Ever been fined like this?

[thirdworld]

Our news is similar but, also very different. On the surface this is mostly an article about traffic violations. Over Christmas in the **Kruger National Park, over 300 tickets were given out, including one to a fool going 120 kph in a 50 kph zone, and there were some others to nuts risking their lives, but the guy risking his life for photos of

Comments

[avt_tor]

The scariest bit here is not the news stories themselves, but on the page with the hippo story, the links to all the other "killed or maimed by hippo" stories.

Scary Hippos

[thirdworld]

People like to talk about man-eating tigers in Asia, deadly salt-water crocodiles in Australia or unpredictable Grizzly Bears in North America, but the hippo has them all beat. It kills more people most years than any other animal, with only African Crocodiles rivaling them. Most people are killed when they get between hippos and water, or between a female and her calf. When away from water it is the lone male buffalo that you have to worry about. They are grumpy, sneaky, smart, just plain mean and don't seem to tire of chasing you. We have a large selection of poisonous snakes, but, black mambas aside, few will mess with you. As I recall the lion would round out the bottom of the top five killers, but I'm open to correction. Of course the sad truth is that we kill far more of all of them than they kill of us.

[agrathea]

That's very interesting. A lot of good info on the KNP page describing the rules. It's amazing to see how much littering can have an effect in an environment like that. I found the notion that littering is creating jobs a very sad argument indeed. Who the hell came up with that one, I'd be interested to know? Sounds like something only a Bubba would claim.

South Africa's "national flower"

[thirdworld]

A sad truth of the developing world is that unemployment is rife. In South Africa it is estimated at around 40% of our 43 million people, not counting the 8 million illegal immigrants. Added to this is the legacy of apartheid that left the majority of the population largely illiterate. At the height of apartheid the ruling class were extremely fond of pristine clean cities and towns, and of course they hired members of the underclass to do most of that cleaning. Unemployment was rife then too and the sad fact of the matter is that more litter did indeed mean more jobs. The lack of education also meant that most South Africans are completely unaware of the environmental and social impact of littering. Now litter is a huge problem in South Africa. It got so bad that the government had to take many measures to fight it, includingchanging the laws concerning plastic shopping bags (sarcastically dubbed "roadside daisies" and South Africa's "national flower" because they flap from fences, hang from bushes and trees and float on