RUNNING LOS ANGELES

In the land of fitness and sophisticated gyms, Giorgia Boitano enjoys a simple beach run

Picture: lululemon

I take a deep breath, and the salty early morning air hits my lungs. I feel a slight chill as my naked foot touches the cool wet sand. The sun has just risen on Santa Monica and the sea is peppered with surfers, while the violet clouds of night slowly roll away. Groups of seabirds peck at the sand. Their loud cackle reminds me of my goal: run. I quickly set up my stopwatch, shake my ponytail, and I’m ready to go.

One leg after the other, I keep my eyes on the endless sweep of sand in front of me and begin to find an inner peace. Plunged into this postcard scene, I forget the fatigue of my muscles working hard on the soft surface. Who said that training in hi-tech gyms is the only way to get fit? A healthy run along the ocean is much more motivating – especially when it’s this beautiful.

I’m not the only one who starts active today. As I step on the humid beach, a couple of beefy peroxide blond men pass me. “See ya later, sweetie!” one of them shouts to a skinny girl doing yoga on a pink towel. A wrinkled woman with sunglasses appears in front of me, drinking while she jogs in the opposite direction. I can see her smiling as we pass each other. I wonder how many kilometres her toned legs have done until now, and I hope I will have her determination in 30 years…

“Heya, how’ you doin’?” a shout coming from a mass of coverts on my left diverts my attention. A homeless man with long white beard is emerging from his comfy sack. His sunburned skin and long white hair suggest that he has lived here a while. “Much better than a bench on a busy street,” I hear him muttering as he stretches.

Continue reading “RUNNING LOS ANGELES”

ORPHAN SNAKE IN WEST LONDON

Picture: Just chaos

A mysterious foreign man bought an anaconda snake in a local pet shop three months ago and never came back to collect it.

The meter-long yellow anaconda was bought in April for £250 in Aqua Rep the tropical pet shop in Harrow Road. According to the shop owner, the unknown man took it as a present for his wife and said he would come back to collect it as soon as possible – but the reptile is still in the shop.

“Usually we write down all the details of our customers, when they order this kinds of animals,” said Michelle, 23, shop assistant. “But he just came in one day and bought the first snake he saw in our expositors, so we don’t have a clue on how to contact him.”

Continue reading “ORPHAN SNAKE IN WEST LONDON”

VIRUS BRINGS 30,000 TROLLS IN EXCLUSIVE COMMUNITY OF BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE

Picture: Nina Matthews Photography

It was probably a funny joke, or maybe there was a message beneath the hacker action that allowed 30,000 ugly people to accede the dating and networking community BeautifulPeople.com.

Being the largest community of attractive people in the world with 700,000 members, the club is reserved to good-looking people, who decide if new applicants are worth to join the site.

But last month, something went wrong: Shreck virus – how they called it – brought down this normally strict “rating” stage, allowing anyone to be accepted, regardless of looks.

Continue reading “VIRUS BRINGS 30,000 TROLLS IN EXCLUSIVE COMMUNITY OF BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE”

THE DESPERATE SEARCH FOR MISSING CHILDREN


A blonde little girl with blue eyes is defencelessly looking at us from hundreds of walls: standing at the tube station, at the bus stop or just walking in the street without feeling sorry for her, is impossible. Every corner in town is plastered with posters of the book of Kate McCann, mother of Madeleine, the three years old who disappeared on May 2007 while she was on holiday with her family in Praia da Luz, Portugal, and hasn’t been found yet. Despite the Portuguese police archiving her search three years ago, her parents has never stopped shouting their pain to the world.

Around 140.000 children go missing every year in the UK, including ‘runaway’, parental abductions and ‘stranger’ abductions – as happened to Madeleine. In 2009, 64% of the 356.000 incidents reported to the Home Office’s Missing People Bureau were under age. Although the majority of the disappearance is solved within the first 48 hours, there are still a lot of lonely children out there and a lot of families are fighting to bring them home.

Continue reading “THE DESPERATE SEARCH FOR MISSING CHILDREN”