The power of positive thinking and Buddhist meditation techniques saved the life of a Chinese construction worker.

It was a cool early spring day in the eastern coastal port of Ningbo. Wang Jianxin was working at a construction site in the booming city. The job that day for the 52-year-old worker was to dig a five-metre ditch. There was nothing to distinguish Mr Wang from the tens of thousands of men across China labouring in one of the biggest building booms that the world has seen.

Without warning, a wall of the ditch collapsed, burying Mr Wang under a huge pile of earth. Like most construction workers in China, he had little in the way of protective equipment except for his tough plastic safety helmet. It was to be enough to save his life.

The rim of his helmet had, by chance, trapped a tiny pocket of air around his face. Mr Wang knew that if he panicked and his breathing accelerated he might use up that little amount of oxygen before rescuers could reach him. He forced himself to be calm.

“I had my back to the wall and didn’t know it was falling until it was on top of me. It was suddenly dark and I realised what had happened and found that there was a small air pocket in front of me,” Mr Wang said. That was when the Buddhist turned to meditation to control his intake of oxygen. “I knew it would not last, so I made myself relax and concentrated on slowing down my breathing by meditation.” Above ground, workers were scrabbling through the earth to try to bring Mr Wang to the surface alive. Construction workers and a uniformed rescue team clawed away the earth with their hands until they found Mr Wang’s helmet.

It took two hours but finally they pulled out Mr Wang alive from the earth that could have been his muddy grave.

A council has ordered an elderly couple to tear down a fence it put up itself.
Pensioners Margaret and Douglas Aveyard were told the 6ft barrier needed planning permission and that they faced court if it was not dismantled.
Margaret, 78, said: “It’s absolutely ludicrous. We’re sick with worry.”
The fence was put up by Harrow Council in Middlesex to replace a hedge workers destroyed when laying a pavement 18 months ago.
It said the situation “would be resolved”.

A man who planned to walk from Bristol to India without any money has quit, after getting as far as Calais, France.
Mark Boyle, 28, who set out four weeks ago with only T-shirts, a bandage and sandals, hoped to rely on the kindness of strangers for food and lodging.

But, because he could not speak French, people thought he was free-loading or an asylum seeker.

He now plans to walk around the coast of Britain instead, learning French as he goes, so he can try again next year.

Mr Boyle, a former organic food company boss, belongs to the Freeconomy movement which wants to get rid of money altogether.

I blame the French.

Ivan Segedin’s subterfuge killed him when he was in a head-on car crash while wearing a fake seatbelt, a coroner says.
“Ultimately Mr Segedin’s actions in driving without a seatbelt have cost him his life in an accident that he may well have survived had he worn one,” coroner Carla na Nagara said yesterday.

Mr Segedin, 39, refused to wear a seatbelt and had been fined for not wearing one 32 times since February 2003.

I posted just over a week ago about a thief in the US who was determined to steal the copper from a substation whilst it was still live. It appears some slightly moronic criminals in the UK have attempted a similar theft.

A ‘thief’ who tried to cut power lines on the border of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire was lucky to be alive, an electricity distributor said.
Central Networks said the person would at least have had severe hand burns.

Engineers found a hacksaw embedded in a live 11,000 voltage cable with a lit blowtorch nearby after being called to Creswell late on Saturday night.

Phil Wilson, Customer Operations Manager with Central Networks, said: “The sheer stupidity of cutting through power cables should be glaringly obvious to everyone.

“At the very least putting the hacksaw through the cable would have created an almighty bang and the line would have burned for quite a few seconds, showering them with molten copper.

“The thief left their tools behind so we can only assume they left in a great hurry or they were injured and were dragged away by an accomplice.