Venezuela Government Occupies Electronics Chain

Venezuela's socialist government has "occupied" a chain of electronics stores in a high-profile crackdown on alleged price fixing it claims is harming the country's economy.

Authorities arrested managers of the five-store Daka chain, sending soldiers into the shops and forcing it to start selling products at cheaper prices.

That brought crowds of bargain-hunters to Daka outlets and sparked looting at one store in the central city of Valencia.

Hundreds of people queue up looking for bargains

President Nicolas Maduro, who accuses rich businessmen and right-wing opponents of waging an economic "war" against him, said the move was "the tip of the iceberg" in a national drive against speculators.

In a speech, he condemned the looting but said the real criminals were unscrupulous businessmen exploiting Venezuelans with unjustified price hikes.

He said: "The ones who have looted Venezuela are you, bourgeois parasites.

"We're going to comb the whole nation in the next few days. This robbery of the people has to stop. You've not seen anything."

Critics say Venezuela's runaway inflation - now at 54% - is due to economic mismanagement and the failure of socialist policies.

Mr Maduro's political opponents also say excessive government controls and persecution of the private sector are to blame for shortages of basic goods and price distortions.

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Super Typhoon Haiyan: '10,000 Could Be Dead'

At least 10,000 people are thought to have been killed in the Philippine city of Tacloban by Typhoon Haiyan, officials believe.

A further 300 are confirmed dead with 2,000 missing in the neighbouring island of Samar.

Up to 4.3million people are said to have been directly affected by the typhoon's path and the death toll is expected to rise further as rescuers reach cut off areas.

If the death toll estimate by government officials is confirmed, it would be the deadliest natural catastrophe on record in the Philippines.

Coffins are left on a street

Up to 70-80% of homes have been destroyed in Tacloban and other areas in the typhoon's path, according to Justin Morgan of Oxfam.

Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas said: "From a helicopter, you can see the extent of devastation. From the shore and moving a kilometre inland, there are no structures standing. It was like a tsunami.

"I don't know how to describe what I saw. It's horrific."

Most of the dead are understood to have drowned or were crushed by collapsed buildings. Many corpses hung on tree branches, buildings and in the roads.

A fishing boat was picked up and deposited atop a sea of housing debris

"On the way to the airport we saw many bodies along the street," said Philippine-born Australian Mila Ward, 53, who was waiting at the Tacloban airport to catch a military flight back to Manila.

"They were covered with just anything - tarpaulin, roofing sheets, cardboards," she said. Asked how many, she said, "Well over 100 where we passed."

But the destruction extended well beyond Tacloban, a city of 200,000. Officials are yet to make contact with Guiuan, a town of 40,000 that was first hit by the typhoon.

A woman mourns next to the dead body of her husband and other corpses

Baco, a city of 35,000 people in Oriental Mindoro province, was 80% under water, the UN said.

The Philippines has limited resources on its own to deal with a disaster of this magnitude, say experts.

US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel has directed the military's Pacific Command to deploy ships and aircraft to support search-and-rescue operations and airlift emergency supplies.

A boy carries away supplies he has collected from rescue workers

But the command is headquartered in Hawaii, with one carrier group currently in port in Hong Kong, so it is thought it will be some days before it reaches the affected area.

The European Commission has released 3m euros ($4m; £2.5m) in emergency funds and is sending a team of humanitarian experts.

The UK is providing £6m in emergency humanitarian aid. A team of four experts has already been sent to the country.

Residents beside a road littered with debris

Prime Minister David Cameron telephoned Philippine president Benigno Aquino III to offer the UK's full support and thoughts.

Haiyan was one of the strongest tropical storms ever to have made landfall, lashing the Philippines with wind gusts of 275kph (170mph) and whipping up a storm surge which swallowed coastal towns and villages.

Although the cyclone has weakened, there are fears that many could be affected when it next makes landfall in Vietnam later today.

A pregnant woman cooks a meal inside a building overlooking Tacloban

Nearly a million people were evacuated from central provinces before the path of Haiyan turned further north.

It is now expected to be a category one typhoon, with winds gusting up to 95mph when it reaches the tourist area of Halong Bay, not far from the capital Hanoi, at about 10pm on Sunday.

