Haitian Refugees Cling To Capsized Freighter

The US Coast Guard is trying to rescue nearly 100 Haitian refugees whose overloaded vessel capsized off the Bahamas.

The Royal Bahamas Defence Force says at least 20 migrants may have been killed after the 40ft freighter grounded and capsized about 15 nautical miles southwest of Staniel Cay.

The vessel ran aground on Monday night. Pic: US Coast Guard

Interviews with migrants suggested the death toll could reach as many as 30 people.

Video and images released by the Coast Guard shows the migrants clinging to the hull of the boat.

Officials say at least 10 refugees have died. Pic: US Coast Guard

The Royal Bahamian Defence Force, which first reported the incident, is aiding in the rescue effort.

Helicopters hoisted 13 people from the water after deploying a mass rescue raft, the Coast Guard said.

Rescue teams have dropped rafts and supplies. Pic: US Coast Guard

Food, supplies and an additional eight life rafts were dropped to provide immediate relief for the refugees.

Staniel Cay is in the Exumas, a Bahamian island chain east of Nassau.

Haitian migrants have long passed through the archipelago east of Florida on overloaded vessels seeking to settle in the Bahamas or reach the US.

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Kenya: Pair Arrested By Anti-Terror Police

The Foreign Office is investigating reports that two British citizens have been arrested by anti-terror police in Kenya.

Sky News sources believe one of the suspects was from Britain and that the pair may have been carrying hand grenades.

They were detained in Diani, a beach resort on the country's south coast.

A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: "We're looking into reports of two British nationals detained in Kenya.

"We stand ready to offer consular assistance."

The reason for the arrests was not immediately clear.

Briton Samantha Lewthwaite is wanted by Kenyan police

They come two months after the Westgate shopping mall siege in the capital Nairobi in which 67 people, including six Britons were killed.

Earlier this month four men appeared in a Nairobi court charged with "supporting a terrorist group" in connection with the attack in September.

The Somali-based rebel group al Shabaab has said it was behind the siege, which lasted four days.

Claims that a woman was involved has prompted speculation it was British-born Samantha Lewthwaite, the widow of a 7/7 suicide bomber Germaine Lindsay.

Interpol issued a warrant for her arrest shortly after the massacre for terrorist offences in Mombasa, just along the coast from Diani, dating back to 2011.

Lewthwaite, who has two children by Lindsay and has been dubbed the 'White Widow', is also wanted in connection with seven murders in Kenya.

The 29-year-old is a member of al Shabaab and has been described by Kenyan security officials as an "incredible threat".

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France Plans More Troops For African State

France says it is planning to send 1,000 troops to the Central African Republic amid reports of mass atrocities and possible civil war.

CAR, one of the world's poorest countries, has been in turmoil since rebel groups joined forces in March and overthrew the president.

The rebels have been accused by human rights groups of committing scores of atrocities including killings, rapes and conscription of child soldiers.

"It's in collapse and we cannot have a country fall apart like that," said French defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.

Locals call for peace in a protest in the capital, Bangui

"There is the violence, massacres and humanitarian chaos that follow a collapse," Le Drian told Europe 1 radio. "It will be a short mission to allow calm and stability to return."

The move would increase the French military presence in Africa for the second time this year - France already has some 420 soldiers in the country - mostly to protect the airport in the capital Bangui.

The country has asked France to increase its force and French diplomats have announced plans to circulate a draft Security Council resolution that will call for additional support for the 3,000-strong force led by the African Union now in the country.

French troops inspect a taxi at a checkpoint at Bangui M'Poko airport

France hopes that a resolution will be passed before the start of a summit in Paris next week focusing on security issues in Africa, French diplomats have said.

French ambassador Gerard Araud on Monday said an increased French deployment would be "a bridging force" until an African force is fully operational - when France would take a back-up role.

France, a former colonial powerhouse in West Africa, has a greater military presence in the region than any other Western country, with thousands of troops in places including Senegal, Chad, Ivory Coast and Gabon.

A boy stands on a cliff over the area of a collapsed bridge in Bangui

It has about 2,800 troops in Mali taking part in an operation that began after rebels and al Qaeda-linked militants moved to take over the capital last winter.

Mr Le Drian dismissed any comparisons between the Mali and CAR missions.

"In Mali there was an attack of jihadists, terrorists who wanted to transform Mali into a terrorist state. This is a collapse of a country with a potential for religious clashes," he said. "France has international responsibilities."

In a briefing to the Security Council, UN deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson said the situation in CAR was deteriorating so fast that a UN peacekeeping force may soon be the only option.

The country was becoming "a breeding ground for extremists and armed groups" and never-before-seen sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians, he said.

