Video Shows Russians Seizing Greenpeace Ship

Greenpeace has released new footage showing the moment its ship was seized by Russian authorities in September.

The Arctic Sunrise crew were protesting oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean and claim their actions were legal because they were in international waters.

The video shows a masked Russian coastguard officer abseil down from a helicopter hovering above the ship.

Greenpeace activists are then seen trying to block more guards from boarding the deck.

More masked coastguard officers, carrying guns, abseil onto the ship and are seen corralling crew members.

The ship's 30 crew members, including six Britons, were arrested when two activists tried to scale a state-owned Arctic Gazprom oil rig in the Barents Sea.

Russian investigators initially charged all 30 with piracy but said last month they were changing the charge to hooliganism, cutting the maximum jail sentence they face to seven years from 15 years.

Prime Minister David Cameron has urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to ensure fair treatment of the prisoners. 

Mr Cameron's intervention comes after relatives and supporters of British journalist Kieron Bryan, who was covering the protest, held a silent protest outside the Russian embassy in London on Saturday.

An international maritime court in the German city of Hamburg has begun hearing a Dutch complaint over Russia's detention of the Netherlands-flagged ship.

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Dow Jones Closes At Another Record High

The Dow Jones industrial average has closed at another all-time record high.

The Dow rose 167 points, or 1.1%, at 15,761.

The US government reported an unexpected surge in hiring last month, with employers adding 204,000 jobs.

"We're walking a tight wire with the Fed," said Rob Lutts, Chief Investment Officer at Cabot Money Management.

Mr Lutts said the job survey was positive because it showed the economy was improving, but perhaps not strongly enough to assure that Fed policymakers will pull back on its bond-buying program before the end of year.

JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs rose the most in the Dow. The index also closed at a record high on Wednesday.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index ended 23.46 higher, or 1.3%, at 1,770.61, just a point below its record. The Nasdaq composite rose 61.90 points, or 1.6%, to 3,919.23.

Consumer-focused stocks such as Priceline.com and Disney also rose after reporting higher profits, and Gap soared after raising its earnings forecast. Losers included housing stocks and Twitter, which dropped 7 percent the day after its initial public offering.

The jobs report was the second piece of unexpectedly robust economic news that Wall Street received in the past two days.

The Commerce Department said on Thursday that the US economy grew at a 2.8% annualised rate in the third quarter, better than the 2.5% rate economists were looking for.

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Syria Refugees 'Could Spread Polio To Europe'

Refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria could cause an outbreak of polio in Europe, two German infection experts have warned.

Writing in The Lancet medical journal, they say the polio vaccine used in Europe is not effective enough to withstand transmission of the virus.

There are fears it may have been carried to neighbouring countries by refugees living in unsanitary conditions ideal for the transmission of disease.

The inactivated polio vaccine (IPC), which is injected, usually forms part of a combined diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough and polio jab.

Syrian refugees cross the border into northern Iraq

IPC provides protection from infection but it does not prevent the spread of the virus.

Professor Martin Eichner, from the University of Tubingen, and Dr Stefan Brockmann, from the Department of Infection Control in Reutlingen, point out that because only one in 200 polio infections cause symptoms, the virus could be circulating for nearly a year before a single case occurs.

By this time, hundreds of individuals may be carrying the virus.

Prof Eichner and Dr Brockmann wrote: "Routine screening of sewage for polio virus has not been done in most European countries.

"But this intensified surveillance measure should be considered for settlements with large numbers of Syrian refugees.

"Vaccinating only Syrian refugees - as has been recommended by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control - must be judged as insufficient; more comprehensive measures should be taken into consideration," they wrote.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has confirmed an outbreak of at least 10 cases of polio in Syria, where vaccination coverage has dramatically decreased because of the civil war.

Nearly all Syrian children were vaccinated against the disease - which begins with fever, fatigue, headache, vomiting, stiffness in the neck and pain in the limbs - before the civil war began more than two years ago.

Polio was last reported in Syria in 1999.

In 1998, polio was endemic in 125 countries and there were an estimated 350,000 cases but that had fallen to just 223 cases in 2012 and it was endemic in just Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

However, WHO warns that if just one child remains infected the risk of the disease spreading again remains and eradication efforts in Nigeria and Pakistan have all been harmed by attacks by Islamist militants.

On Wednesday, the WHO increased the number of people it said must be vaccinated to 20 million as part of a vaccination campaign that will target children in Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories.

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Toronto Mayor Rob Ford 'Considering' Rehab

Toronto's troubled mayor, who smoked crack cocaine and was taped drunkenly issuing threats to kill, is considering rehab, according to his lawyer.

