"The beginning of this bridge is very dark, but when you just walk far enough you can see a beautiful sunset that englightens your way!"

“Tierschutz Euskirchen says that in Gatow (Brandenburg) a married couple just received a prize this week for having an especially swallow-friendly house. Actually their house is of average size for German standards and the architect didn’t try to make this building especially bird-friendly, but the current owners just added a few small changes to the property (the house itself and everything surrounding it) and now they can house 20 or more nesting swallow-couples at once.

Just to remind me: Today, on 10th of June is the 27th anniversary of what people from here call the British Airways Flight 5390 incident: On 10 June 1990 an improperly installed panel of the windscreen failed. The captain was propelled out of his seat by the rushing air from the rapid decompression and forced head first out of the flight deck, his knees snagging onto the flight controls. This left him with his whole upper torso out of the aircraft, and only his legs inside. While the co-pilot tried to land the plane a flight attendant – unable to pull the pilot inside – tried to at least fix him. Everyone thought the captain was already dead – killed by the cold and the intense suction – and yet the flight attendant didn’t let the presumed body go as he was afraid it then would hit a propeller and bring the entire plane down. After the landing even doctors were amazed to find the captain merely unconscious due to thin air, frostbitten due to the cold air around the plane and badly bruised -, but not so much that he would not make a full recovery.

The German newspaper “Welt” says that during the terrorist attack of Manchester – in which more than 20 people died – a homeless men entered the scene and helped some children in peril. Impressed by his actions some members of a soccer-team now combined forces to collect money for him as a reward. For half a year they are going to finance a flat for him. This is a chance for “Steve” to find new social contacts and a job.

The October-sample of the German magazine “Dein Spiegel” says that thanks to a petition Australia now is going to change its dollar-bills to make it possible and even easy for a blind person to tell for example a 5 dollar bill and a 10 dollar bill apart by simply feeling it. The thing is that said petition was made by a boy of 12 years only who actually is visually impaired himself.

The magazine “Focus” says that months ago in Great Britain a baby was born with an unknown disease. Nobody knew what was wrong. The only thing that was certain was that the baby was so gravely ill that in the end it could be kept alive by some machines only. Eventually the doctors gave up on her and advised the parents against keeping the machines running. They did as they were told and as if by a miracle the child somehow kept breathing without being supported by the machines. Also her heart kept beating and it survived without these machines and without any other medical treatment long enough for doctors to find out what’s wrong with her after all. By chance and all the sudden they found evidence that she suffers from a disease that in fact is treatable with some special pills. Thus chances are high that she will make a full recovery, but if they had waited a bit longer the symptoms would have become irreversible and the infant would have died.