At least 39 people have died in a train collision in southern Spain and dozens more have been injured in the country’s worst rail crash in more than a decade, according to Spain’s Civil Guard.

Carriages on a Madrid-bound train derailed and crossed over to the opposite tracks, colliding with an oncoming train in Adamuz, near the city of Córdoba.

Four hundred passengers and staff were onboard both trains, the rail networks said.

At least 73 people were taken to hospital – 24 of them seriously injured, including four children – according to Andalusia’s emergency services.

Spanish Transport Minister Óscar Puente described the incident as “extremely strange” as officials launched an investigation.

All the railway experts consulted by the government “are extremely baffled by the accident”, Puente told reporters in Madrid.

Rail network operator Adif said the collision happened at 19:45 local time (18:45 GMT), about an hour after the train left Málaga heading to Madrid, when it derailed on a straight stretch of track.

The force of the crash pushed the carriages of the second train into an embankment, Puente said.

He added that most of those killed and injured were in the front carriages of the second train, which was travelling from Madrid to Huelva.

The type of train involved in the crash was a Freccia 1000, which can reach top speeds of 400 km/h (250 mph), a spokesperson for the Italian rail company Ferrovie dello Stato told the Reuters news agency.

Credit: BBC

• President Yoweri Museveni

Uganda’s electoral commission announced on Saturday that President Yoweri Museveni, 81, won the presidential election for a seventh term in office.

Museveni captured 71.65 percent of the vote in Thursday’s presidential election, extending his 40-year rule over Uganda after an election clouded by accusations of repression, intimidation, and an internet blackout.

His closest challenger, Bobi Wine, the 43-year-old opposition leader and former pop star whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, received 24.72 percent.

The result cements Museveni’s position as one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders.

He first came to power in 1986 as a rebel commander and has since won seven elections.

Over the years, he has twice overseen constitutional changes to remove presidential age and term limits.

Credit: BBC

In the middle of the night on Monday, Rachel Bloor stirred in her bed to find a heavy weight curled up on her chest.

Half asleep, she reached out for her dog – and instead found herself petting a smooth, slithering object.

As Bloor retreated further under the covers and pulled them up to her neck, her partner switched on the bedside lamp and confirmed the Brisbane couple’s fears.

“He goes, ‘Oh baby. Don’t move. There’s like a 2.5m python on you,” Bloor told the BBC.Her first words were expletives.

The second, an order to evacuate the dogs.

“I thought if my Dalmatian realises that there’s a snake there… it’s gonna be carnage.”

The dogs secured outside the room – and her husband wishing he was with them – Bloor began carefully extricating herself.

“I was just trying to shimmy out from under the covers… in my mind, going, ‘Is this really happening? This is so bizarre’.

“She believes the carpet python – which is non-venomous – had squeezed itself through the shutters on her window onto her bed below.

Once freed from the python, she began casually feeding it back out the way it came in.

“It was that big that even though it had been curled up on me, part of its tail was still out the shutter.”

“I grabbed him, [and] even then he didn’t seem overly freaked out. He sort of just wobbled in my hand.”

It was that big that even though it had been curled up on me, part of its tail was still out the shutter.”

“I grabbed him, [and] even then he didn’t seem overly freaked out.

He sort of just wobbled in my hand.”The same couldn’t be said for her stunned husband, but Bloor herself was barely fazed, having grown up on acreage around snakes.”I think if you’re calm, they’re calm.”