Felix Baumgartner, the first man to break the sound barrier in freefall, says he is giving up being a daredevil but now aims to help others in trouble.
“I am officially retired from the daredevil business now,” the 43-year-old Austrian told UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in a meeting on Tuesday to discuss his death-defying jump from the edge of space earlier this month.
Ban told Baumgartner how he had joined the millions who watched live coverage of the jump from 39 kilometers above New Mexico when the Austrian reached a claimed top speed of 1,342 kilometres per hour, 1.24 times the speed of sound.
“I thought my heart would stop,” the UN leader said, hailing Baumgartner as “the most courageous person in the world.”
“We talked about what I accomplished on October 14 and about future plans, how to inspire young people and women,” Baumgartner told AFP after his meeting with Ban. He said he was ready to get involved in a United Nations initiative.
But the former paratrooper said he was now concentrating on becoming a commercial helicopter pilot as a retirement job.
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‘Eating cheese may harm a man’s fertility’
London: Young men who eat more than three slices of cheese a day may be risking their chances of becoming fathers, a new Harvard study has claimed.
Researchers discovered that even small amounts of full-fat dairy food can dramatically impair fertility in men.
They found that men who eat even three portions of cheese a day had poorer quality sperm compared to others, the Daily Mail reported.
A portion includes 28 gm of cheese, a teaspoon of cream, a scoop of ice cream or glass of full-fat milk. Researchers believe that female hormones that occur naturally in milk may be interfering with men’s ability to reproduce.
Scientist from the Harvard School of Public Health in the US compared the diets of 189 men aged 19 to 25, all very fit and did at least one and a half hour’s exercise a week.
They filled in a questionnaire, answering how often they ate dairy products, fruit, meat and other types of food during a typical week. Researchers also looked at their sperm quality, including how fast it travelled and its shape.
— PTI