The typhoon is currently gusting up to 130mph and has passed very close to the Chinese island of Hainan, where a further 130,000 people were relocated.

A map showing the direction of Typhoon Haiyan

Six people died during Vietnamese evacuations and six are missing off China after authorities lost contact with their cargo boat.

About 100,000 Britons visit Vietnam every year and the Foreign Office is advising travellers to follow advice from local authorities as well as having teams on standby.

Tacloban, a city of 220,000 people south of Manila, bore the brunt of Haiyan in the Philippines. Bodies have been seen floating in roads covered with debris from fallen trees, tangled power lines and flattened homes.

"The dead are on the streets, they are in their houses, they are under the debris, they are everywhere," said Tecson John Lim, a Tacloban city administrator.

Among those feared dead is an Australian ex-priest Kevin Lee, who moved to the Philippines after blowing the whistle on abuse in the Catholic Church in his home country, it has been reported.

The previous deadliest disaster to hit the Philippines was in 1976, when a tsunami triggered by a magnitude 7.9 earthquake killed between 5,000 and 8,000 people.

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Typhoon Survivors Hunt For Food 'Like Zombies'

Survivors of the super typhoon that has devastated several islands in the Philippines have begun scavenging for food and looting shops in order to stay alive, witnesses say.

Shopping centres and grocery stores in hard-hit Tacloban have reportedly been stripped of goods as rescuers' efforts to deliver food and water are hampered by severed roads and communications.

"Tacloban is totally destroyed. Some people are losing their minds from hunger or from losing their families," high school teacher Andrew Pomeda, 36, said as he warned of the increasing desperation of survivors.

"People are becoming violent. They are looting business establishments, the malls, just to find food, rice and milk. I am afraid that in one week, people will be killing from hunger."

Witnesses described how survivors are forming long queues at aid stations, waiting desperately for handouts of rice and water.

"Zombie-like" survivors trudge along roads thick with mud

Some sit and stare, covering their faces with rags to keep out the smell of the dead.

One woman, eight months pregnant, described through tears how her 11 family members vanished in the storm, including two daughters.

"I can't think right now. I am overwhelmed," she said.

During a visit to Tacloban, President Benigno Aquino acknowledged that looting had emerged as a major concern after only 20 out of 390 of the city's police officers turned up for work following the typhoon.

"So we will send about 300 police and soldiers to take their place and bring back peace and order," he said.

Looters take supplies from a shop which has had the gate broken open

"Tonight, an armoured vehicle will arrive and our armed forces will display the strength of the state to put a stop to this looting."

Aid agencies have warned that many of the 480,000 people whose homes have been destroyed by the bludgeoning force of the cyclone face a desperate battle to survive.

"Everything is gone. Our house is like a skeleton and we are running out of food and water. We are looking for food everywhere," said Jenny Chu, a medical student in Leyte.

"Even the delivery vans were looted. People are walking like zombies looking for food. It's like a movie."

Nancy Chang, who was in Tacloblan City on a business trip from China and walked three hours through mud and debris for a military-led evacuation, said: "It's like the end of the world."

Two men drag a corpse towards rescuers

Relief efforts are being hampered by the complete destruction of the airport, where seawaters shattered the glass of the airport tower, levelled the terminal and overturned vehicles.

Military aircraft and helicopters, which are in limited supply in the Philippines, are the only way in and out of the city.

Amid the destruction, extraordinary stories of survival are starting to emerge.

Lieutenant Colonel Fermin Carangan of the Philippine Air Force said he and 41 officers were sheltering in their airport office when "suddenly the sea water and the waves destroyed the walls and I saw my men being swept by waters one by one".

He was swept away from the building and clung to a coconut tree with a seven-year-old boy.

Hundreds of people queue for food at a Tacloban airport aid centre

"In the next five hours we were in the sea buffeted by wind and strong rain. I kept on talking to the boy and giving him a pep talk because the boy was telling me he was tired and he wanted to sleep."

He finally saw land and swam with the boy to a beach strewn with dead bodies.

He said: "I think the boy saved my life because I found strength so that he can survive."

