Man falls, hangs mid-air after trousers get hooked on 6th floor air conditioning unit

A 44-year-old man was rescued by firefighters yesterday morning after he was discovered hanging from an air conditioning unit on the sixth floor of an apartment building in North Point.

The man, surnamed Yuan, is believed to have jumped from his 11th floor apartment at around 10:30am, only to be saved five stories down when his trousers got caught on an air conditioning unit, reports Apple Daily.
The police say that Yuan has a history of mental illness and it is believed that he was attempting to commit suicide.

One witness helpfully told Apple Daily on the phone that "if he were any fatter, he would have probably fallen".

Firefighters first tried to rescue him from a ladder, but failed. They then broke into the 6th floor apartment to reach the man, while lowering a rope from the unit above.

During the rescue operation, Yuan was heard shouting, “I can’t hold on anymore! I can’t hold on anymore!”

The firefighters, in return, would yell, “DO NOT MOVE! DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT MOVING!”

Though at one point it seemed like both rescuer and rescuee would fall, the brave firefighters eventually got the man to safety after a 30-minute ordeal.

Amazingly, Yuan emerged from the incident with only a scratch on his head. He was immediately sent to hospital, where he will hopefully get the help he needs.

Source: Coconuts Hong Kong

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Co-pilot appears to have crashed Germanwings plane on purpose

A French gendarme helicopter flies over the moutainside crash site of an Airbus A320, near Seyne-les-Alpes, March 25, 2015. REUTERS/Emmanuel Foudrot

(Reuters) - A young German co-pilot locked himself alone in the cockpit of a Germanwings airliner and flew it into a mountain with what appears to have been the intent to destroy it, a French prosecutor said on Thursday.

Investigators and grieving relatives were left struggling to explain what motivated Andreas Lubitz, 28, to kill all 150 people on board the Airbus A320, including himself, in Tuesday's crash in the French Alps.

French and German officials said there was no indication the crash was a terrorist attack, but gave no alternative explanation for his motives.
Lubitz gained sole control of the aircraft after the captain left the cockpit. He refused to re-open the door and sent plane into its fatal descent, Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said.

He did this "for a reason we cannot fathom right now but which looks like intent to destroy this aircraft," Robin told a news conference in Marseille broadcast live on national TV.

Describing the final 10 minutes of the passengers on board as the plane hurtled towards a mountain range, Robin said sound recordings from one of its black boxes suggested most of them would not have been aware of their fate until the very end.

"Only towards the end do you hear screams," he said. "And bear in mind that death would have been instantaneous ... the aircraft was literally smashed to bits."

The CEO of Lufthansa, parent company of Germanwings, said its air crew were picked carefully and subjected to psychological vetting.

"No matter your safety regulations, no matter how high you set the bar, and we have incredibly high standards, there is no way to rule out such an event," CEO Carsten Spohr said.

The world's attention will now focus on the motivations of Lubitz, a German national who joined the budget carrier in September 2013 and had just 630 hours of flying time - compared with the 6,000 hours of the flight captain, named in German media only as "Patrick S." in accordance with usual practice.

Robin said there were no grounds to suspect that Lubitz was carrying out a terrorist attack. "Suicide" was also the wrong word to describe actions which killed so many other people, the prosecutor added: "I don't necessarily call it suicide when you have responsibility for 100 or so lives."

Police set up guard outside Lubitz's house in Montabaur, Germany. Acquaintances in the town said they were stunned, describing him as an affable young man who gave no indication he was harboring any harmful intent.

"I'm just speechless. I don't have any explanation for this. Knowing Andreas, this is just inconceivable for me," said Peter Ruecker, a long-time member of the local flight club where Lubitz received his flying license years ago.

"He was a lot of fun, even though he was perhaps sometimes a bit quiet. He was just another boy like so many others here."

A photo on Lubitz's Facebook page, which was later taken down, shows a smiling young man posing in front of San Francisco's Golden Gate bridge.

Robin said the conversation between the two pilots before the captain left the cockpit started normally but that Lubitz's replies became "laconic" as they started readying what would have been the normal descent to the airport of Duesseldorf.

"His responses become very brief. There is no proper exchange as such," he said. It was not clear why the captain had left the cockpit but it was probably to use the toilet, he said.

Robin said the family of the co-pilot had arrived in France for a tribute alongside other those of the victims but was being kept apart from the others.

"SMASH THE DOOR DOWN"

The New York Times cited an unnamed investigator as saying the recording shed insight into the moment when it dawned on the captain that he had been shut out of the cockpit.

"The guy outside is knocking lightly on the door and there is no answer," it quoted an investigator described as a senior French military official as saying. "And then he hits the door stronger and no answer. There is never an answer."

"You can hear he is trying to smash the door down," the investigator added.

Investigators were still searching for the second of the two black boxes on Thursday in the ravine where the plane crashed, 100 km (65 miles) from Nice, which would contain data from the plane's instruments.

France's BEA air investigation bureau had said on Wednesday it expected the first basic analysis of the voice recordings in days.

Pilots may temporarily leave the cockpit at certain times and in certain circumstances, such as while the aircraft is cruising, according to German aviation law.

Cockpit doors can be opened from the outside with a code, in line with regulations introduced after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, but the code can be overridden from inside the cockpit. Lufthansa's CEO said that either the pilot had entered the code incorrectly, or the co-pilot inside had overridden it.

The BEA on Wednesday already ruled out a mid-air explosion and said the scenario did not look like a depressurization.

