Lorry Rips Through Tunnel After Blunder

Video has emerged of a lorry dramatically crashing in a Sydney tunnel after its driver accidentally hit the wrong lever.

The footage shows the vehicle's container lifting upwards and ripping into the roof of the M3 tunnel during morning rush hour.

The New South Wales Roads Minister Duncan Gay told Australian media that the lorry's tipping mechanism was activated after the driver accidentally knocked the controls as he leaned down to pick up his glasses.

All of the city-bound lanes of the tunnel were closed as emergency workers removed the vehicle and cleared debris from the road.

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Sri Lanka: Cameron Urged To Raise Atrocities

Tamil Claims Torture And Sex Abuse

Updated: 11:38am UK, Thursday 14 November 2013

By Lisa Holland, Foreign Affairs Correspondent

Navaneethan Subramaniam is not allowed out of the London mental health unit where he is being treated unless he is accompanied.

He arrived in August after smuggling himself illegally into Britain via Europe in the back of a lorry.

Navaneethan's lawyer says he is under constant supervision because there are fears he may try to take his own life after suffering weeks of torture, allegedly at the hands of the Sri Lankan army.

This is the first time Navaneethan has left the hospital grounds. He wants to tell his story and has been allowed to leave for a few hours by doctors to meet us at a nearby cafe.

Navaneethan speaks virtually no English and talks to us through a Tamil solicitor.

During the Sri Lankan civil war he says he was a driver for the separatist group the Tamil Tigers - but he insists he is no longer an activist.

After the end of the civil war he says he went to France but was deported back to Sri Lanka, where he said he was abducted one day on his way home from work.

The 33-year-old said he was picked up and tortured in May of this year - four years on from the supposed end of the civil war.

His story is typical of the claims of abuses which human rights groups say are continuing in Sri Lanka. 

He told me: "They came in front of me, stopped me and said, 'I want to speak to you, come', then grabbed me from behind my head, grabbed my collar and pushed me into the van."

Navaneethan says he was taken to an army camp where he was held for 23 days.

He said: "I was questioned. They said, 'You have been the driver of the vehicles belonging to the group (Tamil Tigers). You smuggled arms and hid them. Where are the bunkers with weapons?'."

He says he was slapped and punched, beaten with a rifle butt, given electric shocks, made to feel like he was drowning and repeatedly sexually abused.

"I was beaten but before that I was given electric shocks. It was like two squares held onto my waist. After that I was assaulted with a rifle butt. My ear was pulled with pliers and I was stabbed with an army knife.

"The sexual thing ... three army personnel came one night. I was kept the whole night. One after the other they came to me and they did it."

"I was mostly beaten with plastic pipes, long wooden poles and wires. They put a plastic bag over my head and put water inside. I couldn't breathe at all.

"At that time I felt instead of going through all this torture I would rather die - my torture was that severe. 

"Like what happened to me, the torture is on a massive scale and the outside world has no idea about these things."

Navaneethan - who is applying for permission to stay in Britain - returned to the hospital after spending a few hours with us.

Sky News raised his case with Dr Chris Nonis, Sri Lanka's High Commissioner to the UK.

He said: "People who came over here as economic refugees living off the British taxpayers' money who now should be deported naturally do not want to be deported, and they will come up with all sorts of conjecture of 'torture', because they have a compelling reason why they want to stay.

"There will always be a group of people who funded terrorism, who made terrorism a business, who will perpetuate a proxy propaganda war. All these are usually unauthenticated, unverified and uncorroborated.  

"We have a formal process of investigation. It is a domestic process and that will continue because no one condones any form of torture.

"But there are lots of spurious allegations and it is fundamentally important for a country post-conflict that we separate fact from fiction."

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Tamil Man 'Tortured By Sri Lankan Army'

By Lisa Holland, Foreign Affairs Correspondent

Navaneethan Subramaniam is not allowed out of the London mental health unit where he is being treated unless he is accompanied.

He arrived in August after smuggling himself illegally into Britain via Europe in the back of a lorry.

Navaneethan's lawyer says he is under constant supervision because there are fears he may try to take his own life after suffering weeks of torture, allegedly at the hands of the Sri Lankan army.

This is the first time Navaneethan has left the hospital grounds. He wants to tell his story and has been allowed to leave for a few hours by doctors to meet us at a nearby cafe.

Navaneethan speaks virtually no English and talks to us through a Tamil solicitor.

