Kimberley - The construction of a modern hospital in De Aar has been put on hold due to the preparation costs of the 2010 Soccer World Cup, the Northern Cape health department said on Thursday.

Spokesperson Shelley Fielding confirmed there was a 12 month delay in the building of a R200m hospital in De Aar due to a cutback in money available from the national treasury.

"It was as a result of the diversion of funds towards the preparations for 2010."

Fielding was reacting to a local newspaper report that De Aar residents were unhappy with the situation.

According to the report, the ground works for the new hospital were finished around November last year and nothing had happened since then.

Northern Cape premier Dipuo Peters launched the project on site in 2005, indicating that it would create a lot of job opportunities in the local community.

Fielding said building was now scheduled to start in the 2008 financial year, with the expected finishing date the middle of 2011.

Patients from Colesberg, Richmond, Victoria-West and Carnavon would eventually benefit from the 200-bed hospital.

Scary stuff this courtesy of news24.com

Pretoria - A UFO was sighted at Lephalale, where it was described as a strange object "on an orange cloud, singing like a million turbines" - hitting the earth with a bang at 04:33 on Saturday.

That's according to Leonie Ras, the administrative manager of Lephalale (Ellisras) who witnessed the spectacle at her daughter's farm just east of the town on Saturday morning.

"I was lying on my bed reading SMS-messages when I heard a noise like an Airbus aircraft firing up its motors."

"It was raining but there was no thunder or lightning. The noise grew louder and eventually it sounded like a million turbines screaming in unison," Ras said.

She walked to the bedroom window and saw the clouds taking on a bright orange-red colour.

"Suddenly, a bright object plunged from the clouds to the earth, at a terrible speed, and hit the ground with an almighty bang."

"It looked like Haley's comet, round in the front and with an orange-red tail following behind."

When the UFO hit the ground the low-lying clouds went orange.

"It was so exceptional that I started crying. I wished my children and grandchildren could have seen it. I had not been drinking and I was in full control of my faculties," she said.

She calculated that the object must have hit the ground near Beauty, between the Tambotie and Palele rivers.

Cobus Nel, her son-in-law, who was also in the house, woke up from the commotion.

"I woke up to a terrible rumbling, followed by a sound like an explosion. I woke my wife up, so that she could also listen, because the rumbling lasted more than a minute, becoming louder, then we heard the bang," Nel said.

Lephlale's fire service, police and disaster control centres seemed to have slept through the commotion.

"I want someone to go and have a look. The farms here are big, and it could have fallen somewhere, where the farmer doesn't even know about it," Ras said.