Germanwings said 72 Germans were killed in the first major air passenger disaster on French soil since the 2000 Concorde accident just outside Paris. Madrid revised down on Thursday the number of Spanish victims to 50 from 51 previously.

As well as Germans and Spaniards, victims included three Americans, a Moroccan and citizens of Britain, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Colombia, Denmark, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Iran and the Netherlands, officials said. However, DNA checks to identify them could take weeks, the French government said.

The families of victims were being flown to Marseille on Thursday before being taken up to the zone close to the crash site. Chapels had been prepared for them with a view of the mountain where their loved ones died.

Source: Reuters

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Hong Kong man found guilty of killing and cooking parents

A Hong Kong man who was accused of killing, dismembering, salting and cooking his parents was found guilty of double murder Friday.

During the 20-day trial the court heard how Henry Chau, 31, had dismembered his elderly parents before salting, cooking and packing their body parts into lunchboxes “like barbecued pork”.

The severed heads of 65-year-old Chau Wing-ki and his wife Siu Yuet-yee, 62, were found in March 2013, stuffed into two refrigerators in a bloodstained apartment, days after they were reported missing.
A jury at the city’s high court found Chau guilty on both counts of murder by a majority of 8-to-1, the SCMP reported. His friend Tse Chun-kei was found not guilty on two counts of murder. Chau will be sentenced on Monday, the Post reported.

Chau initially told police that his parents had gone to mainland China, but later admitted to the murder on an Internet messaging group.

In evidence read to the city’s High Court last year, Chau claimed that he planned to mislead the police in order to buy himself some time to say goodbye to friends.

“My murdering partner and I were planning to make it a missing person case and dump the body piece by piece,” he said in a group message.

Source: Coconuts Hong Kong

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VIDEO: New detailed images of Germanwings A320 crash site

A plane operated by the budget carrier of Germany's Lufthansa crashed in a remote area of the French Alps on Tuesday, killing all 150 on board in France's worst aviation disaster in decades.

With the cause of the accident a complete mystery, authorities recovered a black box from the Airbus A320 at the crash site, where rescue efforts were being hampered by the mountainous terrain.

Local MP Christophe Castaner, who flew over the crash site, said on Twitter: "Horrendous images in this mountain scenery."

"Nothing is left but debris and bodies. Flying over the crash site with the interior minister - a horror - the plane is totally destroyed."

Video images from a government helicopter flying near the area showed a desolate snow-flecked moonscape, with steep ravines covered in scree.
Budget airline Germanwings said the Airbus plunged for eight minutes but French aviation officials said the plane had made no distress call before crashing near the ski resort of Barcelonnette.



Source: The Telegraph

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Angelina Jolie has ovaries, fallopian tubes removed over cancer fears

Angelina Jolie says she has had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed over fears of cancer, following her double mastectomy two years ago.

The actress, who has lost her mother, grandmother and aunt to the disease, said she had the procedure last week after results from a blood test raised fears that she may be in the early stages of cancer.

Although later tests showed that was not the case, Jolie said she chose to go ahead with the surgery because of her family history and because she carries a gene mutation that had given her a 50 per cent risk of developing ovarian cancer, the same mutation that put her at 87 per cent risk of developing breast cancer.

"I did not do this solely because I carry the BRCA1 gene mutation, and I want other women to hear this," Jolie wrote in an op-ed piece in The New York Times, the same publication where she announced her double mastectomy.

Jolie told to see surgeon immediately following tests
Her doctors said that she should have the preventive surgery about a decade before the earliest onset of cancer in her female relatives.

"A positive BRCA test does not mean a leap to surgery," wrote Jolie, who is married to fellow Hollywood heavyweight Brad Pitt.

"In my case, the Eastern and Western doctors I met agreed that surgery to remove my tubes and ovaries was the best option, because on top of the BRCA gene, three women in my family have died from cancer," she wrote.

"My mother's ovarian cancer was diagnosed when she was 49. I'm 39."

Jolie said that she had been preparing for the possibility of ovary removal ever since her double mastectomy.

But two weeks ago, she said she got a call from a doctor who said her blood test results had "a number of inflammatory markers that are elevated, and taken together they could be a sign of early cancer".

She was told to see a surgeon immediately.

"I went through what I imagine thousands of other women have felt. I told myself to stay calm, to be strong, and that I had no reason to think I wouldn't live to see my children grow up and to meet my grandchildren," Jolie wrote.

"I called my husband in France, who was on a plane within hours.

"The beautiful thing about such moments in life is that there is so much clarity.

"You know what you live for and what matters. It is polarising, and it is peaceful."

Mastectomy revelation boosted interest in gene testing

Australian doctors predicted an increase in the number women getting tests for breast cancer gene mutations, after Angelina Jolie's revelation she underwent a double mastectomy.

The Oscar-winning actress revealed she had the operation after discovering she carried the BRCA1 gene mutation, giving her an 87 per cent chance of developing breast cancer.

Dr Allan Spigelman, clinical director at the Kinghorn Cancer Centre in Sydney, said he expected the superstar's comments to spark interest in cancer gene testing in Australia.

"I fully anticipate there will be very significantly renewed interest in breast cancer gene testing across the world as a result of this high-profile person very sadly carrying the gene change but very bravely going ahead to have preventative surgery," he said.

Both the BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations can greatly increase a woman's risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer.

Dr Spiegelman said there are a number of factors that can put a woman in the high risk category.

"The age of onset of these cancers, the number of people in their family with these cancers and also to a degree what some of the cancers look like under the microscope," he said.

Source: ABC News

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