The World Food Programme said it was airlifting 40 tonnes of high-energy biscuits, enough to feed 120,000 people for a day, as well as emergency supplies and telecommunications equipment.

Aid agencies said relief efforts in the Philippines are stretched thin after a 7.2 magnitude quake in central Bohol province last month and another refugee crisis due to conflict in southern Zamboanga province.

The US embassy in Manila has pledged $100,000 towards relief supplies and the Australian government gave A$390,500 but some expressed anger at the slow pace of rescue efforts. 

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UN Expected To Elect China To Rights Council

By Mark Stone, Asia Correspondent in Beijing

China is almost certain to be elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council despite evidence of a worsening human rights record across the country.

On Tuesday, the UN General Assembly will elect 17 new member states to the 47-member council, whose role is to "promote universal respect for the protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms".

China's bid comes at a time when evidence suggests Beijing's record on the human rights of individuals across the country is at a particularly low ebb.

Oslo: Liu Xiaobo's plight has attracted attention across the world

Over the past month, Sky News has seen evidence of an abortion forced upon a couple, houses forcibly demolished before owners could remove their belongings and individuals detained for expressing displeasure with their government.

Since President Xi Jinping took office in March, his government has made no secret of its widespread and concerted effort to crack down on dissent.

Activists, journalists and well-established dissidents have been rounded up and detained in record numbers.

Government security prevented the Sky crew from talking to his wife

The forced demolition of homes continues, as does the practice of forced abortions in provinces where over-zealous local officials take enforcement of the one-child policy to its extreme.

"Electing China as a world judge on human rights would be like asking the fox to guard the chickens," said Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based human rights group UN Watch.

China's government argues vehemently that it has improved the "collective" human rights of its people by pulling so many millions out of poverty over the past three decades.

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told Sky News: "In the past 30 years China has pulled more people out of poverty than anywhere else and pushed forward the largest scale urbanisation project in the world.

"So in China, millions of people's lives are being changed for the better."

In its official nomination papers for the Human Rights Council, China says: "The Chinese Government respects the principle of the universality of human rights and has made unremitting efforts for the promotion and protection of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of the Chinese people.

"China earnestly fulfils its obligations under relevant international human rights treaties."

Mr Neuer disputed this, saying: "This is a complete lie. The truth is that the Chinese Communist Party has Nobel Peace Laureate Liu Xiaobo behind bars, denies 1.3 billion human beings their basic freedoms of assembly, speech and religion, and crushes Tibetans, Uighurs and other minorities."

Mr Liu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011.

He was unable to travel to Oslo to collect the award because he was locked up for "subversion" of the Chinese government. Three years on, he remains in a jail in northern China.

Sky News tried to visit his wife last week. She lives on the fifth floor of an apartment block to the north west of Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

Residents pick though their belongings after their homes were bulldozed

Mrs Liu has been under house arrest since the day her husband was awarded his Nobel prize.

We arrived at the apartment block knowing it was unlikely we would succeed in seeing her and as we opened the lobby door, three plain-clothed security men confronted us. They forcibly removed us with no explanation.

Mrs Liu has lived with guards at her door 24-hours a day for three years. Her crime is being married to a dissident.

A few miles from Mrs Liu's locked apartment is a pile of rubble which was once home to a small community.

We had driven there after a tip-off that a forced demolition had taken place. We arrived an hour after the bulldozers had moved out.

The Sky team were prevented from filming by site officials

Across the two-acre site, locals were sifting through their belongings. They had not been granted the time to move out before their houses were flattened to make way for new developments.

Standing on top of the rubble that was once her house, Liang Jian Wei said: "Yesterday we were happily living here. This morning, with no sign at all, they demolished the house."

The mood was more one of resignation than anger.

"I'm not angry, I'm frustrated," Jian Wei says.

"I can only accept this reality. In this society, led by the Communist Party, anything could happen.

"There's no place I can go to tell my story, to make some sense out of it. I don't think our country has the full rule of law."

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Sochi Olympic Torch In Historic Spacewalk

Two Russian cosmonauts have taken an Olympic torch into open space for the first time.

Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazansky went on a spacewalk with it - more than 260 miles (420km) above the Earth - as part of the torch relay for the Sochi 2014 Winter Games.

