It wasn’t all bad

A Boy Scout in the Maldives this week helped save the leader of his island nation from being assassinated. Mohammed Jaisham Ibrahim, 15, had lined up in a crowd to see President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. Suddenly, an assailant armed with a knife wrapped in the Maldives flag lunged at Gayoom. Ibrahim grabbed the weapon and wrestled it away. He suffered a cut hand, while Gayoom was unhurt. “One brave boy saved the president’s life,” said government spokesman Mohammed Shareef. Gayoom thanked Ibrahim in a nationally broadcast radio address.

A window cleaner who fell 47 stories in Manhattan is not only alive and talking but may walk again. Alcides Moreno survived a 500-foot plunge when his platform collapsed on Dec. 7; the accident killed his brother, Edgar. Though he was near death for two weeks, on Christmas Day Moreno spoke and reached out to touch his nurse’s face. Moreno’s doctors now say his recovery could be complete within a year. “If you are a believer in miracles, this would be one,” said Dr. Philip Barie, chief of critical care at New York–Presbyterian Hospital. “Above 10 stories, most of the time, we never see the patients because they usually go to the morgue.”

When Charles Matson of Lebanon, Ind., ate a piece of fudge at a Christmas celebration, he bit into something hard: a diamond ring. He alerted his daughter-in-law, Linda Rhoades, who had bought the fudge at a bake sale in nearby West Lafayette. “I knew I had to find that owner,” said Rhoades. But then the owner found her. Rhoades’ friend Linda Vancel sent her an e-mail explaining that while she was cooking the fudge, she had taken off the ring—which belonged to her late mother—and then lost it. “It renews your faith in people,” said Vancel.

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