A British teenager who survived 12 nights in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney yesterday denied staging an elaborate hoax, saying he feared dying in the rugged wilderness.
Jamie Neale returned to the walking track where he became lost to recount his ordeal for a Channel Nine TV current affairs show which paid him a reported A$200,000 (US$160,000).
The 19-year-old told how he prepared for death by writing letters to his family.
“I was thinking I might die on that mountain,” he said.
“I had actually written some goodbye notes and things to my family saying my last walk, saying sorry, explaining how I’d got lost and different things like that,” he said.
Neale’s story has made headlines around the world and a publicity agent whisked the north London teen away from waiting media in a black Range Rover when he was released from hospital on Friday.
Some Australian news Web sites have carried comments accusing Neale of staging his survival feat to secure a lucrative media deal but the teenager said his extraordinary story was not a hoax.
“I know what happened,” he said.
“I know the people who were out searching for me, they know that it happened and that’s good enough for me,” he said.
“People can say what they want because I’m not lying. It’s the truth,” Neal said.
Neale’s father, Richard Cass, and his agent, Sean Anderson of celebrity management firm 22 Management, have both said profits would be donated to the youth’s rescuers.
The teen set off for a solo hike on July 3 but got hopelessly lost, eating only seeds and weeds with just a lightweight jacket for warmth in freezing overnight conditions.
He told police he had torn strips of bark from native paperbark trees to wrap himself in at night, and went into “survival mode” once he stopped hearing search helicopters fly by.
Police have backed Neale’s story, interviewing him at length after his rescue and saying his descriptions of areas he had walked through and slept in checked out.
DISASTER: The Bangladesh Meteorological Department recorded a magnitude 5.7 and tremors reached as far as Kolkata, India, more than 300km away from the epicenter A powerful earthquake struck Bangladesh yesterday outside the crowded capital, Dhaka, killing at least five people and injuring about a hundred, the government said. The magnitude 5.5 quake struck at 10:38am near Narsingdi, Bangladesh, about 33km from Dhaka, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. The earthquake sparked fear and chaos with many in the Muslim-majority nation of 170 million people at home on their day off. AFP reporters in Dhaka said they saw people weeping in the streets while others appeared shocked. Bangladesh Interim Leader Muhammad Yunus expressed his “deep shock and sorrow over the news of casualties in various districts.” At least five people,
ON THE LAM: The Brazilian Supreme Court said that the former president tried to burn his ankle monitor off as part of an attempt to orchestrate his escape from Brazil Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro — under house arrest while he appeals a conviction for a foiled coup attempt — was taken into custody on Saturday after the Brazilian Supreme Court deemed him a high flight risk. The court said the far-right firebrand — who was sentenced to 27 years in prison over a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 elections — had attempted to disable his ankle monitor to flee. Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes said Bolsonaro’s detention was a preventive measure as final appeals play out. In a video made
It is one of the world’s most famous unsolved codes whose answer could sell for a fortune — but two US friends say they have already found the secret hidden by Kryptos. The S-shaped copper sculpture has baffled cryptography enthusiasts since its 1990 installation on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Virginia, with three of its four messages deciphered so far. Yet K4, the final passage, has kept codebreakers scratching their heads. Sculptor Jim Sanborn, 80, has been so overwhelmed by guesses that he started charging US$50 for each response. Sanborn in August announced he would auction the 97-character solution to K4
SHOW OF FORCE: The US has held nine multilateral drills near Guam in the past four months, which Australia said was important to deter coercion in the region Five Chinese research vessels, including ships used for space and missile tracking and underwater mapping, were active in the northwest Pacific last month, as the US stepped up military exercises, data compiled by a Guam-based group shows. Rapid militarization in the northern Pacific gets insufficient attention, the Pacific Center for Island Security said, adding that it makes island populations a potential target in any great-power conflict. “If you look at the number of US and bilateral and multilateral exercises, there is a lot of activity,” Leland Bettis, the director of the group that seeks to flag regional security risks, said in an
RSS