The metre-long unlit torch was tethered to Kotov's spacesuit to ensure it did not float away, but occasionally he and Ryazansky let go of it.

Kotov waved it triumphantly outside the International Space Station (ISS), where they are based, while he floated almost directly above Australia. 

The Olympic torch is held in open space

"Beautiful," said Ryazansky, as he watched his fellow cosmonaut. 

The pair exchanged the torch and filmed the event using high-tech video and photo equipment.

The torch spent more than an hour in open space before Ryazansky returned it to the station and they turned to other tasks.

Last Thursday, a three-man Russian, American and Japanese crew had carried it up on a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan, bringing the number of crew aboard the station to nine.

It is the first time in history the torch has been taken on a spacewalk

It will be taken back to Earth on Monday by Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, US astronaut Karen Nyberg and Italian Luca Parmitano, of the European Space Agency, and handed off to Sochi 2014 officials.

The torch will be used to light the Olympic flame when the Games start on February 7.

They will be the first Olympics that Russia has hosted since the Soviet era and a crucial event for President Vladimir Putin, who has been in power for nearly 14 years.

The torch being taken on to the Soyuz rocket

Russia had originally contemplated sending the actual flame up to the station by encasing it in a special lantern, but internationally agreed rules governing the ISS forbid flames from being lit because they would burn up the limited supplies of oxygen available to the crew.

The feather-shaped silver and red symbol of peace and friendship has already been sent to the North Pole aboard a nuclear-powered icebreaker and is still set to visit the bottom of Baikal, the world's deepest freshwater lake.

The torch also visited the ISS ahead of the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta and the 2000 event in Sydney, but it has never before been taken out on a spacewalk.

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War Graves 'Have Enormous Power To Engage'

Caring For Graves Of Servicemen

Updated: 9:45pm UK, Saturday 09 November 2013

By Peter Francis, Commonwealth War Graves Commission

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission maintains the very fabric upon which remembrance of the war dead is focussed.

It is all too easy, for those of us who have grown up with the two minute silence, the poppy, the war graves and the memorials and think there was an inevitability about the commemoration of the war dead. That is not the case.

Before the First World War it was unusual to remember the sacrifice of "ordinary" soldiers.

One only has to look around London and see the memorials to Generals, or go to the battlefield at Waterloo (just 100 years before the Great War) to see that there was very little to mark the sacrifice of the soldier.

The First World War and the CWGC change all that.

For the very first time you have an organisation that starts to mark and care for the graves of all servicemen and is determined that they should be remembered in perpetuity and with equality of treatment. This is largely down to our founder, Fabian Ware.

Today, the war graves and memorials are perhaps the only physical reminder of the war left.

They have an enormous power in my experience to engage the individual in the war and the sacrifices made.

I still recall as a 13 year old standing in floods of tears at Tyne Cot in Belgium. I didn't know then that I would be working for the CWGC but it had a profound impact on me and sparked my love of history.

Interestingly, the numbers of visitors to our sites is growing but increasingly they may be young people, many generations removed from the individual whose grave they are visiting.

However, it has been my privilege to lead some of these trips and it never ceases to impress me how these young people connect to a grave of their relative, or a former pupil, or perhaps just someone with their name.

I have also attended funerals for discovery of remains cases where, despite not knowing the war casualty personally, the family have become deeply moved and grateful that their loved one is now at rest in one of our war cemeteries. It is an overused expression but there is a sense of truism in the word "closure".

And even today, it surprises me how many traces of our records we do for the public and they say they are the first member of the family to find that information or visit the grave. It is a very rewarding part of the job.

I'm also always deeply moved by the veterans I have met, who often keep thanking you for the work we do in commemorating their friends when I feel we should be thanking them for what they did for us!

The Commission is probably the world's largest horticultural organisation. You may measure your borders at home in metres, we measure ours in kilometres!

But maintaining the big constructed military cemeteries is actually not that difficult. They were designed so well, and we are structured in such a way, that we just know what we do and how to do it.

Every site, every grave is inspected, assessed and maintained by our dedicated workforce - some 1,300 strong worldwide (the vast majority gardeners and stone masons).