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Guantanamo Detainees 'Trained As CIA Agents'

In the early years after the September 11, 2001, attacks, the CIA turned some Guantanamo Bay prisoners into double agents, then sent them home to help the US kill terrorists, a report says.

The CIA promised the prisoners freedom, safety for their families and millions of dollars from the agency's secret accounts, according to the AP news agency, which cited current and former US officials.

Officials knew there was a chance that some prisoners might quickly spurn their deal and kill Americans.

But they deemed it an acceptable and worthwhile risk.

The scheme was carried out in a secret facility built a few hundred yards from the administrative offices of the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The eight small cottages were hidden behind a ridge covered in thick scrub and cactus.

Those who were aware of the cluster of cottages knew it best by its nickname: Penny Lane - a nod to the Beatles song. The CIA's other secret facility at Guantanamo Bay is a prison known as Strawberry Fields, the report says.

The secret facility was hidden inside Guantanamo

Some of the men who passed through Penny Lane helped the CIA find and kill many top al Qaeda operatives, current and former US officials told the AP. Others stopped providing useful information and the CIA lost touch with them.

When prisoners began streaming into Guantanamo Bay in January 2002, the CIA recognised it as an unprecedented opportunity to identify sources.

"Of course that would be an objective," Emile Nakhleh, a former top CIA analyst who spent time in 2002 assessing detainees but who did not discuss Penny Lane, was quoted as saying.

"It's the job of intelligence to recruit sources."

Al Qaeda suspected the CIA would attempt a programme like this and its operatives have been very suspicious of former Guantanamo Bay detainees, intelligence officials and experts said.

Officials said the programme ended in 2006, as the flow of detainees to Guantanamo Bay slowed to a trickle. The last prisoner arrived there in 2008.

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British Diplomats Failed Rape Victim In Egypt

British diplomats failed to assist a woman who had just been raped by a military officer in Egypt when she came to them pleading for help, a report has found.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has been forced to apologise and pay compensation after being found guilty of "maladministration and injustice" by the Parliamentary Ombudsman.

The report found that officials had failed to help the woman "when she was at her most vulnerable".

The woman was attacked in the Sinai region

The British woman was attacked at a checkpoint while travelling in the Sinai region in May 2011, three months after the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak.

A man in plain clothes, who she believed to be a military officer, told her she would not be able to continue her journey until the next day then took her to a place where he said she could sleep before raping her.

When she contacted officials at the British Embassy in Cairo they failed to explain clearly how they could help her.

The report strongly criticised the embassy staff's failure to accompany her to report the attack and the fact they ignored her fears she could be arrested or even killed if she made a complaint against a military officer to the police, who were under the control of the military.

In addition they did not arrange a medical examination or offer to accompany her to a hospital and had no knowledge of  the availability of a treatment which can prevent HIV infection after the virus has entered the body.

The report said: "Ms M was far away from home, she had been through a terrifying ordeal, and the FCO were the only authority she could approach for help. She should have been able to rely on them to fulfil their role and assist her when she was at her most vulnerable."

Parliamentary Ombudsman Dame Julie Mellor found the woman had been failed

When Ms M went to report the attack to the tourist police she found herself in a room with a number of armed plain-clothes officers – a situation she described as "extremely intimidating".

Later, when interviewed by an officer she was asked to re-enact her ordeal, including being forced to repeat the positions into which her attacker had forced her.

Ms M complained to the FCO about the way she had been treated with "impatience, rudeness and a serious lack of sensitivity" by its staff.

However, her complaint was initially rejected until the human rights organisation Redress and then the ombudsman became involved.

Simon Fraser, the Permanent Under-Secretary and Head of the Diplomatic Service, said they had "unreservedly" apologised to the woman and taken steps to ensure there was no repeat of her treatment.

They have paid £1,000 in compensation to the woman.

Ombudsman Dame Julie Mellor said: "This is a prime example of how one individual coming forward to complain can lead to significant changes."

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China Readies First-Ever Mission To The Moon

China is preparing to launch its first Moon rover, with the vehicle named Jade Rabbit in a nod to Chinese folklore.

The name derives from an ancient Chinese myth about a white rabbit which lives on the Moon as the pet of Chang'e, a lunar goddess who swallowed an immortality pill.

China's official Xinhua news agency said the rocket carrying the probe would be launched in early December.

The probe will carry out a number of experiments

China has previously sent two probes to orbit the Moon, with controllers sending the first of them crashing into the lunar surface at the end of its mission.

"China has named its first moon rover Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, following an online poll," Xinhua added.

