Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - An 18-year-old Spanish youth who went missing Sunday afternoon in heavy fog while snowboarding in the French Alps has been found alive. The young man was near the resort of Deux-Alpes (map), at an altitude of 3,200 metres, when he became lost in bad weather, which then prevented search parties from finding him. His life is not in danger, say French authorities, although he was suffering from hypothermia and appeared to have given up on being found when skies cleared long enough for a helicopter patrol to find him at 1,275 metres, only 500 metres from the road, as the crow flies.
Rescuers are calling it a miracle, that he managed to get down some 2,000 metres of untraced mountain without any avalanches or cliffs.
Links to other sites: TF1 (Fre), 20 Minutes (Fre)
Luterbach, Solothurn, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A 20-year-old American was assailed Monday 9 November around noon in the train station at Luterbach by two youths. He was kicked and punched and suffered a concussion. The two were unknown to the young man and police are seeking them, reports AP/20 Minutes (Fre).
Update 13 July Nyon, Vaud, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A 17-year-old Swiss youth from Nyon is in critical condition following an accident at the Nyon train station shortly after midnight, early Thursday 9 July. [Ed. note, 13 July: GL has just learned that he was a 2009 graduate of La Chataigneraie, part of the International School of Geneva] He was sending friends off on the train after an evening out in Nyon when he pulled himself up to the window of one of the rail cars and held on, briefly, then slipped and fell under the train as it began to move. Both legs were severed by the train’s bogies, the right one below the hip and the left at the tibia, below the knee.
Russian signed the European Social Charter 20 May, a fact that excited little media attention elsewhere in Europe, but in Moscow it is stirring up the public because it may force the government to offer sex education courses to young people. The Moscow Times reports that there is little such education and according to one government official not a single textbook mentions the word condom. Groups of parents are, however, protesting plans to start teaching children about sex at ages 11-12. The country has one of the world’s highest rates of HIV infection among young people, according to the Times.
