The Cursing Stone of Carlisle was intended simply as an innocent community art project, harking back to the British city’s colourful past. But following floods, disease and a string of other local misfortunes, town elders are considering whether the £10 000 (R110 000) art work should be removed and destroyed, a report said on Wednesday.
An Iranian woman is trying to set a legal precedent by divorcing her husband because he has not showered for more than a year, a press report said on Wednesday. The 36-year-old woman, only identified as Mina, reportedly told a Tehran court that her husband, Reza, smells so bad that even his children will not go near him.
The South African Council of Churches has asked the African National Congress to act against one of its members of Parliament who called Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu’s views on transformation ”treasonous”. It called on the ANC ”to attend to the matter urgently” and to champion the rights of all citizens to express their views on South Africa’s democracy.
Conservation authorities at the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park have decided to shoot a huge old crocodile that attacked and killed a fisherman this week, KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife said on Wednesday. But resident Petrus Viviers said he was surprised that Elder had been attacked. He said residents are likely to object to the plans to shoot the killer crocodile.
”We are going to keep on until we get one of those buggers,” says Darrell James Roodt, director of South Africa’s Oscar-nominated film Yesterday. Roodt, producers Anant Singh and Helena Spring, and actress Leleti Khumalo arrived back in Johannesburg on Wednesday after a nail-biting time in Los Angeles for the Oscar awards ceremony.
Why was a ”tasty morsel” such as a finger left intact by the lions that attacked Nelson Chisale, a pathologist asked in the Phalaborwa Circuit Court on Wednesday. The pathologist is testifying in defence of Mark Scott-Crossley, who is accused with Simon Mathebula of murdering Chisale, who was viciously assaulted before being fed to lions.
United Nations peacekeepers in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo have killed as many as 60 militia members in a vicious gun fight that wounded two of the UN troops, a UN spokesperson said on Wednesday. The clash took place on Tuesday, about 30km north of Bunia, the capital of the violent Ituri province, where nine peacekeepers were ambushed and killed last week by militia members.
A new draft fishing policy has failed to consider the plight of thousands of subsistence fishermen, a Western Cape body working with the poor said on Wednesday. ”I think it is a pie in the sky … It’s a myth that small scale fishermen will be given greater access rights,” said Naseedh Jaffer, director of the Masifundise organisation.
The JSE Securities Exchange was weaker just after noon on Wednesday, with heavyweight dual-listed stocks coming under pressure offshore. The losses came despite a softer rand. By 12.17pm, the all share index shed 0,43%. Resources retreated 1,12%, with the gold and platinum mining indices losing 1,26% and 1,03% respectively.
A very different South African team from the one that beat Zimbabwe in the first two Standard Bank limited-overs matches will take the field at St George’s Park on Wednesday for the third and last match. South Africa barely raised a sweat in winning the first two matches by huge margins.