The rabbit's outline is said to be visible on the Moon's surface, similar to the Western concept of the "man in the Moon".

Beijing sees its military-run space programme as a marker of its rising global stature and growing technological might, as well as the ruling Communist Party's success in turning around the fortunes of the once poverty-stricken nation.

It has ambitious plans to create a permanent space station by 2020 and eventually send a human to the Moon, but its technology currently lags behind that of the US and Russia.

Ouyang Ziyuan, head of the Moon rover project, told Xinhua that the ancient beliefs had their origins in the marks left by impacts on the lunar landscape.

"There are several black spots on the Moon's surface, our ancient people imagined they were a moon palace, osmanthus trees and a jade rabbit," he said.

China's first lunar probe, Chang'e-1, was launched in 2007.

The next, Chang'e-2, began its journey three years later and after orbiting the Moon was sent on a mission into deep space to monitor an asteroid.

That probe is "expected to travel as far as 300 million km from Earth, the longest voyage of any Chinese spacecraft", Xinhua quoted an official as saying.

That remains a small fraction of the distance travelled by the US Voyager-1, launched in 1977, which left the solar system and has travelled nearly 19 billion kilometres away from its home planet.

Chinese social media users welcomed the name. "I look forward to the jade rabbit visiting the moon palace, go Chinese aerospace!" wrote one poster on Sina Weibo, a service similar to Twitter.

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Saudi Arabia Deports 50,000 Ethiopian Workers

By Tim Marshall, Foreign Affairs Editor

Up to 50,000 Ethiopians have been deported from Saudi Arabia in the past three weeks as part of a crackdown on illegal workers.

Ethiopian workers stranded in Yemen last year after fleeing Saudi Arabia

Thousands of Egyptians, Indonesians, Malaysians and others have also been flown out of the country as the Saudi government seeks to create jobs for local people by deporting some of the estimated nine million foreign workers.

An amnesty for people working in the country without proper permits expired on November 4 and, since then, planes have been taking off around the clock to get the workers to their home countries.

The crackdown has involved tens of thousands of people being rounded up and has led to disturbances in which three Ethiopians have been killed. Almost one million illegal workers had left voluntarily over the past few months.

A Paris protest in support of Ethiopians in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia may be one of the richest countries in the world but it has an unemployment rate of 12.5% in a population of 27 million.

The Government not only wishes to get more locals into the workforce, it also wants to diversify the economy.

Interior minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef is overseeing the operation and says the campaign has "so far led to the deportation of more than 60,000 violators of the residency and labour system, while procedures are on-going to deport others".

The Ethiopian government charted 70 planes just to deport its citizens who are thought to constitute the biggest group of people leaving.

Foreign workers from numerous countries are affected by the crackdown

The foreign ministry in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, said it expected the final total, once the airlift had finished, to be 80,000. 

Foreign minister Tedros Adhanom said the government was in "around the clock crisis management" to help get its citizens home.

A majority of them are thought to be women who were employed as domestic workers.

Saudi employers are now responsible for 'sponsoring' their workers

Ethiopia is the second most populous country in Africa after Nigeria, and also one of the poorest. This leads large numbers of its 91 million citizens to leave to try to find work abroad, many in the Middle East. 

There are consistent and numerous reports alleging the ill treatment of foreign workers in Saudi Arabia, especially those from developing countries.

In many cases, people's passports are taken from them when they begin a job.

This has exacerbated the problem of illegal working, as employees sometimes simply keep the worker on, but do not bother to return their passport, or fill in the correct paperwork.

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Simon Gittany Guilty Of High-Rise Murder

A man has been found guilty of throwing his fiancee off the balcony of their high-rise apartment in central Sydney.

Ms Harnum was planning to leave Gittany

Simon Gittany was accused of hurling Lisa Harnum from their 15th floor home in a fit of "apoplectic" rage in July 2011 after discovering she planned to leave him and return to her native Canada.

Gittany, 40, who was supported in court by his new girlfriend Rachelle Louise, had maintained throughout the trial that Ms Harnum, 30, had slipped and fallen after climbing over a railing.

He said he had tried to save Ms Harnum, a former ballerina.

But Justice Lucy McCallum said the lack of Ms Harnum's fingerprints on the glass barrier made his claim implausible.

"At many times in his evidence, the accused struck me as being a person playing a role, telling a story which fitted with the objective evidence, but which did no more than that," she said.

Gittany barely reacted in court as the verdict was read out.

Gittany with his new girlfriend, Rachelle Louise, who screamed at the judge

His current girlfriend screamed at the judge "You're wrong", and stormed out of the packed courtroom. Ms Louise's outburst continued after she left the court.