With hundreds of thousands of visitors to our sites each year - and with those numbers expected to increase by perhaps as much as 30% over the next four years - the Commonwealth War Graves Commission is engaged in a major renovation programme to get those locations ready for the expected level of visitors and events. The Commission's maintenance programme ahead of the centenary is on target.

For example, 418 of the 452 memorial panels we have scheduled for replacement in advance of 2014 have been completed, while our headstone replacement capacity is now at 22,000 headstones a year and we are re-engraving some 19,000 headstones a year in situ - maintaining the very fabric upon which remembrance of the Great War is largely based and keeping alive in stone the names of those who died.

Interestingly, here in the UK we face a very peculiar challenge. Most people do not realise that in the United Kingdom, the Commission commemorates more than 300,000 Commonwealth servicemen and women who died in the two world wars - their graves and memorials to be found at a staggering 13,000 locations. There is little awareness of this. 

These range from small rural churchyards to large urban civic cemeteries. In essence we have to enter into 13,000 agreements to maintain these sites.

We recently completed a project to map these graves to MP's constituencies and it is the Commission's aim (through this initiative) to work with MPs, educators and local communities to raise awareness of this nationally important commemorative heritage and to create a sense of "public ownership" that encourages communities to use these places as part of their efforts to remember those who died.

An increased awareness of, and sense of ownership in, war graves in the UK, will greatly assist the Commission's task of caring and maintaining for these sites, some of which may have been abandoned to nature over the decades.

In the main there are only a few places where we have difficulty with access and then the Commission tends to take a long term view.

For example, our cemetery in Beirut was badly damaged during the civil war but we remained engaged and when the time was right, repaired the cemetery. If you were to visit it today it looks pristine.

There are times and places where maintenance becomes more challenging but even here, the Commission does everything it can to ensure those who died in the two world wars are commemorated in a manner befitting their sacrifice.

From Gallipoli in Turkey, to Tobruk in Libya, to a village in Sutton Veny in Wiltshire (the latter a particular "favourite" of mine because the local primary schoolchildren make posies and lay them on each of the ANZAC graves in the churchyard next to their school) there are literally thousands of events.

The Commission is extremely grateful for the unwavering support we receive from our member governments - each of whom pays a sum in proportion to the number of graves that nation has and so the UK is about 78% of our budget.

We are an efficient and well run organisation and although I hate to use this phrase, we believe we offer good value for the work we do - maintaining war graves to 1.7 million individuals at 23,000 locations in 153 countries.

We employ 1,300 staff worldwide and they are all trained to our high standard and supported throughout their careers with us. Some may stay at one cemetery their entire career, others will move from country to country. Some are even the third generation of their family to work for us - one of the nice things about the organisation is that we do have a sense of "family".

Of course maintaining the sites is just one part of the story. We have to increasingly help people understand and engage with these locations and the act of remembrance.

Earlier this year we conducted a survey which indicated that the public think it is important to remember the war but feel less confident in understanding the historical events.

This November the Commonwealth War Graves Commission will install a new Visitor Information Panel at Etaples Military Cemetery in France - the 100th panel to be installed at a CWGC cemetery as part of a global initiative to provide more information to the public during the Centenary of the First World War.

Each panel carries information about the cemetery or memorial and the historical context which brought that site into being. Each panel also carries a QR (Quick Response) code which when scanned with a smartphone provides access to further information, including the personal stories of some of the men and women buried or commemorated at the location.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission is at the heart of events to mark the centenary of the First World War.

Our cemeteries and memorials will be the focus for many acts of remembrance over the coming years and this initiative will help inform visitors of the historical context which brought these places into being, while putting a human face to the names of those who died. It is a powerful means of combining traditional methods with new technology to ensure we never forget.

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'Ferrari Of Space' Edges Closer To Earth

A European space satellite that mapped Earth's gravity is heading back towards the atmosphere where it is expected to burn up and disintegrate later today.

Once it reaches 50 miles above the Earth, the Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) satellite will begin to break apart.

Around a quarter of the one-ton craft is expected to survive re-entry and crash to Earth.

