A court in Sicily has ruled that an accused Mafioso can be put under house arrest because he is too fat for any Italian jail. Salvatore Ferranti, who weighs 210kg, was allowed to go home after spending six months in four Italian prisons, his lawyer said, confirming a local newspaper report.
An unresolved contract dispute between appointed Springbok rugby coach Peter de Villiers and the South African Rugby Union has erupted again — and remains unresolved. This time a constitutional matter lies at the heart of the matter, De Villiers’s agent, Rian Oberholzer, said on Wednesday.
At least 20 people who were trapped in cars and homes by rising water levels during a heavy overnight downpour in Durban were rescued by the police’s search-and-rescue team. ”We used a police boat to move many people away from the Island Hotel in Isipingo and we assisted several others,” the unit’s commander, Captain Troy Alison, said on Wednesday.
Shops selling cannabis seeds and specialist equipment for cultivating marijuana plants face closure under proposed changes to Dutch drugs laws. Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin told Parliament he would amend laws to ban the sale of everything that ”facilitates the production of cannabis”.
As tropical cyclone Jokwe threatened the tourism districts of Vilankulo and Govuro on Wednesday, the government of Inhambane province advised business owners and residents to take precautions. The state broadcaster reported that the owners of tourism establishments near the coast were being encouraged to close their businesses.
Games such as ”hit me, hit me” and ”rape me, rape me”, where schoolchildren chase each other and then pretend to hit or rape each other, are being played at South African schools, the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) said in a report on school-based violence, which was presented in Johannesburg on Wednesday.
South Africa’s business confidence fell sharply to a seven-year low in the first quarter of 2008, as the sector fretted about an uncertain economic and political outlook, a survey released on Wednesday found. The Business Confidence Index, sponsored by Rand Merchant and the Bureau for Economic Research, fell by 19 index points to 48.
Asian and European equities surged higher on Wednesday, mirroring an overnight rebound on Wall Street after major central banks announced a massive cash injection for stressed financial markets. However, dealers voiced scepticism over whether the concerted central bank action would head off the global credit crunch and bring stability to choppy world stock markets.
A recent spate of taxi violence in Gauteng is ”senseless barbarism” that will not be tolerated, the Department of Transport said on Wednesday. It has forged relations with law-enforcement agencies to ensure those responsible face the full might of the law, spokesperson Collen Msibi said in a statement.
South African prima ballerina Phyllis Spira has died at the age of 64 in Cape Town, news reports said on March 12. She died in Claremont’s Kingsbury Hospital on Tuesday afternoon. Spira had been admitted to hospital earlier in the week for a routine vascular operation and complications set in after the surgery.