Cyclist fends off leopard attack with mountain bike

A South African cyclist attacked by a leopard on his way to work was able to fend off the animal with his mountain bike.

Pieta Ncube, 39, was able to fight the animal off as it tore into the back of his head with its claws. "I slowed down to see what was behind me," he said. "I was just able to use my bike to stop him getting me".

Mr Ncube said he managed to trap the animal's two front legs in the triangle of his bicycle's frame so that it could not move freely or reach him with its teeth. He eventually pulled a loose steel bar he had attached to his bicycle and smashed the leopard around the head as it clawed at his face and head. The frightened beast then ran off into the bush.

He said he then tried to administer first aid on himself before calling his boss for help. Police launched a full-scale search for the leopard following Tuesday's attack, which happened near the town of Brits in South Africa's North West province. Mr Ncube has been released from hospital but will need injections every three days for a month to prevent infection.

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Woman reunited with diamond ring flushed down toilet two years ago

A woman has been reunited with a diamond ring that she accidentally flushed down the toilet two years ago - and after a waste firm helped her sift through 12,000 gallons of sewage.

Joan Speirs, who happens to be the Conservative leader of Surrey's Reigate and Banstead Council, was at the Charlwood Hotel near Gatwick when she lost the antique gold ring, set with a certified diamond and a handful of smaller diamonds.

The 67-year-old then paid Dorking-based waste disposal company Clear Master to put a camera into the cesspit tank and subsequently filter 12,000 gallons of waste. One worker was even sent into the tank with a metal detector - to no avail.

'She was understandably distraught. The ring was worth a significant amount of money but it was also of great emotional value because it was given to her by her late husband,' Julie French, director of the firm, said of Ms Speirs.

'We did everything we could. We emptied the sewage tank and put a camera into it to see if the ring had got lodged anywhere,' she added. 'We got permission to empty the tank at a Thames Water site and put it through the sewage works, hoping that would filter it out, but we still didn't find it.'

It was sheer coincidence, then, that one of the family-run company's eight employees was sent to the same works two-and-a-half years later - and stumbled upon the ring. 'He took it in the shower with him to rinse it off and brought it into the office,' Ms French explained after the worker, Lloyd Hampshire, spied the gem glinting through the muck.

'My husband was the only person who had seen the original photo of the lost ring and recognised it immediately. 'Two of the smaller diamonds had fallen out but apart from that, it was just in need of a good clean.'

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Family find car three years after parking it

A family have been reunited with a car they lost almost three years ago. Gerald Sanctuary left the silver Honda in a car park while he went shopping in May 2008.

But the 80-year-old, who suffers dementia, then forgot where he had left it.

Despite a search, it stayed undiscovered in the NCP site until attendant Charlene Lewis noticed it looking suspiciously dirty last month and called police.

Mr Sanctuary’s son, Nigel, said: ‘It’s just amazing that it was right under our noses the whole time.’

The 50-year-old, of St Albans in Hertfordshire, said the vehicle, which still had a credit card on the dashboard, worked fine despite its long lay-off.

‘It’s a real wonder it fired up straight away,’ he added.

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Chinese truck driver's dramatic escape

This Chinese truck driver is very lucky person. He avoided certain death after his vehicle somehow span out on the major road than clipped the concrete wall and turn over the edge.


Thanks to a single punctured tyre and some torn sheet metal near the diesel tank, the truck somehow managed to cling on to the concrete barrier, albeit upside down.

Rescuers moved in to pluck the driver to safety, never being entirely sure when the metal or tyres would finally give up their life saving properties and let the truck plunge 200 feet into the gorge below in rural China.
The rescuers risked their own lives, as the truck could have given way at any moment. "If the lorry had fallen, they'd have plummeted too," an onlooker said.

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Suicidal New York man leaps, but saved by garbage pile

A would-be suicide jumper in New York was alive on Monday after leaping from a ninth-floor window but landing in a giant heap of garbage uncollected since the city's massive snowstorm a week ago.

Vangelis Kapatos, 26, was hospitalized in critical but stable condition after jumping from his apartment on West 45th Street on Sunday afternoon, authorities said.

Sanitation workers have not collected trash since the December 26 storm dumped more than a foot and a half of snow on the city. Mounds of garbage several feet high line many sidewalks.

"Everybody is complaining that the trash hasn't been picked up," Kapatos' aunt said on Monday. "But me, I'm thankful that it was never picked up."

Police said the trash bags below broke Kapatos' fall and that he left no suicide note before jumping.

The Department of Sanitation, which was only resuming garbage collecting on Monday, estimates 77,000 tons of trash have been left uncollected since the storm.

Katharina Capatos, who spells her surname differently from her nephew, told he was severely depressed and had spent a month in the psychiatric ward at Bellevue Hospital before being released last week.

He also was worried about the possibility of being evicted from his $572-a-month rent-stabilized apartment, she said.

Kapatos' eviction hearing was scheduled to proceed on Tuesday, according to the New York City Housing Court.

Taken from: uk.Reuters

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Archaeologists find graveyard of sunken Roman ships

A team of archaeologists using sonar technology to scan the seabed have discovered a "graveyard" of five pristine ancient Roman shipwrecks off the small Italian island of Ventotene.

The trading vessels, dating from the first century BC to the fifth century AD, lie more than 100 meters underwater and are amongst the deepest wrecks discovered in the Mediterranean in recent years, the researchers said on Thursday.

Part of an archipelago situated halfway between Rome and Naples on Italy's west coast, Ventotene historically served as a place of shelter during rough weather in the Tyrrhenian Sea.

"The ships appear to have been heading for safe anchorage, but they never made it," said Timmy Gambin, head of archaeology for the Aurora Trust (www.auroratrust.com). "So in a relatively small area we have five wrecks...a graveyard of ships."

The vessels were transporting wine from Italy, prized fish sauce from Spain and north Africa, and a mysterious cargo of metal ingots from Italy, possibly to be used in the construction of statues or weaponry.

Gambin said the wrecks revealed a pattern of trade in the empire: at first Rome exported its produce to its expanding provinces, but gradually it began to import from them more and more of the things it once produced.

In Roman times Ventotene, known as Pandataria, was used to exile disgraced Roman noblewomen. The Emperor Augustus sent his daughter Julia there because of her adultery. During the 20th century, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini used the remote island as a prison for political opponents.

Images of the wrecks show their crustacean-clad cargoes spilling onto the seafloor, after marine worms ate away the wooden hull of the vessels.

Due to their depth, the ships have lain untouched for hundreds of years but Gambin said the increasing popularity of deep water diving posed a threat to the Mediterranean's archaeological treasures.

"There is a race against time," he said. "In the next 10 years, there will be an explosion in mixed-gas diving and these sites will be accessible to ordinary treasure hunters."

Taken from:Reuters

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