of Helmand, where the majority of Britain's 9,500 troops are based, but his Royal Air Force flight was forced to divert to Kandahar airfield.

The highly-contagious Novovirus has forced the closure of manyhospital beds across Britain, prompting warnings from health officials about the serious threat posed by the bug, best known as the winter vomiting virus.

Maurice Madeo, deputy director of infection prevention and control at Doncaster Royal Infirmary, where wards have been closed to new admissions, said the condition could be fatal.