A couple who took a yacht for a quiet sailing trip were stunned when a 40-ton whale crash-landed on their boat off Cape Town.
The pair were enjoying calm seas off the South African coast when the animal flipped into the air and smashed into their mast.
Ralph Mothes, 59, and Paloma Werner, 50, were helpless as the beast thrashed around on their 33ft vessel before slipping back into the water.
Miss Werner said: “It really was quite incredible but very scary. The whale was about the same size as the boat. I assumed it would go underneath the boat but instead it sprang out of the sea. We were very lucky to get through it, as the sheer weight of the thing was huge. There were bits of skin and blubber left behind, and the mast was wrecked. It brought down the rigging too. Thank goodness the hull was made of steel and not fibreglass or we could have been ruined.”
Today, however, officials are investigating reports that Wermer and Mothes may have come too close to the whale and harassed it, causing it to breach. The law requires sailors to stay 1000 feet away from whales.
“I keep on warning people not to go within 300 meters of them,” Marine activist Nan Rice told the Cape Argus. “Whales are not gentle giants but are very territorial and will charge if they feel endangered.”
Palestinians scuffled with Israeli soldiers in the West Bank village of Lubban al-Gharbi Wednesday (July 21) after Israeli forces demolished two houses and four shops that had been built without the army’s permit near a road leading to the nearby Jewish settlement of Beit Arieh.
A police office in Phoenix is the subject of an internal investigation after he posted an online video in which he says he opposes Arizona’s new immigration law because it “will make me feel like a Nazi out there.”
Officer Paul Dobson will likely receive a written reprimand or minor form of discipline for granting the interview without supervisor approval. The case is pending final review.
In the video, the 20-year veteran of the police department says he is speaking only for himself when he expresses his objections to the new law, which takes effect July 29.
“I have a great deal of contempt for it,” he says in the clip, “I’m very emotional about it.”
Authorities in Russia are opening an animal cruelty probe into a weekend stunt on a beach in southern Russia in which a donkey parasailed high over the surf.
Amateur video footage shows men attaching a parasail harness to the trembling mule. Sunbathers were reportedly distressed at the sight of the flying donkey, which screamed in fear as it glided above the bay for half an hour.
The donkey was shell-shocked but survived.
Reports said the donkey flight was a promotional stunt. Employees of a leisure firm in the village of Golubitskaya on the Azov Sea could face two years in prison if they are charged and convicted of animal cruelty.
Former senator George McGovern took his first sky-dive Monday (July 19) to celebrate his 88th birthday.
The 1972 Democratic nominee for president, who lost to incumbent Richard Nixon, said he made the jump after “feeling a little bit down” and hoped it would promote his campaign against hunger, especially among children.
Although a bomber pilot in world War II, the former South Dakota senator said he had never really looked at the Earth from so high up because he was always concentrating on staying in formation.
Pakistani acid-attack survivor Mumtaz Bibi, sat next to her 6-year-old son Moazam Raza as he lay on a bed unconscious Monday (July 19) after an operation on his eye — damaged in the acid attack — at the Al-Shifa Trust Eye Hospital in Rawlpindi.