The European Space Agency says it poses an "extremely low" risk to humans, although they cannot yet predict where it will fall.

The agency's GOCE operations manager Christoph Steiger said: "Recently we have noticed a significant temperature increase in several areas of the spacecraft, arguably linked to GOCE encountering a more dense atmosphere as its orbit keeps dropping.

"GOCE is expected to fall by over 13km today, with the final re-entry into the atmosphere probably less than two days away."

Most of GOCE will be vaporised by the Earth's atmosphere though a few small pieces are expected to survive and fall to earth, covering an area no larger than 200sq ft.

With a sleek design which led to it being dubbed the 'Ferrari of Space', GOCE has mapped variations in Earth's gravity with extreme detail, scientists say.

The data it supplied led scientists to map of the boundary between Earth's crust and mantle - called the Moho - and to detect sound waves from the massive earthquake that hit Japan in 2011.

GOCE's mission came to an end when it ran out of fuel and began its descent towards Earth from a height of about 224km (139 miles).

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Iran 'Will Not Halt Uranium Enrichment'

Iran's president has said his country will not abandon its nuclear rights after talks with world powers ended without agreement.

International foreign ministers and diplomats from six world powers and Iran spent three days in Geneva trying to broker a deal on limiting Iranian atomic programmes, in exchange for lifting some sanctions on the country.

Although they were unable to find a breakthrough, the two sides agreed to to meet again in less than two weeks.

The talks are reported to have stalled over France's request that Iran reduce its stockpiles of 20% uranium by oxidising it, putting it further away from being weapons grade material but still usable in a fuel programme.

After the talks concluded early on Sunday morning in Geneva, Hassan Rouhani told the conservative-dominated parliament in Tehran: "There are red lines that must not be crossed.

"The rights of the Iranian nation and our national interests are a red line. So are nuclear rights under the framework of international regulations, which include enrichment on Iranian soil," he said, according to the ISNA news agency.

Tehran has always insisted its programme is for energy and other civil purposes, not military.

Optimism about a potential breakthrough in the decade-long dispute were raised when senior politicians - including US Secretary of State John Kerry and UK Foreign Secretary William Hague - joined the talks.

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and a Chinese deputy foreign minister also flew in to take part.

The Natanz uranium enrichment facility

But when French foreign minister Laurent Fabius told France Inter radio that Paris could not accept a "fool's game" his pointed remarks hinted at a rift within the Western camp. 

Sky's Foreign Affairs Editor Tim Marshall, in Geneva, said: "I really think they were close. The Iranians were slightly less disappointed but I think Laurent Fabius is going to take some heat from this.

"The US and Britain have led the toughest line against the Iranians in the last five years but France has been as tough as anyone, if not tougher."

Mr Hague said there remained a "good chance" of a deal being struck with Iran soon.

"There is a good chance of that but it is a formidably difficult negotiation," he told BBC's Andrew Marr Show.

"I can't say exactly when it will conclude but...our negotiators will be trying again so we will keep an enormous amount of energy and persistence behind solving this."

The remaining gaps between the two sides were "narrow", he said.

"These talks have been very detailed. They have made a lot of progress and there is no doubt...that the parties are closer together than before we had these talks."

The six world powers and Iran agreed to resume talks on November 20 to try to clinch a deal.

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Costa Concordia: British Diver 'Stole From Wreck'

By Nick Pisa, Sky News Reporter

A British diver is among four people held by police after they were caught "red-handed" on the wreck of the Costa Concordia hunting for souvenirs, police say.

The 42-year-old London man, who has not been named, and three others - a Dublin man, 35, and two South Africans, 24 and 26 - were all staff of the salvage group Titan which had been employed in the laborious operation to raise the Costa Concordia from the seabed.

Police said the men were spotted by CCTV cameras positioned around the vessel and a boat was immediately dispatched to the scene to investigate before the divers were caught with a rucksack.

Titan has now dismissed all four men and they have been bailed by authorities in Grosseto until they appear before a court at a later date accused of theft and of breaching a sealed crime zone.

Lt Elisabette Spoti, of the paramilitary Carabinieri police, said: "The men were spotted by CCTV positioned facing the Concordia and the security firm employed alerted us and Titan as to the unauthorised presence of the four men.

