Iran has hanged up to 30 people in the past month amid a clampdown prompted by alleged United States-backed plots to topple the regime, the British Observer newspaper has revealed. Many executions have been carried out in public in an apparent bid to create a climate of intimidation while sending out uncompromising signals to the West.
SuperSport United winger Daine Klate scored twice to secure a semifinal berth in the SAA Supa8 tournament for his team as they beat Moroka Swallows 2-1 at the Olympia Stadium in Rustenburg on Saturday. Klate netted either side of the break after Swallows striker Alton Meiring scored in the ninth minute.
Watford’s bid for a quick return to the English Premiership was off to a good start as they defeated Sheffield United 1-0 on Saturday to extend their 100% record. West Bromwich cruised to a 2-0 home win against Preston and Plymouth drew against Ipswich, among other matches.
The Golden Lions on Saturday further entrenched their position in the Currie Cup top four when they beat Western Province 19-16 at Ellis Park. In other matches, the Sharks beat Griquas, log leaders Cheetahs beat the Boland Cavaliers, Eastern Province gained a 25-20 victory over the Griffons and the Pumas had a narrow win over the Impala Leopards.
Mamelodi Sundowns’ topsy-turvy start to the season looked like taking another downward slide when they went down to a 31st-minute goal in the CAF Confederation Cup game against Cameroon’s Astres de Douala on Saturday night — but the Brazilians hit back and eventually edged home by a 2-1 margin.
Rescuers found no signs of life after drilling a fourth hole into a collapsed Utah mine in the United States where six workers have been trapped nearly two weeks, a disheartening blow in a rescue effort that has killed three other people. A microphone lowered into the hole revealed nothing to indicate that anyone was in the cavern.
An Australian woman was killed by a pet camel given to her as a 60th birthday present after the animal apparently tried to have sex with her, police said on Sunday. The 10-month-old male camel knocked the woman to the ground, lay on top of her and exhibited what police suspect was mating behaviour.
Residents snapped up emergency supplies and tourists crowded Caribbean airports on Saturday as Hurricane Dean bore down on Jamaica and the Cayman Islands and threatened to pound Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula as a rare category-five storm. It had already hit the eastern Caribbean, where it killed at least three people.
Typhoon Sepat swept China’s southern coast on Sunday, forcing almost a million people from their homes and spawning a tornado that smashed buildings and killed at least nine people. The tornado cut a corridor of destruction 800m wide, wrecked 156 houses and injured more than 60 residents in Zhejiang province.
Distraught relatives protested and demanded answers on Sunday, two days after a collapsed dike in eastern China flooded two coal mines, leaving 181 workers missing and feared dead. State media said the breach in the dike had been closed, but gave no indication if there were any signs of life.