Delivering the verdict in the judge-only trial, Justice McCallum said witness Josh Rathmell, who had been walking past the apartment building on his way to work when he saw Ms Harnum fall, gave a compelling account.

At the time, Mr Rathmell thought he had seen Gittany "unload" a piece of luggage or rubbish and continued on his way. It was only later he realised it was a body and contacted the police.

Justice McCallum said while Gittany and Ms Harnum had loved each other, there was no doubt the accused was "controlling, dominating and at times abusive".

"I am satisfied by the end of July 2011, those tensions had reached a point of crisis," she said.

Gittany and Ms Harnum's apartment was in central Sydney

The New South Wales Supreme Court heard that Gittany had secretly monitored Ms Harnum's phone and had installed CCTV cameras inside and outside their apartment.

One of the cameras showed Gittany restraining Ms Harnum outside the flat and then dragging her back inside on the night she died. Ms Harnum was heard yelling: "Please help me, help me, God help me."

Ms Harnum's mother said there were no winners in the case. Her only hope was that her daughter's death would be a powerful wake-up call to other young women.

"Young women who are caught up in situations like my daughter found herself in need a voice," Joan Harnum said.

Gittany, who was held in custody for the final weeks of the trial, will be sentenced in February.

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Berlusconi Addresses Fans Ahead Of Senate Vote

Silvio Berlusconi has given a speech to supporters in Rome just hours ahead of a Senate vote on his political future.

Hundreds of fans have gathered outside his Rome palazzo, some carrying flags and wearing Berlusconi masks.

"In these past 20 years, if there is one thing I can't complain about, it's your closeness, your affection," he told the crowd. 

He later declared today "a day of mourning for democracy". 

A supporter wearing a mask outside Berlusconi's Rome palazzo

A banner hung from one of the windows of the palazzo reading "It's a coup". 

The Italian Senate will vote later on whether to expel Berlusconi from Parliament over his tax fraud conviction.

Berlusconi is widely expected to lose his seat as both Prime Minister Enrico Letta's centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and former comedian Beppe Grillo's anti-establishment Five Star Movement have indicated they will vote against him.

A supporter waves a Forza Italy (Go Italy party) flag

In August, Berlusconi was convicted of manipulating tax bills for his television empire Mediaset, but the billionaire claims he didn't receive a fair trial and the judges were trying to "eliminate" him from public office. 

The court heard how he was behind a scheme to purchase the rights to broadcast US movies on Mediaset television networks through a series of offshore companies, and had falsely declared the payments to avoid taxes.

The former prime minister was sentenced to four years in jail, which was reduced to one year and will likely be served as community service, and banned from holding public office for two years.

Supporters gather for a planned rally outside Berlusconi's Rome palazzo

Under a law passed last year, politicians convicted of serious criminal offences are ineligible for parliament, but his expulsion must first be voted on by the Senate.

Berlusconi sent a letter to opposition senators this week warning that removing him from Parliament would reflect badly on Italy's public image. He said the move would "shame you in front of your children, your electors and all Italians".

Losing his seat will deprive Berlusconi, who is fighting a conviction for paying for sex with a minor among other legal cases, of his parliamentary immunity from arrest.

Dancer Karima El Mahroug, known as Ruby the Heart Stealer

In June, the three-time prime minister was found guilty of paying for sex with underage prostitute, Karima El Mahroug, also known as Ruby the Heart Stealer.

During his trial, the court in Milan heard dozens of young women, including Miss El Mahroug, who was 17 at the time, were paid with cash and cars to attend Berlusconi's so-called "bunga bunga" parties and dance semi-naked for him.

Berlusconi's lawyers said it's "completely unrealistic" he will be arrested over the case.

Berlusconi is a 20-year veteran of Italian politics

The expulsion is expected to do little to affect Mr Letta's government which survived a confidence vote on the 2014 budget.

The vote was supported by a group of senators who broke away from Berlusconi's party.

Berlusconi pulled his party out of Mr Letta's ruling coalition earlier this year, accusing opponents of a "coup d'etat" to get rid of him.

However, even outside parliament, many believe the 20-year political veteran could still remain a nuisance to Mr Letta's government.

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World Cup Stadium Collapse: 'Three Killed'

Part of the stadium that will host the World Cup opener in Brazil has collapsed, killing three people, local media has reported.

Television images show a metal structure buckled at the top of the Itaquerao Stadium in Sao Paolo, destroying part of the stands.

Some local media reported that the accident occurred when a crane collapsed.

The stadium was 94% complete. The accident could delay the delivery of the stadium in Sao Paulo by FIFA's December deadline to have all 12 venues ready.

More follows...

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