Titan was employed to raise the Concordia from the seabed

"They were caught red-handed with the rucksack and the suspicion is they were trying to take items from the ship as souvenirs.

"They should not have been anywhere near the vessel as it is still a crime scene and as such sealed off.

''When they were held they had with them in their possession a rucksack with the Costa Concordia emblem on it.

"They had no permission to be on the ship and they were caught at 1.30 in the morning when no salvage operation was ongoing.

"We are also carrying out checks to establish what exactly the role of the four men held was during the salvage operation."

Lt Spoti refused to say whether there were other items inside the rucksack.

Thirty-two people died in the disaster

She said the matter was now in the hands of the prosecutor at Grosseto where their trial will be held.

Lt Spoti added they were found by deck eight, named Portugal, of the 13-deck ship and that area has several outside cabins as well as executive staterooms - and all of them have safes inside.

Another police source said: "The men said they were just looking for a few souvenirs and that they had no intention of taking anything personal, expensive or that would be of use to the investigation but that is not the issue. It is still a crime scene."

Titan said in a statement: "Four employees have been dismissed after they were identified onboard the Costa Concordia without permission and in a zone that is off limits.

The 290-metre Costa Concordia struck a reef off Giglio

"The matter is now in the hands of the local authorities."

It is not the first time that the wreck has been targeted by thieves - three months after she ran aground divers discovered that the ship's iconic brass bell, engraved with her name and the date she was launched had been stolen.

The 290-metre Costa Concordia luxury liner, carrying more than 4,000 passengers and crew, struck a reef off the island of Giglio in January 2012 after captain Francesco Schettino changed course in order to carry out a sail by salute.

Thirty-two people died in the disaster and last month the ship was pulled upright after a laborious operation lasting more than a year - and the remains of one of the two people still missing were discovered in the cruise liner.

Schettino is currently on trial accused of multiple manslaughter, causing a disaster and abandoning a ship with passengers and crew still onboard.

Meanwhile authorities have given permission for divers to open the hundreds of cabin safes that have now become accessible since the ship was straightened so that possessions can be reunited with passengers.

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Syria 'Attacks School With Incendiary Weapons'

Syria's air force has used incendiary weapons in dozens of attacks over the last year - including a half-ton bomb which killed 37 people at a school - Human Rights Watch has claimed.

A British emergency doctor, who treated patients from the Aleppo school attack on August 26, told HRW that most of them were covered in burns.

One victim, who later died, arrived with what she described as 90% third degree burns.

Dr  Saleyha Ahsan said: "The clothes had been burned off him. It was the most horrific injury I have ever seen in a live patient. Only his eyes moved."

Incendiary weapons can contain any number of flammable substances, including napalm, thermite, or white phosphorus.

Researcher at the organisation Bonnie Docherty said: "Syria has used incendiary weapons to inflict terrible harm on civilians, including many children."

The organisation called for the weapons to be condemned internationally and for tighter international laws restricting deployment.

HRW said that since last November, when it documented one of the first cases of incendiary bomb use in the Damascus suburb of Daraya, Syrian jets and helicopters had dropped incendiary bombs at least 56 times. All of the weapons were made in the Soviet Union, it said.

President Bashar al Assad's forces have used cluster bombs and vacuum bombs and are accused by the West of firing rockets loaded with the nerve agent sarin into districts outside Damascus in August, killing hundreds.

More than 100 countries - but not Syria - have signed up to an international convention banning their use in areas with "concentrations of civilians".

But loopholes and inconsistencies limit its effectiveness, HRW said.

The findings come as government officials and rebels reached a deal to ease a weeks-long blockade on a rebel-held town near the Syrian capital on Sunday, allowing food to reach civilians there for the first time in weeks, activists said.

The truce is the latest to be observed by the Assad regime and rebels, who have been at war for two and a half years.

The crisis started with peaceful protests but escalated into armed conflict after his forces shot at demonstrators demanding change.

The scale of the violence on both sides has steadily escalated, with the authorities resorting to tanks and artillery, then helicopters, fighter jets and surface-to-surface missiles to strike at their opponents.

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