Video was made public on Thursday of Mayor Rob Ford pacing around a room, swearing and threatening to "kill that ******* guy". It came two days after his public admission of smoking crack cocaine.

His lawyer, Dennis Morris, said on Friday that Mr Ford was "considering his options" in regards to treatment.

However, he said it was "best we hear from his (Mr Ford's) lips".

"When you go left, he goes right," Mr Morris added.

Rob Ford admits the latest video is "extremely embarrassing"

The mayor acknowledged he had a drinking problem for the first time on Sunday while on his weekly radio show.

He told listeners that he was "hammered" at a street festival in August and "out of control" drunk, carrying a half empty bottle of brandy around city hall after St Patrick's Day last year.

Mr Morris said Thursday was a defining day for the Mayor, after a video emerged of him threatening murder.

In the video, Mr Ford said: "I'm going to kill that ******* guy. I'm telling you it's first-degree murder.

The Toronto Mayor has refused to resign or take a leave of absence

"He dies or I die, brother ... But when he's down, I'll rip his ******* throat out. I'll poke his eyes out!"

The date and location of the video, which appears on the Toronto Star's website, is unknown and it is unclear who Mr Ford is addressing.

Mr Ford told reporters he was "extremely, extremely inebriated" in the video.

"It's extremely embarrassing. The whole world is going to see it," he said.

The Mayor was previously caught on video using a crack pipe

Mr Ford has been under pressure to quit since allegations surfaced months ago that he had been caught on video using a crack pipe.

He continues to brush aside calls to resign or take a leave of absence.

City Councilor Denzil Minnan-Wong says he plans to amend a motion he has filed that would ask Mr Ford to take a leave of absence.

The amendment takes the unprecedented step of asking the province of Ontario to pass legislation to remove the mayor should he not agree to take a leave of absence.

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Detroit Girl Shot Dead 'While Seeking Help'

A 19-year-old Detroit woman shot and killed after knocking on a stranger's door was looking for help after a car crash, her family has said.

Renisha McBride's family also asked people and the media to respect their privacy until after her funeral, which was held on Friday at the House of Prayer and Praise Church in Detroit. 

Family members said they held a closed-casket service.

"We couldn't get a chance to look at her for the last time," Krystal Byrd, Ms McBride's cousin, told The Detroit News. "We need justice."

The family released a statement calling for "peace and justice as we challenge the system to arrest and try the alleged assailant for this horrific act".

The stranger lives in a Dearborn Heights home. He said his shotgun accidentally discharged when he shot Ms McBride in the face on Sunday afternoon.

The man "believed the girl was breaking into the home. And he's also saying the gun discharged accidentally," Lieutenant James Serwatowski, chief detective, told the Detroit Free Press.

But the view has been disputed by the woman's family, who claimed she had been shot in the back and said the man did not immediately notify police.

"It's hard to believe it's an accident when a gun is in her face and the trigger is pulled," attorney Gerald Thurswell said of Ms McBride's death.

Police are looking for more information and said they would release a statement once the investigation is completed, saying the probe is moving swiftly.

McBride's crash took place several blocks away from the home.

Her death sparked a recent protest outside a Detroit police station, with relatives, friends and others in the community demanding justice.

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Lampedusa Boat Victims 'Raped And Tortured'

Italian police have arrested a Somali man accused of raping and torturing asylum seekers fleeing Libya on a boat which sank off the island of Lampedusa last month killing more than 365 migrants.

Mouhamud Elmi Muhidin, 34, faces charges of kidnapping, sexual assault, people trafficking and criminal association with the goal of aiding illegal immigration after he was identified by survivors.

Some 130 Eritreans were assaulted in Libay according to police

Some 130 migrants from Eritrea told police they were held for ransom at a detention centre in the Libyan desert by people traffickers from Somalia, Libya and Sudan.

A 17-year-old Eritrean girl interviewed by police said: "They forced us to watch our men being tortured with various methods including batons, electric shocks to the feet; whoever rebelled was tied up."

The migrants were forced to pay up to $3,500 (£2,180) for their freedom and their onward journey to the Libyan coast and a boat that due to take them to Italy.

Those who survived the crossing are held at detention centres in Italy

"The women who could not pay were assaulted," the girl said.                 

She also described in her own sexual assault, claiming Muhidin was one of three men who raped her.

"They threw me on the ground, held me down and poured fuel on my head. It burnt my hair, then my face, then my eyes.

"Then the three of them raped me without protection. After a quarter of an hour I was beaten and taken back to the house."

Muhidin was arrested on Lampedusa after he was spotted by some of the survivors on the island. He has now been flown to Sicily where he faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted.

Police also held this Tunisian man suspected of driving one of the boats

Investigators say he arrived on the island last week and had been staying in the local migrant centre, pretending to be one of the refugees.

