Spain has performed the world's first full-face transplant in a 24-hour operation carried out by more than 30 medics.

The patient, a young farmer, had been left unable to breathe, swallow or talk properly after accidentally shooting himself in the face five years ago.

He received new facial muscles, skin, nose, lips, jaw, teeth, palate and cheekbones in the surgery on March 20 at Barcelona's Vall d'Hebron University Hospital.

The man, believed to be in his 30s, had been dependent on artificial equipment to breathe and eat since 2005.

According to the hospital, he had been operated on nine times previously without success and was therefore considered for the complete facial transplant. (PA)

Porn breaks into Disney channel

Children watching the Disney Channel in Chile were offered a startling adults-only peek of Playboy programming this week because of a technical error, media reported.

And the glimpse they caught went a long way beyond Playboy's bunny logo romping around on a channel normally reserved for Mickey Mouse and friends.

"My eldest daughter told me one of her friends said to put on channel 21 (Disney), and instead of the usual programme there was the Playboy channel. Luckily my smallest one, 10 years old, was sleeping at the time," one Chilean mother, Jacqueline Orchad, told the daily El Mercurio.

Another mother said: "My daughter showed me the TV and said 'look, mommy' - and I almost fell off my chair."

The cable company responsible, VTR, said the mix-up occurred only in the northern city of Antofagasta, and only for a few minutes late Tuesday.

It said the channel switch happened inadvertently while technicians were updating the system.

A member of Chile's National Television Council, Hernan Chadwick, raged: "This is unacceptable. This is a grave mistake." (AFP)

UK leaders' debate watched by four million

More than four million people watched the second pre-election debate between the three main party leaders, the pay-TV firm Sky said yesterday.

The 4.1 million average viewing figure is less than half the 9.4 million who tuned in for the first ever such debate aired the previous Thursday on the free-to-air commercial channel ITV.

The Sky figure includes viewers who watched the debate live on Sky 3 and the BBC News Channel, as well as on Sky News.

The debates have brought the campaign alive ahead of the May 6 election after assured performances by Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats. (Reuters)

Lufthansa invites iPhone 'loser'

Lufthansa said yesterday that it has invited the Apple software engineer who left an iPhone prototype in a German-style beer garden in California, a free trip to "pick up where you last left off."

In a letter to Gray Powell published on the internet, the German airline said it had "noted with great interest your passion for German beer and culture."

"We thought you could use a break soon - and therefore would like to offer you complimentary business class transportation to Munich, where you can literally pick up where you last left off," the letter added.

A Lufthansa spokesman said the letter was genuine.

Technology blog Gizmodo published this week photos of the next-generation phone, saying it had bought the gadget from an unnamed person also at the bar the night that Mr Powell was celebrating his 27th birthday. (AFP)

Bomb explodes outside police station

A car bomb has exploded outside a police station in Northern Ireland, injuring two people, days after the final formal steps for the peace process in the province were put in place.

The device blew up at the Newtownhamilton police station late Thursday night after a warning was telephoned to a Belfast hospital, police said.

A car bomb was defused at the same spot in the county of Armagh 10 days ago. The Continuity IRA, which opposes the peace process and last year killed a police officer in the bloodiest three days in Northern Ireland for more than a decade, claimed responsibility for that bomb.

A day earlier another republican group opposed to the peace process, the Real IRA, had detonated a bomb near the Northern Ireland offices of domestic spy agency MI5. (Reuters)