Death-defying stunt: heart-stopping moment a man smashes a coconut on his wife's throat with a machete.

Wielding the huge knife, the man spins the weapon in the air several times before bringing it down hard on the coconut, which was balanced between the woman's neck and chest.

Balashankar Budati often performs the death defying stunts with sticks, stones, knives and other sharp objects to entertain the public in their village, Chirala Mandal, in India.

And it's usually his wife Bhramharamba who is in the firing line when her husband gets up to show off his tricks.

With just inches between the coconut and certain death, Bhramharamba lies motionless on the ground as her husband chops the shell in half, thankfully leaving her neck intact.

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Ebola: Schools reopen in Liberia after long shutdown

Schools in Liberia have reopened, six months after they were closed to try to curb the spread of Ebola.

Pupils welcomed the move, but some raised fears that the deadly disease had not yet been totally eradicated.
Staff at school gates were equipped with thermometers to take pupils' temperatures and buckets of chlorinated water for them to wash their hands.

 

Liberia was one of three West African states worst affected by the Ebola outbreak, identified in March 2013.
More than 9,000 people have been killed by the virus, but there has been a general decline in the number of cases in recent weeks.
'Rural schools still shut' Only three new confirmed cases were reported in Liberia in the week leading to 8 February, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
The leaders of the three states - Liberia's Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Guinea's Alpha Conde and Sierra Leone's Ernest Bai Koroma - pledged at a meeting in Guinea's capital Conakry on Sunday to achieve "zero Ebola infections within 60 days".

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