"He was one of the leaders of the trafficking organisation," a police spokeswoman said, adding that he may have come to Italy to look for criminal contacts.

Italian authorities have vowed to crack down on the people trafficking rings that have been behind the influx of more than 35,000 asylum seekers so far this year to the country's coasts.

Most of them come from Eritrea, Somalia and Syria and Italy has asked for the European Union to step up assistance in dealing with the arrivals and countering the criminal networks behind them.

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Satellite Set To Crash Down On Earth

A one-ton research satellite will crash to Earth on Sunday night or Monday - but scientists do not know exactly where it will land.

The European Space Agency (ESA) says its 1,100kg (2,425lbs) structure has already fallen to an altitude of around 100 miles and is spiralling steadily downwards.

Once it reaches 50 miles above the Earth, the GOCE (Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer) satellite will break apart and much of it will burn-up in the atmosphere, scientists say.

However, several dozen fragments totalling around 200kg (440lbs), or about the weight of a car engine, will hit the surface, though it is not thought it will cause any casualties.

Humans are 250,000 times more likely to win the lottery than to get hit by it, experts add.

Professor Heiner Klinkrad from the ESA said: "At present we can not say where the re-entry is going to happen except that it is not going to happen north of the 85 northern latitude or south of 85 southern latitude.

It is not thought the satellite will cause any casualties

"We are in contact with national civil protection agencies throughout Europe, of ESA member states, so they get all the information we have on the re-entry prediction and that also includes information on emergencies in case parts of the satellite fall on inhabited areas."

He added: "In total since Sputnik was launched about 15,000 tons have returned from space.

"Most of this burns up when it re-enters in the atmosphere due to aerothermal heating.

"So typically between 10% and 40% of the initial mass survives such a re-entry. And the few pieces that survive than reach the ground, but with much reduced velocity."

The GOCE was launched in 2009 to map the Earth's gravitational field which is important for understanding sea-level changes and ocean circulation patterns, amongst other matters.

It ran out of fuel last month, ending the mission.

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Iran Nuclear Deal Stalls Over Two Issues

The gap has closed but not enough yet for the handshakes, photographs and smiles which will greet a deal if it comes.

As Sky News understands it there is agreement that Iran will stop enriching uranium to 20% for up to six months. There is also agreement that Iran can continue to enrich to 3.5%. 

However, there are two sticking points.

The first is that the French and possibly the USA also wants Iran to reduce its stockpiles of 20% uranium by oxidising it and thus putting it further away from being weapons grade material. 

The second appears to be a demand by at least one country that Iran will not fully open its plutonium plant at Arak next year. 

One side has to compromise on at least one of those issues if there is to be a deal today.

If there is, the Iranians will have billions of dollars currently frozen in foreign bank accounts unfrozen, and it will become easier to sell their petrochemical products abroad.

Tehran also wants more concrete guarantees that other sanctions will soon be lifted, and would like a cast iron statement from President Obama that the USA does not seek regime change in Iran.

It is unlikely that if they cannot reach agreement by late tonight they would go into an unscheduled fourth day of negotiations.

None of the foreign ministers were supposed to be here at all, but once Secretary of State Kerry said he was coming, there was a stampede.

The ministers have now spent some political capital in betting on handshakes and smiles all round. 

By late tonight we should know if it has paid dividends.

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Iran Nuclear Talks Make 'Very Good Progress'

British Foreign Minister William Hague has said global powers negotiating with Iran over its nuclear programme must "seize the moment" as talks enter an unscheduled third day.

Six world powers - the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany - are working on a deal to cap some of Iran's atomic programme in exchange for limited relief from economic sanctions.

As delegates arrived on Saturday, Mr Hague told reporters: "We are very conscious of the fact that real momentum has built up in these negotiations and there is now real concentration on these negotiations and so we have to do everything we can to seize the moment."

However, he cautioned that it was not clear whether a deal could be reached by the end of the day.

Iran's deputy foreign minister Abbas Araqchi also said that if there was not a deal on Saturday then any remaining issues would have to be carried out over to another date.

"There is greater agreement on some issues and less agreement on other issues," he told the ISNA news agency.

France's Laurent Fabius said the sticking points were a call for Iran to halt operations at its Arak research reactor - a potential producer of bomb-grade plutonium - while the negotiating process continues and questions about Iran's stock of uranium enriched to 20%.

Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (centre) is at the talks

Both issues reflect Western concerns that Iran is enriching uranium for use in atomic weapons rather than in a civilian nuclear energy programme as it claims.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, who cut short a Middle East tour to attend the talks in Geneva, Switzerland, had also struck a note of caution after a five-hour meeting drew to a close last night.

