Window cleaner survives 47-storey fall

Washington: A window cleaner who plunged 47 storeys from a Manhattan skyscraper was awake and talking to his family on Friday - and is expected to walk again.

In what is being dubbed the miracle on 66th street, Alcides Moreno, a 37-year-old Ecuadorean immigrant, plummeted almost 166 metres when scaffolding collapsed, in a fall that killed his brother.

Doctors at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center on Friday described Moreno's recovery since the fall on December 7 as astonishing. He has movement in all his limbs, is breathing on his own, and on Christmas Day, he spoke for the first time since the accident. His wife, Rosario Moreno, cried as she thanked the doctors and nurses. "Thank God for the miracle that we had," she said. "He keeps telling me that it just wasn't his time."

Dr Herbert Pardes, the hospital president, described the father of three's condition when he arrived as "a complete disaster".

Both legs and his right arm and wrist were broken in several places. He had severe injuries to his chest, his abdomen and his spinal column, and his brain was bleeding.

Doctors inserted a catheter into his brain to reduce swelling and cut open his abdomen to relieve pressure on his organs.