During the Sri Lankan civil war he says he was a driver for the separatist group the Tamil Tigers - but he insists he is no longer an activist.

After the end of the civil war he says he went to France but was deported back to Sri Lanka, where he said he was abducted one day on his way home from work.

The 33-year-old said he was picked up and tortured in May of this year - four years on from the supposed end of the civil war.

Tamils claim they were abused in government-run refugee camps

His story is typical of the claims of abuses which human rights groups say are continuing in Sri Lanka. 

He told me: "They came in front of me, stopped me and said, 'I want to speak to you, come', then grabbed me from behind my head, grabbed my collar and pushed me into the van."

Navaneethan says he was taken to an army camp where he was held for 23 days.

He said: "I was questioned. They said, 'You have been the driver of the vehicles belonging to the group (Tamil Tigers). You smuggled arms and hid them. Where are the bunkers with weapons?'."

He says he was slapped and punched, beaten with a rifle butt, given electric shocks, made to feel like he was drowning and repeatedly sexually abused.

"I was beaten but before that I was given electric shocks. It was like two squares held onto my waist. After that I was assaulted with a rifle butt. My ear was pulled with pliers and I was stabbed with an army knife.

"The sexual thing ... three army personnel came one night. I was kept the whole night. One after the other they came to me and they did it."

Sri Lanka's High Commissioner dismissed the claims of torture

"I was mostly beaten with plastic pipes, long wooden poles and wires. They put a plastic bag over my head and put water inside. I couldn't breathe at all.

"At that time I felt instead of going through all this torture I would rather die - my torture was that severe. 

"Like what happened to me, the torture is on a massive scale and the outside world has no idea about these things."

Navaneethan - who is applying for permission to stay in Britain - returned to the hospital after spending a few hours with us.

Sky News raised his case with Dr Chris Nonis, Sri Lanka's High Commissioner to the UK.

He said: "People who came over here as economic refugees living off the British taxpayers' money who now should be deported naturally do not want to be deported, and they will come up with all sorts of conjecture of 'torture', because they have a compelling reason why they want to stay.

"There will always be a group of people who funded terrorism, who made terrorism a business, who will perpetuate a proxy propaganda war. All these are usually unauthenticated, unverified and uncorroborated.  

"We have a formal process of investigation. It is a domestic process and that will continue because no one condones any form of torture.

"But there are lots of spurious allegations and it is fundamentally important for a country post-conflict that we separate fact from fiction."

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Elephants Killed As Train Slams Into Herd

A train has crashed into a herd of elephants as they lumbered across tracks in India, killing seven animals and seriously injuring another 10.

The crash, described as the worst of its kind in recent memory by one government minister, happened at dusk in Chapramari Forest, a vast wildlife sanctuary in the eastern West Bengal region.

The train was travelling at 50mph (80kph) when it struck the herd of about 40 elephants.

The animals scattered but later returned to the scene of the crash, before being driven off the tracks by forest guards and train staff.

Pictures taken at the scene showed the carcass of one animal hanging from a bridge.

Two calves were among the elephants killed.

Hiten Burman, the forestry minister in West Bengal, said railway authorities had ignored requests from his department to reduce the speed of trains in Jalpaiguri district, which is home to a number of elephant herds.

Animesh Basu, a wildlife activist and co-ordinator of the Himalayan Nature and Adventure Foundation, said at least 50 elephants had been killed by trains in West Bengal since 2004.

He blamed unrestricted train movements for the latest accident.

"It's an irony that elephants are being killed by speeding trains in north Bengal at regular intervals, even though it's been declared as the heritage animal in India and an elephant cub is the mascot of Indian Railways," Mr Basu added.

There are approximately 27,000 elephants left in the wild in India, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

The charity said about 40 animals are killed each year, with habitat loss among the biggest threats to their survival.

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Ireland Confirms Exit From EU-IMF Bailout

Ireland is to make a clean break from its three-year international bailout programme next month without seeking precautionary funding, it has been confirmed.

The decision not to seek a special overdraft facility was finalised at an emergency cabinet meeting ahead of finance minister Michael Noonan flying to a summit in Brussels.

Ireland's prime minister Enda Kenny confirmed that his country will leave the bailout, overseen by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund since 2010, on December 15.

"This is the right decision for Ireland," Mr Kenny said.

Mr Kenny added: "We will exit the bailout in a strong position. The government has been preparing for a return to normal market trading.

