UK Live Blog

Civic authorities in London say they are resuming legal action to evict a protest camp outside St. Paul's Cathedral after talks with the protesters stalled.

London's Occupy protest outside St. Paul's, where more than 200 tents have been pitched since October 15, has settled into a stalemate between church and civil authorities.

The cathedral and local authority the City of London Corporation suspended legal action to remove the camp two weeks ago, and offered the protesters a deal to stay until the new year if they then agreed to leave.

The protesters say they have not agreed to this.

The Corporation said Tuesday it would restart legal action to clear pathways around the cathedral.  [AP]

British Foreign Minister William Hague called for "ever-increasing" international pressure, rather than military intervention, to end the violent repression in Syria.

"I don't think the answer to (the repression) now or subsequently would be a military intervention from outside," Hague told reporters in Strasbourg after a meeting of Council of Europe ministers.

The situation in Syria is "dramatically more complex" than that in Libya before NATO intervened in March, he said.

"We will not be able to apply the same answer in Syria as in Libya," he said.

"I do think however we should apply ever-increasing international pressure to the Assad regime."

Additional sanctions against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad are the way forward, Hague said.

"Of course, the UK would like to be able to pass a resolution at the UN Security Council bringing the condemnation of the world on the use of force against civilians by the Syrian regime," he said.

Syria is currently under EU and US sanctions, but Russia and China vetoed a UN Security Council resolution against Amman in October.

The release of a critical report into the moral standards of British bankers has been delayed by London's St Paul's Cathedral, the Independent on Sunday newspaper reported.

The report was meant to be published last Thursday, but was suppressed over fears it would heighten tensions among the Occupy London protest movement, currently camped out near the steps of the Cathedral.

The Independent on Sunday said:

A spokesman for St Paul's Cathedral said: "It has been decided to delay publishing this report until further notice as it wouldn't get the proper debate it deserves in light of the present circumstances."

The spokesman refused to comment what the report's findings were, but it is understood it raised profound concerns about the banking sector's willingness to accept responsibility for the financial crisis.

Click here to read the full article on the Independent's website.

Sean McAllister, a filmmaker, was detained by the Syrian authorities while working undercover on a report for the UK's Channel 4 news last week.

McAllister says that he was seized from a Damascus cafe along with Jihad, an activist, blindfoled, and driven to a prison in the central part of the city.

I was placed on a seat in an empty room on my own. Outside I could hear beatings in a neighbouring room. People being slapped and wailing painfully as they were being whacked," he said.

McAllister was being held along with activists who had been detained by the authorities. 

When they are taken out of the cell they are blindfolded and their hands are tied. They are taken down the corridor to this, well, they don't know where they are going, the whole thing, having been blindfolded for a little bit, the disorientation, of never seeing and the person you keep meeting is just a voice that you hear and you have to see him on one knee, you are forced to kneel on one knee. It’s a very awkward position to be in for maybe an hour of interrogation. 

"If they are not satisfied with the info, you would be brought out at three in the morning into the torture chamber and whipped with the cable or there was like a hundred leather belts like a big ball of leather belts in the corner."

"I'd seen these things that they'd use, because the cable was next to my bed one night. They'd manufactured the end of the cable to become like a proper handle and the cable was so solid that it had formed its arc and the arc as it hit someone's back.  

"It was so heavy, it was so awful, it must have broken bones and the howling, the noise of a human being hit with that is something that just, you know, you shiver and shake. You hear a sound that you've never heard before. I've never heard before. And I've seen people dead. And I've seen people dying. And I've seen people decapitated, but this sound hearing a man cry, is just like, awful, there's nothing to compare it with."

McAllister was also particularly by the bravery of those detained with him.

I didn't realise exactly what those guys are risking until I went into that experience and my God those guys are brave. Too brave."

He has said that he does not know what became of his contact, Jihad, after his own release.

The voice I got from Homs is that we just need help. We need outside help.  We need foreign intervention. We need a no fly zone. We will take any of those options to move thing things forward, cause they are killing us every day."