A man accused of being one of South Africa's worst serial rapists, Sifiso Makhubo, has been found dead in his prison cell, officials say.

Sifiso Makhubo, who faced 122 charges, including murder, was found hours before his trial was due to start.

He is also charged with attempted murder over allegations he knowingly infected his victims with HIV - the first such prosecution.

South Africa has one of the highest rates of sexual violence in the world.

Some 64,000 cases were reported to the police last year.

It is also the country with the largest HIV-positive population - some 5.5 million people, or 17% of those aged 15-49.

A band of wild cats pounced on a French woman this week and attacked her as she walked her pet dog. The traumatised woman was reportedly left with a gashed artery and bites to her arms and legs in what a vet said was an unprecedented assault.

Traditionally cats are meant to be solitary and docile creatures. But a band of feral French felines in the north-eastern French city of Belfort appears to have put that theory to bed.

The seemingly unprecedented attack happened around 7pm on Sunday at the edge of a wood in Belfort, in the north-eastern region Franche-Comté, situated between Lyon and Strasbourg, French news site l'Est Republicain reported.

The 31-year-old woman had apparently been out walking her pet poodle when she was set upon by half a dozen blood thirsty moggies.

The victim's mother Josette Galliot described the mob attack.

"They scratched and bit my daughter and really went for her," Galliot told Est Republicain.

Shanghai - Bribery is the lubricant that helps keep China's public hospitals running, and the health system would struggle to function without illegal payments to poorly paid doctors and administrators, say medical practitioners and industry experts.

They say government policies are partly to blame for a system in which doctors and other staff expect to be paid extra fees to perform operations and take kickbacks from pharmaceutical firms and medical-equipment suppliers.

The profession's ugly underbelly was exposed last week when police accused British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline of bribing officials and doctors for six years to boost sales and the price of its medicines. GSK has called the developments "shameful" and on Monday said some of its Chinese executives appeared to have broken the law.

China is an appealing market for pharmaceutical firms and medical-equipment makers, with spending in the industry expected to nearly triple to $1 trillion by 2020 from $357 billion in 2011, according to consulting firm McKinsey.

The corruption stems largely from doctors' low base salaries, which are set in line with a pay scale for government workers. Hospitals can pay bonuses but, given public hospitals are strapped for cash, compensation is usually low, say doctors and industry experts.

A doctor fresh out of medical school in Beijing earns about 3,000 yuan ($490) a month including bonuses - roughly the same as a taxi driver. A doctor with 10 years experience makes around 10,000 yuan a month, according to Peter Chen, chief executive of privately run Oasis International Hospital in Beijing.

"Without the grey income, doctors would not have the incentive to practice," said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

At least 77 people died in Wednesday's train crash in the northern Spanish region of Galicia, a spokeswoman for Galicia's supreme court said.

Four died in hospital, the rest at the site of the accident, the spokeswoman said on Thursday morning, adding that the numbers were still provisional. Judges in Spain are responsible for recording deaths.

The crash occurred as the train approached the north-western Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela at 8.40pm. A further 131 people were reported injured in the accident, the worst in Spain for 40 years. Reports said about 20 were very seriously injured.

The death toll might rise further, a spokeswoman for the office of the central government in Galicia warned. One Briton was among the injured, the Foreign Office confirmed.

Rescue workers battled to free passengers trapped inside the carriages, several of which had overturned. Some caught fire. Bodies covered in blankets lay next to the overturned carriages as smoke billowed from the wreckage. Firemen clambered over the twisted metal trying to get survivors out of the windows.

"The scene is shocking, it's Dante-esque," the head of the Galicia region, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, said in a radio interview.

Some 20 cars have been torched and four people detained in a second night of violence in suburbs west of Paris, a result of tensions linked to authorities' handling of France's ban on Muslim face veils.

France's interior minister said Sunday that the incidents overnight targeted the town of Elancourt.

Police union official said on BFM television that about 50 assailants were involved, some firing weapons and a gasoline bomb at police.

The night before, about 250 people hurling projectiles clashed with police firing tear gas in the nearby town of Trappes in apparent protest over the enforcement of France's ban on Islamic face veils. Five people were injured and six detained in the violence, authorities said Saturday.

The interior minister urged calm and dialogue, insisting on both the need for public order and respect for France's Muslims. The incident in the town of Trappes on Friday night reflected sporadic tensions between police upholding France's strict policies of secularism and those who accuse authorities of discriminating against France's No. 2 religion.

