Each week, Ben Hopkinson looks back at a serious, crazy, and happy news story from the past week.
Serious News
The biggest rail strike in the UK for decades hit this week as 40,000 Network Rail staff refused to attend their work due to pay rise demands. After last-minute talks to halt the strikes fell through on Monday, there were 24-hour walkouts by members of the RMT union which happened on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday; as well as London Underground Strike that also happened on Tuesday. Due to this, 20,000 services that would usually be running on Tuesday were brought down so that only some 4,500 services were running instead. It is advised that strikes could carry on until Christmas, as more strikes from train drivers represented by Aslef are expected to strike soon.
Crazy News
Doctors in Turkey are baffled after finding 233 coins, batteries, shards of glass and screws in a man’s stomach. Burhan Demir took his younger brother to hospital after complaints about abdominal pain, but with an endoscopy, ultrasound and X-ray scans they were amazed to see the vast number of items inside the 35-year-old’s stomach.
Surgeon Dr Binici says: “During the surgery, we saw that one or two of the nails had passed through the stomach wall. We saw that there were two metal pieces and two stones of different sizes in the large intestine. We found that there were batteries, magnets, nails, coins, pieces of glass and screws. We cleaned his stomach completely. It is not a situation we see in adults; it is mostly in childhood and unconsciously swallowed foreign bodies. It can be seen in psychiatric patients, prisoners or abuse cases in the adult age group”.
Happy News
Dame Kelly Holmes has said she is “getting rid of that fear” as the Olympic Champion has come out as gay. The 52-year-old was both nervous and excited about coming out, saying: “I needed to do this now, for me. It was my decision. I’m nervous about saying it. I feel like I’m going to explode with excitement. Sometimes I cry with relief. The moment this comes out, I’m essentially getting rid of that fear”.
Sharing the news within Pride Month, she added to her Instagram account: “I can finally breathe. Yes I have been petrified of putting this out – you have no idea. This journey has been the hardest part of life. Living with any kind of fear is debilitating”.
