China is to build a 1,315 km railway line running north – south connecting Nigeria’s two main commercial cities, Lagos and Kano. Nigeria’s leader President Olusegun Obasanjo said the five-year railway line was the first phase in a 20-year modernisation programme. The existing railway along these routes has fallen into disrepair and new tracks are…

Australia’s Treasurer Peter Costello has said there is “no point” Australia signing the Kyoto Protocol on climate change unless it applies to China and India too. Australia, like the US, has refused to ratify the Kyoto agreement which places curbs on greenhouse emissions.

We normally associate Venezuela’s president Snr Hugo Chavez with outrageous pronouncements. Peru’s President, Alan Garcia has entered the fray for the title of most controversial remarks: he recently suggested that the coca leaf, from which the drug cocaine is derived, should be used in cooking and salads – that coca leaves had many valuable uses,…

The South Korean government is offering movie tickets to office workers as well as a cash prize of 1 million won ($1,077) to the company which enlists the most employees in the campaign – to promise not to visit brothels this holiday season. “If you promise yourself to make it a healthy night out at…

Womankind Worldwide, an international women’s rights group says guarantees given to Afghan women after the fall of the Taleban in 2001 have not translated into real change. It believes many are the result of forced marriages, thought to account for about 60% to 80% of all Afghan marriages. 57% of girls are married before the…

An overweight passenger has sued Air France after being told he was too fat and had to pay for a second seat to accommodate him. Jean-Jacques Jauffret, a French scriptwriter, said that he had felt humiliated by Air France staff that had measured his waist in public at New Delhi Airport in 2005 and decided…

A woman travelling to Mexico accidentally put her one month old grandson in an X-ray machine at Los Angeles International Airport. The woman, who spoke little English put the child in a plastic bin used to hold loose carry-on items for security scanning. Security screeners saw the baby as it started to pass through, pulled…

A 27 year old New Zealand woman is in critical condition in hospital after being crushed by a dolphin that leaped on to her boat. The woman had been watching the dolphins off the North Island’s Coromandel Peninsula from the bow of the small boat when a bottlenose dolphin landed on her. She suffered serious…

Things don’t look like they are going to improve in Zimbabwe; mad despot President Robert Mugabe who has been president since 1980, has warned he will resist protests against his proposal to postpone presidential elections until 2010. The ruling Zanu-PF party backed a move to extend Mr Mugabe’s reign from 2008 to 2010, but opposition…

A huge stone pagoda being built on the outskirts of India’s financial capital, Mumbai (Bombay) was recently opened to the public after Buddha’s ashes and bones were enshrined in it. Work on the pagoda began in 1997 and it will take at least another three years to complete. The Mumbai pagoda may be one of…