International Roundup

Bahamian authorities intercepted a boat carrying 31 Haitian migrants, bringing to more than 400 the number caught trying to enter the country this year according to officials.

The 25 men and six women were apprehended in a 45-foot slope east of New Providence Island Saturday night, the Royal Bahamas Defense Force said. They were turned over to immigration officials and are being processed at a detention center in the capital, Nassau.

The migrants had been at sea for a week after leaving Port-de-Paix on Haiti's north coast, according to the Defense Force.

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Insurance company Axa paid 600,000 euros (778,000 dollars) to the families of 58 Chinese who were suffocated to death in a Dutch truck smuggling them into Britain, the company said Friday.

The truck was insured with Axa when the bodies of the 58 were found at the British port of Dover after it crossed the Channel from Rotterdam in June 2000. Only two of the immigrants escaped alive.

The driver was sentenced to 14 years in prison by a British court in April 2001, while nine other people found guilty of involvement in the smuggling, including two Chinese, were jailed for up to 10-and-a-half years in the Netherlands in June 2002.

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