Born to be Blue: Baby delivered aboard JetBlue flight
NEW YORK: “Born to be Blue” is the name of a JetBlue plane but it’s quite fitting after a baby boy was born on that jet during a flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Fort Lauderdale. During the two hour and 50-minute flight, crew and medical professionals on board helped an unidentified mother deliver the airline’s “youngest customer to date,” according to the airline. A video that partly shows medical personnel treating the woman was also made available by the airline. (Agencies)
Near naked men celebrate Saidaiji Eyo festival
Tokyo: Thousands of near-naked men seeking luck have scrambled to find two sacred sticks as part of an ancient Japanese festival. It’s thought about 10,000 men wearing white loincloths took part in the ceremony at the Kinryozan Saidaiji Buddhist temple in Okayama on Saturday, said a BBC News report. Participants were purified in water before scrambling to find sticks that had been thrown into the crowd. Those who found the 20cm-long sticks, called “shingi”, are believed to be the luckiest men of the year. This was the 510th anniversary of the Saidaiji-eyo festival, which dates back to the Muromachi period of Japanese history. It kicked off with the thousands of participants bathing in cold water in the Yoshii river before they hunted for the shingi. Once the purification stage was complete, the lights were turned off while the temple’s chief priest stood at a window four metres high and threw the shingi into the crowd. A mass jostle ensued and for the next couple of hours, the crowd of men pushed and felt around for the sacred sticks. The pair who left the temple grounds holding the sticks were crowned the lucky winners. Saidaiji-eye is one of the highlights of the Japanese traditional festival calendar. Aside from the luck that the shingi bring, it is also a fertility festival that is thought to bring good harvests for the rest of the year. It usually falls at about the same time as the Lunar New Year. Thousands of other people go to the temple to light lanterns, and watch the men compete for the shingi. (UNI)