Wales players are set to be exposed to a week of training at a cryotherapy centre ahead of the Six Nations Grand Slam winners’ two Test tour of South Africa in June, coach Warren Gatland announced on Tuesday. Cryotherapy is a process in which the body is briefly subjected to extremely low temperatures below -110°C.
South African petrol pump prices and wholesale diesel prices will rise sharply next week, the government said on Wednesday, adding to inflationary pressures. The Department of Minerals and Energy Affairs said all grades of petrol would on May 7 rise by 55 cents, or 6,2%, to R9,46 a litre in Gauteng.
North Korea again runs the risk of outright famine, ten years after up to one million of its people died of starvation, a leading United States research institute said on Wednesday. ”The country is in its most precarious situation since the end of the famine a decade ago,” said Peterson Institute senior fellow Marcus Noland.
Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered the hallucinogenic drug LSD, has died aged 102, the organisation that republished his book on the mind-altering substance said. Hofmann died at his home in Basel, Switzerland on Tuesday, the California-based Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies said on its website.
A stunning goal from Paul Scholes gave Manchester United a 1-0 win over Barcelona on Tuesday to set up an all-English Champions League final against either Liverpool or Chelsea in Moscow next month. Scholes was suspended for United’s epic victory over Bayern Munich in the 1999 final, and Ferguson had already said he would play in the final if they qualified.
They work under the cover of night, armed with seed bombs, chemical weapons and pitchforks. Their tactics are anarchistic, their attitude revolutionary. Their aim: to beautify. An army of self-styled Guerrilla Gardeners is growing across the world, fighting to transform urban wastelands into horticultural havens.
Russia accused Georgia on Tuesday of planning to invade the breakaway republic of Abkhazia and said it was sending more troops to the region. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Georgia had amassed more than 1 500 troops in the mountainous Upper Kodori valley — a small but strategic enclave inside the separatist territory but controlled by Georgian forces.
South African private sector credit growth jumped to 22,62% year-on-year in March, knocking expectations of a slowdown in spending and hardening the case for more interest rates increases. Central bank data on Wednesday showed growth in demand for credit leapt from 20,79% in February, while M3 money supply growth edged higher to 21%.
Zimbabwe’s army is supplying militants with weapons to intimidate voters to ensure that Robert Mugabe wins a possible run-off in the presidential election, Human Rights Watch said. In a statement released late on Tuesday, it said military forces had equipped war veterans with weapons and trucks to scare Zimbabweans into backing Mugabe.
South Africa’s 13-year moratorium on elephant culling was set to be lifted on Thursday to combat a surge in population numbers, despite an outcry from animal rights activists. The South African government earlier this year authorised the culling of elephants from May 1 as a last resort in limiting the numbers of the African elephant.