"We will set out a path to a brighter economic future for our people, a path from mass unemployment to full employment from involuntary emigration to the return of thousands of people who have to leave for other countries to find work.

"Today is just the latest step in that ongoing journey, a significant step indeed but also just another step towards our ultimate job of getting Ireland working again."

The department of finance said the government's assessment was that leaving the €85bn (£71bn) bailout without a so-called backstop of credit was the best option.

It said market and sovereign conditions are favourable towards Ireland.

The country has built up more than €20bn (£17bn) in cash reserves since returning to the international money markets last year.

It said this can be used to keep Ireland in the black until early 2015.

It also said the latest budget, announced last month, had been designed to deliver a primary balance or small surplus.

"Domestic and international economic conditions are improving, monetary policy decisions are conducive to exit and confidence and sentiment towards Ireland has improved considerably in recent months," the department said.

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Toronto Mayor 'Took Cocaine With Prostitute'

Toronto's troubled mayor is facing more questions after newly released court documents appeared to reveal a pattern of drug and alcohol use and abusive behaviour.

Just a week after Rob Ford admitted he had smoked crack cocaine in the past, The New York Times published details of police surveillance and wiretaps with his staff and other witnesses.

Included in the 500-page report are allegations Mr Ford brought a woman, thought to be a prostitute, to his City Hall office and that he took cocaine and partied with a possible sex worker in a bar.

The documents, released by a judge, were used by Canadian police to obtain a search warrant for Alexander Lisi, Mr Ford's friend and occasional driver who is accused of marijuana possession and trafficking.

Mr Ford with a bobblehead toy

Employees claim they were involved in drunken altercations with Mr Ford and that he was verbally abusive to them.

The documents also allege Mr Ford took the painkiller Oxycontin and drove his Cadillac while drunk.

Mr Ford's former press secretary claimed that women would regularly appear at his boss's office. It is reported that they said they had smoked marijuana with Mr Ford outside a bar and that he had offered them jobs.

On Wednesday members of the city's council called for Mr Ford to take a leave of absence after he admitted smoking crack cocaine while in a "drunken stupor" and was filmed making threats to kill.

Mr Ford also admitted buying illegal drugs in the last two years, but he has refused to step down from his position.

He has denied he is an addict or alcoholic and said he is "sincerely sorry" for his actions.

On Tuesday the embattled politician signed limited-edition bobblehead dolls of himself which were being sold for charity.

In a CTV News poll 62% of respondents said there was "no way" they would vote for Mr Ford "under any circumstance".

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Hundreds Of 'Exploited' Children Rescued

Nearly 400 children have been rescued and hundreds of people arrested worldwide after a sex abuse investigation in Canada.

Police launched the investigation in November 2010 when about 200,000 explicit images of children were found at a house in Brantford, near Toronto.

Detectives said a Toronto man was later found running a website that allowed users to purchase pornographic videos of children.

The site, which allegedly offered digital downloads and a mail order service, is said to have made more than $4m (£2.5m).

Sky's US Correspondent Dominic Waghorn said: "What's extraordinary is that this man's alleged business appears to have been conducted out in the open.

"The website was described by people who saw it before it was shut down ... as looking rather like Amazon.

"There was a legal page saying that everyone pictured in the images was of the right legal age.

"The police in Canada will have to prove that, under Canadian law, these images were made not for artistic merit but for sexual gratification.

The investigation involved police forces around the world

"However, they've said that some of the images they found among several terabytes of data were horrific and the worst they'd ever seen."

The results of the three-year investigation, known as Project Spade, were released by Brantford Police Service at a news conference.

A spokesman said 339 people had been arrested around the world, with 386 children rescued from child exploitation.

The investigation involved dozens of countries, including the United States, Greece, Ireland, Norway, Hong Kong, South Africa, Australia, Spain and Mexico.

A man arrested over the 2010 haul of pornographic photos, who was charged and released on bail at the time, was revisited by police when they received information about an alleged purchase of indecent images.

He was subsequently charged with accessing and possessing indecent images of children and two counts of breaching bail conditions and jailed last June.

Brantford Police Service did not release specific details of any of the other arrests.

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Turkish Parliament Lifts Trouser Ban For Women

The Turkish parliament has lifted a ban on women politicians wearing trousers in the assembly.

The move comes after a landmark decision to allow female MPs to wear the Islamic headscarf.