Authorities responding to a report of a foul odor from a home ultimately discovered three bodies and arrested a registered sex offender who sent police and volunteers through a poor Ohio neighborhood in a search for more victims Sunday, officials said.

East Cleveland Police Chief Ralph Spotts had cautioned searchers to be prepared to find one or two more victims. But after a daylong search that included 40 abandoned houses and other areas, no more bodies were found.

Spotts identified the suspect as 35-year-old Michael Madison. He said Madison is expected to be formally charged Monday, but did not elaborate.

Mayor Gary Norton said the suspect has indicated he might have been influenced by Cleveland serial killer Anthony Sowell, who was convicted in 2011 of murdering 11 women and sentenced to death.

It's the latest in a series of high-profile cases involving the disappearance of women from the Cleveland area.

Florida court hands down sentences of up to 25 years against men who peddled worthless shares in 'boiler-room' scheme

Three British conmen who left thousands of victims penniless as they frittered £85m in stolen money on a private jet, yachts and holiday homes in the Caribbean have been jailed by a Florida court.

Richard Pope, Paul Gunter and Simon Odoni lived a luxurious life while defrauding at least 2,300 Britons, many of whom lost their entire life savings and one of whom was driven to suicide.

They were jailed at a court in Florida, where Gunter, 64, was sentenced to 25 years. Odoni, 56, was given 13 years and four months and Pope, 55, was sentenced to four years and nine months.

Detective Inspector Kerrie Gower said: "Pope, Gunter and Odoni are amongst the most ruthless and destructive criminals the City of London police have ever dealt with and deserve every day they will spend behind bars in America.

"Unfortunately this sentencing will not repair the huge damage they caused to the lives of thousands of people who were simply looking for a safe place to invest their money, but hopefully it will bring a measure of comfort and a sense of closure to those caught up in what was fraud committed on a truly massive scale."

DA NANG, Vietnam -- In many ways, Nguyen Thi Ly is just like any other 12-year-old girl. She has a lovely smile and is quick to laugh. She wants to be a teacher when she grows up. She enjoys skipping rope when she plays.

But Ly is also very different from other children. Her head is severely misshapen. Her eyes are unnaturally far apart and permanently askew. She's been hospitalized with numerous ailments since her birth.

Her mother, 43-year-old Le Thi Thu, has similar deformities and health disorders. Neither of them has ever set foot on a battlefield, but they're both casualties of war.

Le and her daughter are second- and third-generation victims of dioxin exposure, the result of the U.S. military's use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, when the U.S. Air Force sprayed more than 20 million gallons of Agent Orange and other herbicides over parts of southern Vietnam and along the borders of neighboring Laos and Cambodia. The herbicides were contaminated with dioxin, a deadly compound that remains toxic for decades and causes birth defects, cancer and other illnesses.

To this day, dioxin continues to poison the land and the people. The United States has never accepted responsibility for these victims - it denies that Agent Orange is responsible for diseases among Vietnamese that are accepted as Agent Orange-caused among American veterans - and it's unclear when this chain of misery will end.

Riot police free more than 100 MPs and ministers blockaded for more than eight hours as anti-government protests grow

Police in Bulgaria have broken up a blockade of parliament by anti-government protesters to escort out more than 100 MPs and ministers who had been trapped inside the building for more than eight hours.

Police in riot gear pushed away the protesters early on Wednesday and formed a corridor to allow those trapped out of the building.

Protests in Bulgaria's capital, which have been continuing for 40 days, escalated on Tuesday evening when several hundred demonstrators trapped the officials inside parliament in a bid to oust the left-leaning government.

Police had tried to escort the officials out by a bus on Tuesday, but protesters blocked the vehicle and hurled stones. Seven protesters and two police officers were treated in hospital for head wounds.

The Socialist-backed government took office after early elections in May, following the resignation of the previous cabinet amid anti-austerity protests. The government commands only 120 seats in the 240-seat Parliament and has to rely on the support from a nationalist party.

The appointment of media mogul Delyan Peevski as head of the national security agency sparked the most recent wave of protests. The appointment was immediately revoked but demonstrators insist the government is corrupt and must resign.

Recent public-opinion polls show the protests are supported by about two-thirds of Bulgaria's 7.3m people, who have the lowest incomes in the European Union.

The Bulgarian president, Rosen Plevneliev, issued a statement calling on the protesters to keep the demonstrations "peaceful and civilised."

"For the first time since the start of the protests we have now witnessed tension and attempts for provocation," Plevneliev said, urging the protesters to restrain from any acts which increased the tension and breach public order. He also called on the police to help keep the protest peaceful.