"There is not an agreement at this point," Mr Kerry told reporters. "There are still some very important issues on the table that are unresolved."

Earlier on Friday, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov raised hopes after he said the six countries and Iran could agree a "road map" to end the differences over the programme at the talks.

He told reporters he did not wish to prejudge the outcome but said Iran should be allowed to have a peaceful nuclear programme under the watch of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Unlike previous encounters between Iran and Western powers in the past decade, all sides have remained quiet about details of the negotiations, without the criticism and mutual allegations of a lack of seriousness that have been typical of such meetings in the past.

Diplomats involved in the talks say this is a sign of how serious all sides are.

If some sort of agreement is reached, it would be a breakthrough after a decade of negotiations between Iran and the six world powers.

A potential deal could see Tehran freeze its nuclear efforts for as long as six months in exchange for some relief from the sanctions that have battered its economy.

But Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that his country "utterly rejects" a deal being forged, adding that "Israel will do everything it needs to do to defend itself and defend the security of its people".

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Super Typhoon Haiyan: Thousands Feared Dead

Thousands of people are feared to have been killed in the areas of the Philippines hit by Super Typhoon Haiyan.

The country's Red Cross says it has been told there are 1,000 dead in Tacloban and 200 in Samar alone.

A Red Cross spokesman said: "We now fear that thousands will have lost their lives."

Flooded fields and wrecked villages in Iloilo Province

The scale of devastation led one UN disaster official to compare the destruction to that caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

The official death toll had reached 138 by 1pm on Saturday (UK time) but there are fears the eventual death toll will be "massive" after the tropical cyclone smashed through the country with winds gusting up to 170mph.

And there are growing fears for Vietnam which is now in the path of what has been called one of the most powerful recorded cyclones in history.

A truck was picked up by the high winds and slammed against a tree

Sebastian Rhodes Stampa, head of a United Nations disaster assessment coordination team, said: "This is destruction on a massive scale.

"The last time I saw something of this scale was in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami."

Around 220,000 people died as a result of that disaster.

Typhoon Haiyan pictured from International Space Station

Gwendolyn Pang, Philippine Red Cross secretary general said: "An estimated more than 1,000 bodies were seen floating in Tacloban. In Samar, about 200 deaths. Validation is ongoing."

When asked how many had died in just the coastal town of Palo and its surrounding area, Energy Secretary Jericho Petilla said: "I think hundreds. Palo, Ormoc, Burauen... Carigara, they all looked the same."

Scores of towns and villages are thought to have been inundated with water after storm surges flooded low-lying areas, drowning many in their path.

A mother weeps beside the dead body of her son

TV pictures showed cars, trees and rubble from houses strewn across streets after they were picked up by giant waves and carried inland.

"Almost all houses were destroyed, many are totally damaged. Only a few are left standing," said Major Rey Balido, a spokesman for the national disaster agency.

About a million people evacuated because they were living in the typhoon's path have been returning to find out what is left of their houses.

Children play among downed power lines

Many of those who died are thought to have left shelters in an urgent bid to rescue valuables from their homes, unaware of the giant waves flooding through coastal towns.

Hundreds of thousands are thought to have been left homeless.

British team of humanitarian experts is due to fly out to the Philippines to help the UK Government decide what aid to send.

Residents carry the body of a loved one

An appeal launched by the British Red Cross has already raised more than £100,000. US Secretary of State John Kerry said that America stood "ready to help".

Many of the most heavily damaged areas are still to be contacted because power and telephone lines are down, making the work of providing relief all the more difficult.

Captain John Andrews, a Philippines aviation chief, said he had spoken to colleagues by radio who had told him there were "100-plus dead lying on the streets" in Tacloban.

Soldiers walk outside of Tacloban's shattered airport terminal

Tacloban is the capital of Leyte, a large island of about two million people that suffered a direct hit from Haiyan on Friday morning when the storm was at its strongest.

Leyte Island, about 350 miles south of the capital Manila, is one of six islands that was in the path of the super typhoon's centre.

An increasing problem for the authorities now is looting, with many of the survivors desperate to get hold of supplies from the shattered shops.

Many children became seperated from their parents and were left in tears

Thousands of police and army personnel are being flown into the affected areas to start relief operations and to uphold law and order.

At one point the super typhoon had been stronger than it was when it hit land, with winds gusting up to 235mph making it among the most powerful ever.

Meteorologists said that it had slowed to 100mph after passing over the Philippines but is still expected to be of typhoon force as it sweeps across the South China Sea toward Vietnam.

A map showing the path of the typhoon and affected islands

Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese have been moved away from coastal areas as authorities prepared for Haiyan to make landfall around 10am Sunday. Millions are thought to be living in its path.

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