China has agreed to supply Iran with 50 passenger trains over the next two years in a deal worth nearly $60-million, state press said on Monday. China’s state-run Changchun Track Passenger Train Company will supply the double-decker trains as well as provide spare parts, tools and technical services.
Italian actress Alida Valli, who featured in films by Alfred Hitchcock and Luchino Visconti, died in Rome on Saturday at the age of 84, Ansa news agency said. She made her cinema debut at the age of 15 and appeared in more than 100 films, including Hitchcock’s The Paradine Case (1947).
John ”Johnny” Checketts, a World War II fighter pilot who crippled at least 14 enemy planes and twice survived being shot down, died last week at his New Zealand home, a newspaper reported on Monday. He was 94. Checketts died in the southern city of Christchurch on Friday.
The South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) accused Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana on Monday of favouring employers in the current security-industry wage strike. Last week, Mdladlana said he wanted a trade union bigger than Satawu in the security industry.
Roy Bennett, a former opposition member of Zimbabwe’s Parliament, is seeking political asylum in South Africa because he fears for his life. Bennett, a senior member of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, was released from prison in June last year after serving eight months for shoving the justice minister during a heated debate in Parliament.
Teachers at a school in rural Zimbabwe have been convicted of assault after a brutal caning spree during which they beat around 300 children with broomsticks for being late for lessons, breaking one girl’s arm, it was reported on Monday. The incident happened before Easter at Rambanepasi High School in the eastern Hwedza district, said the state-controlled The Herald newspaper.
The case against six people accused of murdering three laundry workers was struck off the roll at the Vereeniging Magistrate’s Court on Monday due to insufficient evidence against the accused. ”The big problem is that the case has been dealt with in a very, very amateurish way,” the magistrate said.
Car bombings and shootings in Baghdad on Monday left 15 dead and 100 wounded as Washington stepped up pressure for Shi’ite premier-designate Jawad al-Maliki to form a government and halt Iraq’s slide into a civil war. Insurgents set off seven car bombs, including a double car bombing at a Baghdad university, security officials said.
The African Union will end talks among warring parties in Sudan’s Darfur region by April 30 if the Khartoum government and rebel factions fail to agree to a peace deal, a senior mediator said. Sam Ibok, head of the AU team mediating peace negotiations, said on Sunday his team was still working toward a United Nations-backed deadline to achieve a final peace agreement by the end of the month.
Nepal’s pro-democracy movement called for a final push to remove the country’s monarch tomorrow as demonstrators clashed with armed police, defying curfews, teargas and bullets on the edge of the capital. In Gongabu leaders from the political parties appealed to a crowd of thousands to regroup peacefully as King Gyanendra had ”only two days left now”.