The change in the rule for trousers came after an MP Safak Pavey from the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) drew attention to the trouser ban during a parliamentary debate on the emotive headscarf issue.

The headscarf ban has long polarised opinion in the largely Muslim - but officially secular - Turkey.

Ms Pavey, who has a prosthetic leg, was banned from wearing trousers

Ms Pavey, elected to office in June 2011, has a prosthetic leg but parliament had rejected her previous request to be allowed to wear trousers because of regulations which specified that women should wear suits with skirts.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's ruling centre-right AK Party, which has Islamist roots, proposed the relaxation of the trouser ban and the opposition parties - the secularist CHP, the pro-Kurdish BDP and Turkish nationalist MHP - backed the plan and the measure was approved late on Wednesday.

The Turkish parliament witnessed historic scenes at the end of October when four AKP female politicians wore headscarves for the first time in the assembly.

MPs Nurcan Dalbudak (l) and Sevde Beyazit Kacar (r) wearing headscarves

The headscarf is viewed by secularists as an emblem of political Islam and thus a threat to the republic's secular identity, but the AK Party has argued that the restrictions on its use violate the principle of religious freedom.

Secularists made only subdued protests to the move, highlighting a shift in attitudes in Turkey about religion after more than a decade of AKP rule.

The headscarf ban has also been lifted in other state institutions as well as parliament.

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Alec Baldwin's Stalker Jailed For Harassment

A Canadian woman convicted of stalking actor Alec Baldwin has been sentenced to six months in prison for harassment.

Genevieve Sabourin was found guilty of stalking, attempted aggravated harassment, harassment and attempted contempt of court.

At the trial in New York, Baldwin claimed the actress had turned his life into a nightmare after they met once for dinner. The actor says she besieged him with unwanted phone calls and emails and started showing up at his homes and at public events.

In his summation to the judge, defense lawyer Todd Spodek said Sabourin had a legitimate, brief romance with Baldwin. He complained that Baldwin was using the court system to "sort out his relationships."

The judge sentenced Sabourin to six months in jail, on top of 30 days she already received for disrupting court proceedings.

More follows...

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Typhoon Haiyan Survivors Call Astrodome 'Home'

Thousands of Typhoon Haiyan survivors who sought shelter in an astrodome are still waiting for food and water.

The large venue in Tacloban city has been a temporary home for them for six days but they are yet to receive any aid.

"What can we do? There's nothing we can do," says Corazon Cecleno, a volunteer with the village council who had handed out food stamps to the occupants - stamps for food that has yet to arrive.

"We really want to know why the distribution of help is so slow."

Mass burials have begun in Tacloban

People are seeking water where they can, from broken standpipes or in tarpaulins in other buildings, often it is dirty and salty. They are also attempting to dry out ocean-soaked rice grains in the sun.

"We have no choice," said Moses Rosilio, a neighbour who is squatting in the restaurant and whose baby is due by the end of the month.

"I'm feeling nervous," she said. "There are no clothes for my baby ... I don't know, I don't know. Maybe I'll give birth here."

Elsewhere in Tacloban, which was worst-affected by the storm, the first mass burials have taken place.

Officials said efforts had been made to identify the bodies so families have a chance of finding out what happened to their loved ones in the days and weeks to come. It was not immediately clear whether this included DNA testing.

HMS Illustrious will arrive on November 25

Authorities say 2,357 people have been confirmed dead in the disaster, but that figure is expected to rise, perhaps significantly, when information is collected from other areas of the disaster zone.

The USS George Washington aircraft carrier has arrived near the Gulf of Leyte and will set up a position off the coast of Samar Island to assess the damage and provide medical and water supplies.

Britain is deploying two warships, HMS Illustrious and HMS Daring, to the country to help with the relief effort.

Severe winds wreaked widespread destruction

It comes after UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said people had been "let down" by the slow dispersal of aid.

"The situation is dismal," she told reporters in Manila. "Those who have been able to leave have done so. Many more are trying. People are extremely desperate for help.

"We need to get assistance to them now. They are already saying it has taken too long to arrive. Ensuring a faster delivery is our ... immediate priority."

At least £23m has been raised by the British public to help affected people and the British Government is also providing £20m.

:: To make a donation to the DEC Philippines Crisis Appeal visit www.dec.org.uk, call the 24-hour hotline on 0370 60 60 900, donate over the counter at any high street bank or post office or send a cheque.

You can also donate £5 by texting the word SUPPORT to 70000.

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