Cleaners sweeping through a passenger jet that landed at the Philippines’ main international airport found a newborn baby dumped in a bin in a toilet yesterday.
The clean-up crew quickly alerted airport doctors to the surprise discovery aboard the Gulf Air flight, which had just landed from Bahrain and was preparing for a turn-around flight. The baby boy was then rushed to a hospital, where he was declared healthy and turned over to social welfare officers.
Pictures taken by airport photographers showed the baby swathed in a towel while doctors warmed him up under a light bulb.
Airport officials said they named the mystery baby “Jorge Francis” and efforts to locate his parents would be left to social welfare officials. (AFP)
Man dies from balcony-jumping craze in Ibiza
A young Italian man was the latest casualty in the Balearic Islands of balconing, where people dive from a balcony into a pool, the Spanish media reported yesterday.
The 26-year-old tourist died after attempting to dive into a pool from his seventh-floor hotel balcony on the island of Ibiza, online newspaper Diario de Mallorca said.
He was the sixth person to die from “balconing” in the Balearic Islands – Ibiza, Majorca and Menorca – this summer, daily newspaper El Mundo said on its website.
Hotel owners in Majorca and Ibiza plan to secure the balconies of their hotel residences to prevent their young clients from jumping, El Mundo added, but did not say how. (AFP)
Burned by fake hair straighteners
Trading standards officers warned people about dangerous fake hair straighteners yester-day after a teenager was left with melted hair and a singed scalp.
Rebecca Day, 17, from Leicester, chose the tongs, believing them to be GHD straighteners, from a website but was left in agony when she first used them.
“These straighteners singed my hair and ripped it away from the roots,” she said. “I was in agony. I had no reason to believe the straighteners were fake, as the website said they were an approved retailer and the pictures looked very convincing.”
Leicestershire Trading Standards said some sets of counterfeit straighteners heat up to 285˚C - hot enough to melt human hair and seriously burn someone’s scalp. (PA)
Marathon celebrates historic anniversary
The Greek town of Marathon yesterday celebrated 2,500 years since the famous ancient battle which sealed the victory of Athenian democracy over Persian troops and is behind a running event in the modern Olympics.
A sailing race in the Bay of Marathon kicked off celebrations to be followed by a hike leading to the Tumulus monument, erected after the 490 BC victory of Miltiades’ soldiers against the Persians.
A host of exhibits, plays and concerts about the battle also took place.
According to legend, Greek soldier Phidippides ran 42 kilometres from Marathon to Athens to announce the Greek victory over the Persians. He died from exhaustion just after uttering “victory” to his compatriots.
This event would become the inspiration behind the modern-day Olympic Games, which began in 1896, and the Athens marathon which draws numerous athletes from around the world. (AFP)
New Wave film director dies
Prolific French film maker Claude Chabrol, who helped start the New Wave movement in the 1950s and went on to create some of the darkest portrayals on the silver screen, died yesterday aged 80.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy compared Mr Chabrol to 19th-century novelist Honore de Balzac and Renaissance writer François Rabelais, hailing him “a great author and a great film maker”.
Born in Paris on June 24, 1930, Chabrol became famous for his sombre portrayals of French provincial bourgeois life. He authored dozens of films over more than 50 years, from his first work, Le Beau Serge, made in 1958, to his last film, Bellamy, starring Gerard Depardieu which was released last year. (AFP)