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 to be built under the deal with China.

This is the latest of significant ventures invested by China in Africa – it is said that China now imports more oil from Angola than from Saudi. Some commentators raise the question of China colonising Africa, rich with resources and governed by corrupt leaders.

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, including giving relief from sore throats and colds. Mr Garcia suggested the legal use of coca as a way of fighting cocaine production and trafficking.

Peru is the world’s second largest producer of cocaine behind Colombia. Mr Garcia’s comments came at a press conference for foreign correspondents at the government palace in Lima. Whilst some of Mr Garcia’s ideas sounded unorthodox, he insisted that the coca plant could be used for nutritional and medicinal purposes. The president likened coca leaves to the herb rosemary and to rocket, adding that he personally had cooked with coca leaves. “You can put coca leaves in your roast dinners, in the oven, you can make many things which it will give a special taste to,” he said and that the best way to fight illegal coca plantations was to open new markets so that Peru’s land could be used to produce coca for legal purposes.

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 the end of the year, and if you recommend this to others, we are giving lots of prizes,” the Ministry of Gender Equality said in an Internet posting. The ministry is offering to pay companies whose employees pledge not to buy sex after what are typically alcohol-soaked, year-end parties.

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 legal marriage age of 16. Domestic violence remains widespread. Womankind Worldwide says the Afghan authorities rarely investigate women’s complaints of violent attacks. Women reporting rape run the risk of being imprisoned for having sexual intercourse outside marriage. Although women now hold more than 25% of the seats in the Afghan parliament, female politicians and activists often face intimidation or even violence.

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 he was too big for a single seat. Air France’s lawyer said that the company had a clear policy of asking obese passengers to pay for two seats. “Let’s be objective. This man is fat,” lawyer Fernand Gamault told the court in Bobigny, according to Le Parisien newspaper. “He barely fits on the courtroom chair. How could he sit in an airplane?” Jauffret said he weighed more than 160 kilos (353 lb) and said he had flown numerous times, including on other Air France flights, without ever being asked to pay more. Air France’s web site urges overweight passengers to reserve a second seat, adding that failure to do so might mean they are refused access to an aircraft if it is fully booked.

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 it out and immediately sought medical assistance for the child which was examined at a local hospital and judged not to have received a dangerous dose of radiation.

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 head injuries and was flown to hospital in Auckland. Bottlenose dolphins, which can measure up to 2.5 metres (8.2 feet) in length and weigh as much as 260 kg (572 pounds), are known for their friendly behaviour toward human beings and seldom become aggressive.

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 parties have vowed to resist the plan. Critics say he has ruined what was one of Africa’s most developed economies. Zimbabwe shamefully has the world’s lowest life expectancy, highest inflation rate and chronic unemployment. Mr Mugabe says he is the victim of a Western plot to bring him down because of opposition to his seizure of White-owned land.

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 the largest Buddhist structures and will be used as a centre to promote meditation (or Vipassana) as taught by Buddha, but no particular religion.

The British handed the relics over to a Buddhist society in 1920 which were kept in a monastery until 1997, when they were placed in a shrine in a shallow pit on top of the dome. Women are not allowed to visit the place where the relics are kept. This year is special for Buddha’s followers as it is 2,550 years since he attained enlightenment.