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BBC news 2012-01-18

BBC News with Marion Marshall

Audio recordings from the capsized Italian cruise ship, the Costa Concordia, suggest the captain left the vessel while passengers were still being rescued. A coast guard officer orders the captain, Francesco Schettino, to return to the ship. Mr Schettino could be charged with manslaughter. His lawyer says a judge has ordered that the captain be held under house arrest. Eleven people are now known to have died in the disaster. Matthew Price reports from Giglio island.

Five more bodies were brought out of the Costa Concordia today, four men and a woman, the coast guard said. More than 20 people, though, remain unaccounted for, among them a five-year-old girl taken on the cruise as a special treat. Rescue workers blew holes into the side of the ship today, trying to improve access for the divers who are venturing inside. Specialists, cavers were brought in to get into the deepest parts of the wreck. Officially this is still a rescue operation, but the sense here is that no one else will be brought out alive.

The Syrian government has rejected a call from the Gulf state of Qatar for Arab soldiers to be sent to end the violence in Syria. The foreign ministry in Damascus said the Syrian people rejected any foreign intervention or attempt to infringe their sovereignty. Here's Paul Harper.

Qatar has been an outspoken critic of Syria's violent repression of anti-government protests, but the Qatari emir's suggestion on Friday that Arab troops should intervene to end the killing took that criticism to a new level. Predictably the suggestion has met with an angry Syrian rejection. Nevertheless, the Arab League will soon have to decide what to do about Syria as the mandate of its observer mission expires later this week.

The European Commission has decided to take legal action against Hungary because of new laws which it says infringe EU regulations. The president of the commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, said Hungary would be issued with a warning over the laws which are alleged to jeopardise the independence of its central bank and judiciary. The Hungarian government has since offered to negotiate, saying it hoped to address the commission's concerns without going through the full legal process.

A Canadian company has begun drilling for oil in Somalia. It's the first oil exploration there for more than 20 years. Peter Biles reports.

Drilling operations have started at a well in Somalia's semi-autonomous region of Puntland. There are also plans for a second well, and the company says it will take about 90 days for each drilling and evaluation. The area is part of the same geological system that produces oil and gas across the Gulf of Aden in Yemen. Oil exploration was carried out in Somalia more than 20 years ago, but came to a standstill after the overthrow of Siad Barre's government in 1991. Analysts say the latest venture is a huge gamble although the Puntland region is relatively peaceful.

World News from the BBC

State television in Ethiopia says gunmen have shot dead five foreign tourists in a remote area near the border with Eritrea. It's believed that some of the tourists were German. The Ethiopians say the gunmen crossed from neighboring Eritrea with whom Ethiopia has a long-running border dispute.

A court in Turkey has jailed three more people in connection with the killing five years ago of the prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. Mr Dink was shot dead outside his office in Istanbul. He'd angered Turkish nationalists by describing the mass killing of Armenians a century ago as genocide. His teenage killer was jailed last year.

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia is planning to shut down the English language version of its website for 24 hours on Wednesday in protest at proposed legal changes in the United States. The legislation aims to combat the sale of pirated US products overseas. More from Mark Gregory.

Wikipedia's founder Jimmy Wales told the BBC that the proposed laws are so overbroad and badly written they could have all sorts of consequences that have nothing to do with piracy. One controversial provision would require Google and other search engines to block access to non-US sites deemed to be hosting stolen content; another would require online payment services like PayPal to stop the flow of revenues to pirate sites. Support for the changes has come from media groups and movie makers worried about their paid-for content being stolen and distributed free of charge.

Mexico is sending food aid to the north of the country where indigenous communities are suffering from severe shortages. The indigenous group, the Tarahumara, have been hit by a prolonged drought and freezing temperatures. Mexicans have been donating clothes and food after reports, which were later denied, that there had been a string of suicides among the Tarahumara.

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